It Started in 1898

Today is my father’s birthday.  He was born on this day in 1898, one hundred thirteen years ago today.  He was 44 when I was born, so I never really knew him as anything but an “old” man.  (In the 1940′s and early 50′s, men in their 50s looked much older than they do today.)  He was a pretty good father, but he was a product of his time, and so carried the prejudices and extremely conservative values of most other men of his generation.  The picture shows each of us around the age of 20 (that’s me on the left), and there is some family resemblance.  The pictures were taken over 40 years apart.

My dad died in 1990 at the age of 92.  It’s hard to imagine what he must have thought of the world in his final years.  He grew up at a time when there were no cars, no radio or television or airplanes.  He stood only 5′ 2″ tall, and his father, who was born in Germany, never even reached five feet.  Yet these were not unusual statures for the time.  He grew up on a farm in what is now Shrewsbury, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.  He was the first one in his family to go to college, where he earned a law degree and started practicing law at the age of 21.

During his lifetime he saw what must have seemed incredible changes in the world around him.  He grew up in a house without indoor plumbing or electric lights.  As he grew and aged he witnessed two world wars (he was in the army in WWI but didn’t go overseas), the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, Communist China, the Korean conflicts, etc.  The appearance of television (we got our first TV around 1951 or so) must have seemed surreal.  I remember him being completely confused by personal computers in the mid-1980s when I showed him my primitive Radio Shack Color Computer on one of my visits.

Now that I’m closing in on 70 and taking my place in the “senior” arena, I understand him a lot more than I did when I was younger.  Fortunately, today’s seniors, the baby boomer generation, are generally in better health and have many more options than our parents and grandparents.  If someone told me back when I was a teenager that I would be writing songs and performing at coffeehouses and music festivals after I retired, I would have thought they were crazy.  Life is a strange but interesting adventure.  I’m sure my dad would have agreed with that.

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