I was born in 1949, so I did grow up on Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, and I Love Lucy.
Those are the memories I cherish.
But of course there’s more, folks.
When I was very young, we had two sources of news: newspapers and the 6 o’clock news.
There was no cable television, no cell phones, and no Blackberries.
And no internet, of course.
At my house we got morning and afternoon newspapers, and we watched Walter Cronkite in the evening.
Things started changing the day that President Kennedy was assassinated.
For four days, television networks televised the ongoing story of Kennedy’s murder, including his funeral.
As the years went by, we watched the horror of the Kent State shootings, Viet Nam, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, then Robert Kennedy’s murder.
My parents were blue collar workers, and they owned a home, had a new car every few years, and furnished us with 3 square meals a day.
A visit to the doctor cost a few bucks.
On Sunday, after a nice dinner, we (me, my brother, and our parents) got in the car and took a ride out to “the country” where we enjoyed the scenery. During the summer, we stopped at fruit stands, then got an ice cream cone before going home to bath and bed.
The pipeline of news and information was slower and not always in living color.
It was a different time, and I think that as humans we were able to live, work, and love with a marvelous sense of detachment from the horrors that life can inflict.
Things like wars and reports of missing children always happened to “other people,” or so we told ourselves.
Being a Baby Boomer is about more than being born after World War II and watching Howdy Doody.
It’s about growing up in a world that has changed with a speed that is at times exciting (when considering technology), and at times absolutely frightening (e.g., watching an airplane fly, on purpose, into buildings occupied by thousands of people).
