The Author Celebrates His Birthday By Reviewing His Life and Times

That's me on the far right with brother and mother.

It’s my birthday. 

I’ve had one every year starting with my debut in this world in 1954. I was born a few months before the United States Supreme Court handed down their epic decision in Brown v. Education. I was born seven and half months before the then New York Giants baseball team won their last World Series title in the Big Apple. (It would be 2010 before they won one in San Francisco.)

I was born during the second year of Dwight Eisenhower’s first term as president. I was born during the relatively early days of the Cold War. I was born when there were 48 states in the USA. Statehood was four years away for Hawaii and Alaska. I was born a month after Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio married. I was born just a few days after the polio vaccination was first administered on a mass basis. (This was at a time when science in general and vaccinations in particular were held in high regard.) I was born a month before From Here to Eternity was awarded the Oscar for best picture. Two months after I was born Senator Joseph McCarthy began the Army hearings that would help bring about his downfall (today he’d be Attorney General). I was born a few months before the words “under God” where added to the Pledge of Allegiance. I was born just before Elvis Presley became famous and before Sports Illustrated had published its first issue. I was born within a few weeks of Matt Groening, Patty Hearst, John Travolta, Ron Howard and Rene Russo. I was born five months before On the Waterfront hit theaters. 

When I was born about 65% of American households had televisions and about 0% had personal computers. Telephones were infinitely more likely to be on walls than in pockets. Indeed the very idea of taking your telephone with you when you left the house was still absurd when I left for college. When I was born Vietnam was generally referred to as Indochina and it was the French who were entangled there, not the U.S. When I was born The Beatles were just under ten years from the American television debut. Major League baseball had sixteen teams, the NFL had twelve, the NHL six and the NBA had eight including teams in Fort Wayne, Syracuse and Rochester. Only the NFL had teams west of the Rockies. NCAA football teams were in geographically sane conferences of workable numbers. For example the University of California was in the nine-team Pacific Coast Conference which consisted of four schools in California, two in Washington, two in Oregon and one in Idaho. Today the Bears are in the unwieldy seventeen-team Atlantic Coast Conference which is comprised of two California schools and one from Texas with most of the rest being in states boarding the Atlantic Ocean and ranging from Syracuse in the north to Miami in the south.

When I was born Jim Crow still ruled in the American South and for that matter much of the rest of the country. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was over a year away and Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X were not well known. The US Senate hadn’t passed a federal anti-lynching law. Civil Rights bills wouldn’t be passed for another ten years. 

Gays were still very much in the closet and were not spoken of except as being perverse oddities that were lible to molest children. 

Women were being raised to be future housewives and were not afforded the same legal rights as men.

Me in 1978

Many African and Asian countries were still under colonial rule. Most African countries were under French or British rule. There was both an East and West Germany and countries like Poland, Estonia and Romania were under Soviet rule.

In my life time there have been the assassinations of a president, John F. Kennedy, his brother Bobby, then a presidential candidate, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton and scores of other civil rights leaders. There was also been the entire run of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. I’ve been alive for the all of the Watergate saga which brought down a president. I was around for the Zodiac killings which terrorized the Bay Area and the Patty Hearst kidnapping and her conversion to an SLA warrior and her magical transformation back to a law-abiding citizen. I have memories of the Jim Jones cult and their mass suicide in Jonestown and the murders of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk that same month. My life has also coincided with Charles Manson, his "family" and the brutal slayings they inflicted. I also recall Woodstock and Altamont. Likewise the arrival of the Beatles which transformed my life and sensibilities. I was witness to the emergence of the Hippie Movement and the protests of the Sixties some of which I participated in. 

I started life with a black and white TV that had five channels and now have a large high definition color TV with a flat screen and more channels than I can count plus several streaming services. For most of my life if I wanted to see a movie that was not in theaters I had to wait for it to be on TV where it would be decimated by commercials. Now I can find any movie I want (with rare exceptions) and watch it at my leisure, commercial free. Indeed I own about 300 films on DVD. Similarly, in my youth if I wanted to listen to a song that I didn’t have on an album or a 45 I had to hope that it would be on the radio. Now I can find it, often accompanied by a video, on YouTube.

Information that used to require a trip to the library is now at our fingertips. Then again a great deal of lies that we would not have been exposed the past to are now at our fingertips. 

I was born into a more dangerous world. There were no seat belts, bike riders didn’t wear helmets, playgrounds could be veritable death traps. On the other hand school shootings were not nearly so ubiquitous and the government was actively trying to make us safer from disease rather than making false claims about the dangers of inoculations. This gets to the worst thing about the world today. A reckless idiot who is dismantling all the good things that the government can do for the people, especially the most vulnerable, is bending over backwards to serve the needs of the wealthiest. He holds the highest position in the land. 

When I was growing up climate change was not a thing though people were becoming aware of the need to protect our environment. I was in high school when we had the first Earth Day. Today we’re already living with the effects of climate change.

I was born before Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was published and before Allen Ginsberg’s first public reading of Howl. Both those pieces of literature have been meaningful in my life.

I was born when my beloved Cal football team was mediocre. Today they are mediocre. In between they have mostly been mediocre and bad more often than good. I love them no less. It was seventeen years before I became aware of London’s Arsenal Football club and I have loved them ever since. They have given me much joy. As previously noted the San Francisco Giants were in New York when I came into the world. They are playing in their third different ballpark in SF. Virtually every professional team that you can name is in their second or third home since the fifties. The astroturf era as come and mostly gone. Women's sports have become popular and I am a dedicated fan of Cal's women's basketball team.

My wife was already in the world when I was born. She is the love of my life and offsets any travails I’ve ever experienced. Only the love I have more daughters matches the way I feel about her. I've had many friends, sadly too many of them died young. In 2017 two great friends died within six months of each other. Life can be cruel. I've seen many other people suffer great misfortune and have a fair share of my own mostly in the form of a mentally ill mother. I've struggled with PTSD all my life and attendant issues such as drug and alcohol addiction, depression, anxiety and panic attacks. With all that I've been luckier than most. I've remained physically healthy and had a long and rewarding career in teaching. 

I enter a new year feeling incredibly lucky that I’ve been along for the ride and I’d like to stick around for as long as possible. It’s been a lot of fun and damned if you know what's going to happen next in this world.