Member-only story
Please Don’t Call Me “Boomer”
I’ve never felt a part of my generation
Those things in the photo above are called “slides.” We put them in machines called “slide projectors.” Often, the picture on the screen was upside down.
I was born in 1959. Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Yogi Berra played in the All Star game that year. “Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin was a hit song, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of the US, and Jello molds were on most dinner tables. The telephone was owned by the phone company and was stuck to the wall.
My first vivid memory from early childhood was of our next door neighbor running to our house to tell my mother to put on the radio — President Kennedy had been assassinated. I remember watching the funeral procession on our black-and-white TV; hearing the clop clop of the horses hooves, seeing the people along the route wailing in grief.
I remember another neighbor, coming to our house because her gun was jammed. The only gun I had ever seen was the one in my Dad’s holster; he was a cop. I remember my Dad telling my neighbor that she should not own a gun; a gun was a dangerous thing to have in the house. The neighbor said she bought it because she was afraid of “race riots.” [sigh, seems like things don’t change]
