That we were happy to be alive under any circumstances was the point growing up during the 50s. We were told to be so by our pandemic, world war and depression weary folks.

Sometimes we were distracted and drove ourselves into a ditch and got severely bounced around, nearly buying the farm — missing a bridge or an old tree by an inch — before correcting ourselves, and steering back onto life’s highway happy to still be alive again.

We were slow learners, but learn we did and we moved on.

Then after some more time passed and we were a bit older (and better off we guessed), we still fell prey to distractions like buying a luxe convertible or fast hot rod (an unplanned purchase on a payment plan — always on a payment plan) that could overtake and pass anything as it was driven by handsome men in a flight jacketed uniforms of the US Navy. In the passenger seat, a beautiful young woman smiled at us, rendering us speechless and beyond ultra-distracted.

These shiny machines, once parked, drew crowds of kids like bees to honey. Raised right, we were always openly friendly to these children as the car’s radio cranked to three-quarters played the latest and greatest top 40 tunes from the dashboard speaker grill that got the young ones jabbering, singing, swaying, and dancing:

Cars and girls are easy come by in this day and age
Laughing, joking, drinking, smoking
‘Till I’ve spent my wage
When I was young people spoke of im-mor-ality
All the things they said were wrong
Are what I want to be

We’d race our cars’ V8s so the young crowd could hear the Detroit powered animal grumble and rumble and not the wheezing, clattering, and rattling of the foreign-made, inexpensive, mini cars that were starting to wash ashore in America’s ports. Several more throttle goosings rendered the children deliriously chaotic.

Nowadays, car radios aren’t radios but lonely computers on the road hooked to the invisible cloud, playing snatches of another distant war’s news on the eight or so speakers inside the seating area. Strangely, today’s youth don’t have the same early owner fixation we had with cars.

Maybe that’s due to today’s cars headlights illuminating the nighttime in a darker, different, almost harsh way. Still those bygone machines’ powers of enchantment are overwhelming even 50 years later. It’s like one’s first taste of carnival candy . . . like a Midwestern child’s first view ever of an ocean, the horizon, the sun glimmering on the endless waters. We took it in and never forget that moment when we truly saw the curve of the earth.

This slow learning was good for us.

Most, if not all, of these admiring youngsters, had never seen the ocean. We boys in khaki lived on, above or under it. When asked about it, we’d treat their interest seriously, almost reverently but without preaching or BSing. We’d speak of stressful times, honorable sailors, hard work, life and death always ending with some last-minute situation that we’d describe like it’s our cars on a newly wetted pavement making us slide sideways as we counter steered to save our souls, so they could feel it and want to join if they really wanted to.

Some slow but steady learning was present there.

Today’s controlled and censured social media age is like growing up in an orphanage — you’re always lonely, yet you’re just never left alone.

You’re not left alone in the bathroom or the shower — not even in your own bed on a cold morning.

Most folks my age miss things . . . like people. For instance, I miss getting and reading letters in the mail from distant correspondents and reading books to my kids and grandkids. I miss going to the movies at a drive-in theater. It was like watching the three main broadcast TV channels programming at home, something we all did together as a nation but in the privacy of our cars or living rooms. Today there’re as many “programming” channels and programs as there are people in the world. Where’s the social in that?

It’s all so eternally adolescent — a never ending, computer-network assisted period which seems defined as the first time in our lives when we imagine we have something terrible to hide from those who love us. Yet somehow we feel safe sharing it broadly online with strangers.

This often leads me to wonder how this world is treating us. And how we are treating ourselves and others.

Seems we no longer talk a lot about hoping to be of use to folks, in whatever we are up to.

We just sit by the raw holes daily dug by others with piles of fresh dirt standing out against media’s noise acting like newly fallen snow; the hole is always black against the day’s new drifts of white noise.

Now this is some serious slow learning. It’s like we’ve become a black and white photo stills of finished characters instead of the more appealing movie story of souls in flux.

Over under sideways down.
Backwards forwards square and round.
Is this the best way we have found?
When will it end? (when will it end?)
When will it end? (when will it end?

(Italicized lyrics courtesy of the Yardbirds’ song Over Under Sideways Down)

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