Like the attack on Pearl Harbor for our parents, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was a seminal event for the Boomer generation. I’m sure our parents always remembered where they were when they heard the Japanese had taken out the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, just as we will always remember where we were when we heard the news about JFK.
It was a Friday, so I was at school—and it was not yet lunch time in the small town where I grew up in Oregon. I can’t remember now if we heard it over the public address system or if our teacher, Miss Hager, told us that the president had been shot. We did not know, then, that he had died. We were sent home. My friends and I walked along the dusty street to our houses a few blocks from that small elementary school. I remember being frightened and confused. We were all crying. We stayed out of school until after the Thanksgiving holiday, which was the following week. The TV seemed to be always on over the next 10 days, with reporters talking about the events as they had unfolded; talking, talking about what had happened: the motorcade in Dallas, the shots and where they came from, Kennedy slumping in the back seat of the convertible, and everyone—not just me—being frightened and confused. (Television cameras did not, in spite of what some of us might think, capture this event. A bystander was taking home movies of the motorcade on his Super8 camera and it was that footage of the assassination, released in 1975, most of us probably remember most clearly.) Soon after, on that very day, Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the next president of the United States and Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. We heard he was a communist, he’d defected to the USSR and later to Cuba, and we were even more frightened and confused. Then on Sunday, November 24, Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby, a night-club operator and big fan of JFK, who was said to be distraught after the assassination. This—unlike the assassination of the president—was seen live by television viewers, who hadn’t turned their sets off since the news of the shooting of the president on Friday. This did not ease our fears or confusion; it seems to have set them both in stone for many people. (Check out some of the conspiracy theories on Wikipedia.) Finally, there was the funeral. That’s the part I remember most vividly. By Thanksgiving Day, I was pretty tired of watching the casket being carried through Washington, D.C. by a horse-drawn carriage, the salute by little John-John, the swearing in of LBJ, the constant barrage of fear and confusion. I did learn the word “cortege,” of course, but even that it didn’t make up for missing all those TV shows I usually watched. I was just a kid, and—I admit it—I was getting bored. No school, no cartoons, just that dirge and those horses. It wasn’t too many years later that I began to feel a bit guilty about that reaction. I really was just a little kid, I reminded myself, but I still thought of it as insensitive. That is, until about September 13, 2001, when I could no longer stand to watch those twin towers falling over and over again, my sense of fear and confusion growing with each repetition. I finally realized that I had to reach out and turn off the TV! That was the only way I’d maintain my sanity. It also allowed me to realize that limiting how much news about the assassination of the president I could handle—especially when I was still just a child—had probably been a blessing in disguise. I was able to move on, still believing that most people really are good and have better things to do with their lives than plan ways to kill each other.
Thirty-seven years ago this week, when most of us still thought mice were mainly useful as smokers to test the carcinogenic properties of tobacco, U.S. patent No. 3541541 was issued to Doug Engelbart for an “X-Y Position Indicator for a display system,” i.e., a computer mouse. Engelbart invented the device a couple years earlier and called it a mouse, because early versions had a cord at one end that looked like a mouse tail. Considering how fast technology is advancing, the computer mouse may soon just go the way of its cigarette-smoking namesakes.
This week is also the anniversary of Tricky’s declaration in 1973 to a whole roomful of AP managing editors that he was “not a crook.” This was duly reported in the press, and I doubt there’s a Boomer alive today who hasn’t heard of this…which just goes to prove the contention that the media just slavishly reports everything anyone in government tells them. The leader of another kind of free world is also having a big anniversary this week. Way back in 1950, when most of us Boomers were still the proverbial gleam, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama—only 15 years old at the time—was named the head of state in Tibet. Though forced to flee from his homeland in 1959, he is still considered its spiritual, if not actual, leader by most Tibetans, while most Americans felt completely betrayed by Nixon, their freely elected leader. So, kind of like mice, men can use power to make positive changes, or they can just chew through a wire and electrocute themselves.
One November day early in the Boomer years, the poet T. S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Although it would be several years before I made my appearance, I’m sure I never did realize that Mr. Eliot actually lived right up until 1965—only a few years before his name made its appearance in one of my classes.
Oh, do not ask "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
I wasted a lot of time in high school, much of it in my lit classes, but the name T.S. Eliot stuck with me for a couple of reasons. First off, though I have no memory of what it was about, I have always adored the title of his famous first poem: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I mean, really. Doesn’t that just roll off the tongue like the chorus of a good dance tune? There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet The second reason was Mr. Patterson, the teacher in that lit class. Along with almost all of his other students, I adored Mr. Patterson. And why did we adore him? Was it his ability to evoke a scene from Our Town? Was it the mellifluous tones of his elegant voice as he recited his own inimitable poetry? Was it his handsome visage? None, as they say on so many high school quizzes, of the above. He was simply, amazingly, invariably unflappable. The goal of nearly every one of his classes was to get him to flap. But, alas! We all failed! And indeed there will be time To wonder "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?" Once I remember that the clock fell off the wall in the midst of our class. (Was this an accident? Who knows?) He didn’t even flinch! He just turned around and looked at it, then returned to the lesson at hand. My own sister, who sat in his class a couple years before I did, told me of turning a waste basket upside down on desk prior to his entering the room. He came in, turned the can back over, refilled it, and began teaching. Nary a word, a glance, a scowl! But perhaps they were studying The Waste Land. Perhaps that’s why, two years later, he chose to focus on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock instead! And would it have been worth it, after all, Ah, Mr. Patterson, I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question
But in my old age, maybe I’ll pull old J Alfred out again, read it with care, and think of those tumultuous years and that classroom filled with squeaking chairs, youthful restlessness and one unflappable teacher.
I doubt I saw the Wizard of Oz when it first hit the small screen, which was on November 3, 1956. I was a too young to be watching something that scary, and I’m not sure how much TV watching we did back in those days, anyway.
I do remember my surprise when I realized that the Land of Oz was so danged colorful! I believe that was in the 70s. I’d seen the movie a bunch of times as a youngster, but I’m guessing I just didn’t watch it after we got our first color television sometime in the latter half of the 1960s. It really seemed like a whole new movie to me after that.
I still love that movie. Don’t you?
Check out this Dorothy/Scarecrow/Tin Man mashup I found on YouTube:
The original meter was invented by the French in the 1780s, and it’s been regularly made a more precise measurement, most recently at the CGPM (Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures or, in English, the General Conference on Weights & Measures) on October 21, 1983, where it was defined in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
Not that it makes much difference to the vast majority of us Boomers, or any other American, for that matter. We’d much rather cling to our traditional inches, feet and yards than kowtow to those French (and just about everyone else in the world) by changing to the metric system of measurements.
And here’s the reason given by a huge number of people I’ve asked: It’s too hard to figure out how long a meter is, how heavy a kilo is, how many liters of gas it will take to fill a gas tank (and here’s the kicker) compared to yards, pounds and gallons! And here’s my answer to that: WHAT? It’s just however many meters, kilos or liters it is, and you don’t have to convert it in your head. Just get used to the metrics! Having lived in a “developing” nation that has already somehow figured out how to convert its local measurements to metric, I can honestly say that they are a LOT easier to use. Everything is based on 10s (rather than 12s, for heaven’s sake!), so addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are all a lot easier. Think about it.
While we didn’t much care what kind of waves were used to define the meter, we sure got behind another kind of wave, that being the microwave.
It was in 1955 that Raytheon’s homestyle microwave hit the U.S. market with Tappan as its distributor. Raytheon had come up with a commercial model in 1947, a refrigerator-sized unit costing between $2,000 and $3,000. Tappan’s home model was more the size of a conventional oven, but had a less powerful microwave generating system. It had two cooking speeds (500 or 800 watts), stainless steel exterior, glass shelf, top browning element and a recipe card drawer. Still, at $1300 a pop, it wasn’t snapped up too quickly.
Even when the prices finally came down, my husband refused to buy one, citing questions about those “unmonitored microwaves.” In reality, the FDA had set safety standards for the darn things in the early 1970s. So, the only way I got a microwave oven was to buy one for myself as a Mother’s Day present sometime in the late 1980s. My husband loves it, though he keeps his distance and insists that our sons do so as well. Ongoing research leads me to believe he’s hit on a pretty wise policy—but don’t tell him I said so!
We used to throw our pennies, nickels and dimes into a small container in the car. When we’d saved up a buck, we could put three gallons of gas into the tank. That was in my early driving days, for sure! Then those danged OPEC Arabs refused to heed our demands that they give us all the oil we wanted—imagine that!—and prices soared. In today’s market, we’d be grateful if we only had to pay a dollar for a gallon of
gas, but keep in mind that the prices had actually gone up about 300% in about a year. If that happened between October 2006 and October 2007, we’d be paying a lot more than $3.25 a gallon!
The good part of OPEC’s oil embargo was that we began to learn to conserve, cars sizes started to decrease, mileage ratings improved.
Note that those things seemed to be put on the back burner in the first half decade of the 21st century, so maybe the $90 per barrel oil prices are just the nudge we need to put us back in the ecology driver’s seat.
This week we Boomers remember the end of a revolutionary fighter, the change of heart of a revolutionary scientist, the tactics of a revolutionary organization and the commencement of a cultural revolution.
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out?
Few names might spring to mind immediately if I ask you to name people who are true revolutionaries. Some of
the Founding Fathers, Mao, Castro, and of course, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Most were patriots whose main concern was freeing their own country from literal or figurative colonial status—at least that was their original intent. Che was more of a professional revolutionary, but boy was he ever inspiring! Even today, his name evokes a sort of romantic revolutionary spirit. It was on October 8, 1967 that Che was captured in Bolivia. He was executed the following day.
You say you've got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We are doing what we can
But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell is, brother, you'll have to wait
In 1975, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In their citation, the Nobel Committee called him "the conscience of mankind" saying he "has fought not only against the abuse of power and violations of human dignity in all its forms, but has in equal vigor fought for the ideal of a state founded on the principle of justice for all."
You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You'd better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow
The FLQ (Front de libération du Québec or Quebec Liberation Front) was a separatist organization established in the 1960s to fight for Quebec’s independence from Canada. The group used terrorist-style tactics to try to achieve its goals and was responsible for more than 200 bombings and the deaths of at least five people. The climax came in the October Crisis of 1970 as the group ratcheted up their activities, kidnapping a British diplomat earlier in the month, then seizing Canada’s Labour and Immigration Minister Pierre Laporte, who was eventually killed by the group. These actions proved to be their downfall, as the government invoked the War Powers Act, leading to Quebec’s separatist movement shifting toward a political solution.
But don't you know it's gonna be
Alright?
Eventually the stress of guns and bombs gets to be too much, and the best relief for that is to just call in the
Samurai Librarian! It was this week in 1975 when "Saturday Night Live" debuted on NBC with George Carlin as host and really changed how humor was delivered on TV. I first saw the show about midway through the first season and was a fairly faithful viewer until the late 1980s.
Who can forget the Blues Brothers; the Coneheads, Gumby, Buckwheat and Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood; Gilda Radner and Bill Murray’s nerd couple, Pat/Chris, Wayne’s World, the Church Lady; or the Spartan Cheerleaders. I couldn’t possibly name all the cast members who not only made an impact on SNL but also became stars in other genres. The list just goes on and on—I don’t even know most of them these days.*
Some of the most memorable lines ever came out of that show:
Miss Emily Latella’s “What’s all this I hear about youth in Asia?”
One of our favorite advertisements “It’s a floor wax, it’s a dessert topping.”
And Dan Akroyd’s debate line: “Jane, you ignorant slut.”
Of course, without fail the best part of the show has always been the Weekend Update. Starting with Chevy Chase, the anchor desk has been a stepping stone to superstardom.
Still, it seems like every generation outgrows the updated cast. Along with many others, I’ve said, “This show just isn’t as good as it used to be.” The likelihood is that the writing has always been inconsistent, the hosts not always at the top of their game, the music not always universally applauded. Even the cast has uneven. But almost all of can remember at least one cast member, sketch, musician, line, host, or full-on troupe of those originally known as the Not-Ready-for-Prime Time Players that has made us feel like we’re part of the revolution—and somehow it really feels like it’s gonna be alright.
*Fortunately for us, memories old and new are now available via the Internet. Here are some places to start:
Seems almost unimaginable that both Sputnik and Leave it To Beaver were
launched on the very same day, but that distinction does go to October 4, 1957. October 4 is now the official start of World Space Week, inaugurated in 1999 by the United Nations-sponsored Office of Outer Space Affairs.
This day is universally recognized as having launched the Space Age, and in keeping with that theme, one could argue that “the Beav” might easily be considered the very first space cadet.
While it wasn’t until 1983 that the term “nuclear winter” was coined by American physicist Richard P. Turco (a cohort of Carl Sagan, who literally wrote the book on the subject), no Boomer had been untouched by the whole idea of nuclear war and its concomitant MAD philosophy (not to be confused with the computer game of the same name). Who among us hasn’t hidden under a desk to avoid being annihilated by an atom bomb? I would guess the real driving force behind MAD and the eventual fear of a nuclear winter came about on a lovely fall day in 1949, when President Harry Truman announced to a shocked nation: "We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR." The race was on! I grew up in quite a small town planted pretty much right smack in the middle of nowhere (which turns out to be a good place to park ammunition dumps and nuclear power plants, by the way), so we didn’t have much of an airport. I can still remember trembling in my bed whenever I heard an airplane fly overhead for fear that it would be the one that brought a big bomb home to me. I realize now that this doesn’t make sense, but like most little girls, I had a big imagination and only a little strategic defense education. It took 47 years, but on Sept. 24, 1996, the U.S., along with a bunch of the world's other nuclear powers (though not all), signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons. (Go to article.) While I applaud this effort, like so much of what we do, this treaty looks like too little, too late. OK, maybe not too late. I’m really the eternal optimist—if an optimist can also be a cynic. I suspect a lot of people who get a little power can’t see the trees for the forest, but I also think most people are really pretty decent; they don’t look forward to wars or even rumors of wars. I suspect that, like me, most of them just want to eat, have a roof over their heads and have happy children—and grandchildren. I know I want my grandchildren to be happy. I sure as heck don’t want them lying awake at night wondering if the airplane droning overhead is going to drop a bomb on them! So I guess I’ll keep walking and talking the peace and love walk and talk, all the while maintaining a little low-key constituent pressure on those elected officials who claim to represent me among those powerful people who are lost in the woods. Hope they find their way home before winter.
It was during this week in 1972 that both “The Bob Newhart Show'' and M*A*S*H premiered on CBS. I’ll bet execs at that network long for the good old days!
Having grown up with Bob Newhart, I did take to his show fairly quickly. I remember listening to his albums as a youngster, and even trying to put together a telephone routine to entertain my friends! It was a bust, but I still dream of doing standup comedy, and I believe I can trace that desire back to that early failed effort.
M*A*S*H, on the other hand, I didn’t especially care for right off. In those days, of course, popular movies might still be showing at smaller local theaters for years after their release, and even if they had run their course there weren’t so many new releases that we couldn’t remember what we saw last year, much less last week! As
the TV show was first broadcast only two years after the movie was released, I found it too easy to make comparisons between Donald Sutherland and Alan Alda, between Elliot Gould and Wayne Rogers, between Robert Duvall and Larry Linville, and between Sally Kellerman and Loretta Swit. And there was Robert Altman, who has directed more than one of my all-time favorite films. However, as the show progressed and grew, I became totally addicted to it. By 1979, I was watching up to five reruns a day, trying to catch up on episodes I hadn’t seen. I still occasionally run across an episode that I’m pretty sure is new to me, but it’s likely that I’ve only seen it once, rather than the 10 times I’ve seen almost all other episodes. My view of M*A*S*H changed subtly after having acquired a Korean daughter-in-law. Though I still think it’s an excellent television series, I now find the paternalism of many of the episodes more noticeable, which has turned me into a more critical fan—but still a fan! Among lines that found their way into our family lexicon due to years of M*A*S*H indoctrination is Father Mulcahy’s “Jocularity, jocularity.”
Speaking of jocularity and other silliness, this week also marks the anniversary of the barring of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev from visiting Disneyland in 1959. That’s right – he was refused admission. The story is that U.S. government officials feared for his safety, but I suspect Walt was afraid to let a Commie see Tomorrowland.
More foolishness ensued in 1973, when Bobbie Riggs took on Billie Jean King in a tennis match in Houston, Texas, billed as a "Battle of the Sexes." I know Billie Jean King won the match and the $100,000, but I think she lost a bit of dignity in responding to Riggs’ buffoonery in the first place.
And speaking of buffoonery, this week also presents all of us—Boomer or not—an opportunity to enjoy International Talk Like a Pirate Day. This is an especially endearing event for me, as it originated on September
19, 1995, exactly one year to the day after my father died. Somehow, this seems such a fitting memorial to him. I can just imagine him finding particular joy in drinking up some grog and shouting, “Ahoy, me hearties!” Ah, Dad, I'm still a-missin' ye!
