Boomers . . . and How They Got That Way
Epistle 1 – Spam
. Technically, I’m not a Baby Boomer because I was born before the end of WWII. I guess that makes me a Beta Boomer. But the drift of my life has been borne on the high tide of the Boomers (not those old geezers like my brother), and so I cast my lot with theirs.
. The historic events that define the Boomer generation started right after WWII when all the GI’s returned home from the war and behaved like rabbits. A frisky bunch, those people. Good Lord, they kept it up for over 15 years!
. The first important thing I remember about being a Boomer is the public school food. The hallways of my grade school were stacked to the scuppers with army surplus food, particularly something truly evil call Spam. (No, children, spam was not invented to bedevil computer users. It was invented to bedevil Boomers during their tender, formative years, which explains their behavior.) The real Spam, (from Spawn of Ham, an old horror movie), is a ghastly, ghoulish thing crammed into a can and sealed tight for public safety. It can be sliced cold for a sandwich, cooked for a dinner entrée, or just left to squat in the refrigerator, daring you to even touch it, heaven forbid eat it.
. It would still be there except that boomer parents were made of sterner stuff than their offspring. Apparently the war also made them a hell of a lot meaner, too. Can you imagine forcing an innocent child to eat that today? You can’t even spank a kid today without going to jail, let alone poison it. But I read somewhere that native Hawaiians have made Spam their food of choice. Can that really be true? 113,539 Hawaiians can’t be wrong, can they? Maybe it’s the ukuleles.
. But I digress. The point is that the epic events spawned by Boomeritis were due to Spam. Of course, it has morphed into something very different now but it is still evil, and you young people deserve to know the awful truth. It’s not the crushing national debt that your elders have saddled you with for the rest of your life that you should resent to the very core of your being. It’s that they ate Spam. On the other hand, if they survived Spam, maybe you will survive the debt.
God loves little children and old Boomers.
We Will Win
Filed under: Boomer Blues
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WE CAN TELL IT WAS WRITTEN BY NONE OTHER THAN JIM TESCH–TRULY GREAT DRY WIT AS ALWAYS—BUT YOU STRUCK A NERVE WITH JEAN—SHE LOVES SPAM—MAYBE THAT’S WHAT’S WRONG WITH HER—BUT STILL LOVE HER—AFTER 56 YEARS TOGETHER, AS OF LAST SATURDAY—AND WE SURVIVED THE BOOMER YEARS—WASN’T EASY BUT THE SIX KIDS HELPED US THRU IT—WE ARE GLAD YOU HAVE THE TIME FOR THIS—KEEP IT GOING—HOW OFTEN WILL YOU RENEW THE HISTORY?—OFTEN WE HOPE—AM SURE THAT THE FRENCH RIVIERA WOULD BE A GOOD PLACE TO CONTINUE YOUR WRITING—OR HAWAII, WHERE THERE IS AMPLE SPAM, WOULD BE ANOTHER LOCATION–BUT ANYWHERE AT ALL—AS LONG AS YOU CONTINUE–OUR LOVE FROM THE STEAMY SOUTH—JEAN AND BILL
PS–SORRY THE BAG OF STUFF WE LEFT BY YOUR DOOR WAS SOO SMALL—HOPE YOU LIKED THE RIBBON COLOR—