[Disclaimer: "Yesterday" no longer actually refers to yesterday. But it took me a while to figure out where this was headed. But now it looks as though it's here to stay. Oh I believe in...]
Yesterday. My grandfather turned 92. So first: happy birthday, Papa! (Not that you'll ever read this...being 92 and all.)
But moving on.
92 years old. Two years into his tenth decade. Even without the constant clicking of the oxygen tank brazenly announcing the passing of every few seconds, it's enough to get me thinking about time. About time.
He was born in 1913. Born into a world that would erupt--in the first year of his life--into what would come to be known as the First World War (the first of many as it turns out, though only the first of two by name).
Less than a year earlier, the additions of Arizona and New Mexico brought the United States up up to 48 stars on its flag. (Numbers 49 and 50 wouldn't make an appearance for almost 50 more years, until my father was nearing teenager-dom...which is also disconcerting time-wise.)
My grandfather was a teenager during Prohibition and the Roarin' Twenties.
He was in his late twenties when FDR spoke of a day that would live in infamy.
And he was in his late eighties when that sort of language was finally used again. And again. And again. In disingenuous, propagandistic syndication.
He was in his late forties during the Cuban Missile Crisis -- middle-aged when Charles de Gaulle waved away evidentiary photos of missiles in Cuba, saying, "The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me."
Forty-five years later, who would do that today? Who would say that?
He was born with the assembly line; I was born with the personal computer. He was raised amid influenza; I was raised amid AIDS. He was told penicillin would be his life's cure-all; I am told genomics will be mine. He was born ten years after the Wright brothers' first flight; I have already seen the first outer space tourists return from their travels.
He was barely five years old when the following words were heard from the President:
"What we demand in this war...is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression."
His first President, Woodrow Wilson, set out this "program of the world's peace" while at home he set up the U.S. Committee on Public Information which ordered the Palmer Raids in 1919, he had Eugene V. Debs arrested, he supported the American Protective League, and he pushed the Espionage and Sedition Acts through Congress.
Who would say that today? Who would do that?
He was barely five years old. I am now twenty-three.
92 years. He has seen radios turn to TVs turn to color TVs turn to VCRs turn to DVDs turn to Tivos turn to video iPods.
The Birth of a Nation to Fahrenheit 9/11.
And the more things change.
3 comments:
Your grandfather is two tears into his TENTH decade, Mr. Smartypants.
I meant "years" of course, but the typo was probably apt in any event what with the ticking of the oxygen tent.
Indeed. Smartypants stands corrected. Duly noted (and changed in the original).
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