The Vanishing Boomer — STEVEN HARDESTY

Proud to say I’m a Boomer because we changed the world and all of you out there who aren’t haven’t. I mean all you sneering Millennials, Gen-Zers and other such with cute names. What have you done and why aren’t you getting down to doing something?

That’s the subject of my latest book-in-draft called Boomers End.

When I say changed the world, just think (if you dare) what music was like before we Boomers took over. I don’t mean Ellington jazz or Goodman swing. That stuff’s grand and eternal. But pop music from Doris Day and Perry Como, folk music (can you really listen to the lyrics of Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather” without cringeing?) and whining hillbilly (“D-I-V-O-R-C-E”).

We Boomers shoved aside all that nonsense for Elvis! Chuck Berry! Otis Redding! James Brown! Tina Turner! the Jefferson Airplane! and Janis Joplin! When they died there was no more music, as I’m sure you know. Well, except for the Rolling Stones who, as good Boomers, don’t seem willing to fade away.

How about books – Holden Caulfield, that Gone With the Wind nonsense and Rod McKuen’s poetry? Give me a break. We stomped all that and took up Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America. Alan Ginsberg. Harper Lee. A Confederacy of Dunes. Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo.

Our changing music, books and movies (Go Tell the Spartans) pushed along changes in the way people thought in the Age of Boomers and that pushed for a war on race hate in this country. An end to a useless war in Vietnam. For full and fair treatment of all people. And for something else:

Does it ever occur to you why a Boomer will rinse the top of a tin can before opening it to fork out canned tuna or pour tomato soup? No, it isn’t to rinse off the supermarket shelf dust. But to rinse off (and sometimes scrub with soap) the nuclear fallout. From atom bomb tests in Arizona and hydrogen bomb tests in Siberia and Bikini.

Boomers are the last of the World War II generation and we fought in the coldest part of the Cold War. Born in those years right after the WW2 ended. Raised by parents who had suffered through the war against fascism and, before that, the Great Depression. We’re the last who truly remember that war. Too young to fight it, yes. But not too young to be reminded of it each day of our youth in a dozen unconscious and sometimes very conscious ways by our parents and by post-war society.

We’re the ones trained to outsmart Russian nuclear missiles by hiding under our school desks. Prepared to crawl into holes dug deep in the backyard to wait out nuclear war and then to crawl out into a ruined world to try to re-start the planet. Told life could be nasty, brutish and short and probably would be. For us. Very short.

When we grew old enough to shout against all that horror, we saw we also had to act against the race hate that murdered four schoolgirls in a Birmingham church. Against abuse and belittlement of women and their hopes to fully join society in all its aspects. Against denying fellow citizens all that any citizen (and taxpayer!) has a right to expect from this country. Against a foreign war that was unfair, unjust and unnecessary. Against a corrupt election system and a lazy government.

Against all the evils that, despite the progress we thought we were making, did not change that much. Because life changes by increments and only rarely by leaps. Oh, you hope for a leap, prepare the groundwork for a leap, maybe even achieve a leap. But if you don’t push the increment, you make no progress at all.

That’s why a Boomer out of habit still rinses the lid of a tin can before s/he cranks the old-fashioned manual can opener around the lid to cut it open. Because you’ve got to crank hard to make progress, and any progress at all is progress.