Most people my age had parents which nicely "set the table" for us. In other words, their life focus was to leave us a world better than the one they inherited from their parents. For the most part, they succeeded in that endeavor very well.
I am a "boomer" - born in the late forties, grew up in the fifties and sixties. Family life was similar to Ozzie and Harriet. Don't get me wrong, life was not boring - it was just ordinary. The template for what life was suppose to be revealed itself right in front of us - and it was provided by our parents. We went to school, to church, and played cops and robbers outside in the front yard. When Dad got home from work, together we watched Walter Cronkite and Dave Moore to see the news. We ate family dinner, did homework and then watched some TV before bedtime. We walked and rode bikes all over as our parents seldom had to worry about our well being. It was a comfortable life, a safe life.
The only fly in the ointment was Viet Nam. Unlike World War II, the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts became wars of attrition rather than victory. Viet Nam affected many in my peer group. It was messy, confusing and long. Young men went to a land far away and witnessed horrors they still carry with them today. Some were wounded, some died and all that went were impacted. However besides Viet Nam, life was still very good. Employment had many opportunities, inflation was low, and most everyone had hope for the future. We saw what our folks had and knew if we worked hard enough, we could have the same, if not better. It was called the American Dream.
Today paints a much different picture. As in Camelot, our "Round Table" has developed some major cracks. For example, today it is hard to listen to the radio or watch TV without having a PSA asking for money so kids may have lunch in the summer. It seems that during the school year a number of kids now qualify for free or reduced lunches and during the summer when there is no school, there is no lunch. We currently have one out of seven Americans on some kind of food assistance - that is over 40 million people just in our country! Also for the first time I heard a PSA asking for donated beds so kids in our state won't have to sleep on the floor. What in the world has happened to our country, our state? At one time we donated to charities to send food and comfort items to aid the less fortunate in Third World countries. Now we need to donate the same type of items to ourselves.
When I was in high school, very few kids smoked or consumed alcohol. Drugs were not yet in the picture. Birth control for guys or gals was almost impossible to get without parental consent (fat chance of that happening!). Kids were not in rehab and there were very few pregnancies. Now we have "Sober High" (school) and day care facilities in many of the secondary schools. Birth control is handed out like candy to guys and girls and yet the number of teenage pregnancies each year is staggering.
I ache for our kids. What a bewildering, confusing world this must appear to be. Kids today are not stupid. They know the chances of having a better life are is slim. The American Dream? Maybe not. In addition, as we patterned our lives after our parents and leaders, who are they to pattern after? The cesspool in Hollywood? The dysfunction in Washington? Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet have been replaced by adult cartoons on Sunday night filled with vulgarity and disrespect. Black has become white and up is now down. Absolute right and truth have been replaced with moral relativism, hedonism and sometimes even nihilism. Utopia has dissolved into dystopia. Our Constitution and Bible are now vulnerable to revision so they can be aligned with the times. Even the sacred act of marriage is on the verge of being redefined into something yet to be defined.
I don't know the root cause of this sea change in our society, our country. Some say it goes back to the unrest of 1968, a few say the "Great Society", others say Viet Nam. Whatever triggered it, it is a change which has not yet stopped. A couple years ago I wrote an article for our class web site called The End of Innocence. In that article I talk about life in the early to mid sixties when I went to high school. I believe that 1967 was the last year of the innocence - the Camelot. After that, everything started to change - slowly at first, and then rapidly. Call me naive, but all I want to do is put the round table back together and get back to Camelot. I want our kids to see a world full of challenges, but I want them also to see hope. I want them to know that the world we are leaving them is just as good, if not better, than the world we inherited from our parents. We owe it to them - they are the future, our future. If we don't have the will to restore hope by righting this wrong, may God forgive us, and may our children forgive us...
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