How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Junior High

In the spring of 1958 I, along with 109 other little bright eyed sixth grade Whittier children, looked forward to summer days knowing that in the fall we were to join kids from five other elementary schools at Alice Robertson Junior High.  To say our world would expand was an understatement.  The amount of maturity that occurs between the 7th and the 9th grade is easy to see looking at the old yearbooks.

Alice Robertson Junior High School

A little interesting history on Alice Robertson Junior High (now called the 7th and 8th grade center).  Alice Robertson, from Muskogee, was an educator who was only the second woman elected to Congress in 1921. She was also the first woman to be appointed as a Class A Postmaster. The school itself opened in 1940 and is adjacent to the largest football field built in Oklahoma by the WPA in 1936.  Known as Indian Bowl, the stadium is still used today as the high school stadium for the Muskogee High School Roughers.  Being a historic preservation person I am proud to see both the school and the stadium still in use.

Camp Fred Darby 1959

After a summer of all the usual swimming, girl scout camp, fighting with brothers and a family attempt at a vacation (the vacation is a novel in itself) the scary day arrived when I had to enter the doors of that huge building.  There were a total of 422 students in the 7th grade alone.  Instead of sitting at the same desk in the same room all day long as in elementary school we had to change classrooms and teachers.  It was our first introduction to band, orchestra, chorus, home economics, gym and lockers. It was also a twenty block walk home instead of the ten to and from grade school.  Scary as it was, it did not take long to make more friends and get used to the daily routine.

After all these years it is hard to remember a lot of the events that made the characteristics of the baby boomer generation develop compared to the classes before us especially in the 7th and 8th grade. The sheer size of class itself created more chaos.  There did not seem to be a day that went by that someone wasn't sent to The Blue Room.  The Blue Room was next door to the principle's office where Mr. Abbott got out his paddle.  It does seem like a trip there was a badge of honor for most of the boys.

My mother was pretty good at keeping me busy with piano and dancing lessons and girl scouts.  If there was a talent show at school I was always the first one to sign up much to the chagrin of my brother Paul. Unlucky for me, Paul was in the ninth grade when I did some dance in a talent show and gave some silly speech to the entire school running for a student council office.  His friends, who I looked at in the same way I would have looked at Troy Donohue or James Darren, would pass me in the hall and yell "Hey, Paul.  Isn't that your sister?"  Paul would answer
"No, I don't have a sister". He was good at crushing all my fantasies.

Talent Show 1959

Yes, it was the time when I fell in love at least once a day. Movies didn't help.  I had outgrown Superman and Wagon Train on TV and dashed off to see Gidget or A Summer Place with all the other teenage girls. I rushed home from school everyday to watch American Bandstand and knew the name of everyone on the show.  I learned to dance using the door jam for a partner and poured over every issue of Teen Magazine.  If I did not have the latest copy of Seventeen magazine how was I ever going to know what to wear or how to act!

Gidget I was not

Oh how I remember the sock hops in the gym.  The boys sat on one side of the gym and the girls on the other. Excuse me!  When the music started on American Bandstand everyone grabbed a partner and rushed to the floor. Now the ninth graders danced but they certainly were not going to ask a little kid out onto the dance floor. 

There is a funny story I well remember about a sock hop and macho brother Paul.  He actually had a date to one of them with a very pretty girl.  Not being able to drive, Mom had to take him and pick up his date. This was when my Mom had the bright red Jeepster.  Cute as it was it was not the cool car Paul dreamed about.  To make matters worse Mom figured that since I was going to the dance too that we would just all go together.  Paul moaned and groaned all the way to the girl's house about me, about the Jeepster and about life in general.  When we picked the girl up she rode in the backseat with me.  Needless to say, Paul's first real grown up date was not at all what he imagined.  I enjoyed it. Revenge is nice.

Macho Brother Paul

At the junior high level it seemed like slowly the realization set in that there were "popular" girls. I can't say that every girl wanted to fit in that category but there was definitely something to being well liked. Naturally cheerleaders sort of stood out.  Don't think that has changed much through the years but when I was in school there were only cheerleaders for the varsity team.  Out of the whole school only nine girls could achieve that distinction.

Mrs. Chance, the physical education teacher was also the cheerleader coach. You know, I don't remember ever seeing Mrs. Chance in anything but a white shirt and white shorts in the three years at Alice Robertson. She was a short stocky Indian woman, very stern and her skinny legs stuck out of those big legged shorts almost cartoon like.  Anyway, every spring there were tryouts for the cheerleaders for the following year. For weeks all the girls got together in groups of nine and practiced like crazy before the elections. 

The day of the tryouts had to be the longest day ever.  The hopefuls did their routines in front of the pep club who voted for the girls they thought were the best. I lost. The end of the world had really come.  I can remember walking home with a boy who had stayed to watch the tryouts and crying all the way. He tried hard to console me but it didn't work.  When I got home and told my Mom I lost and she was overjoyed. That didn't help.  Guess she wanted a concert pianist or a ballerina instead of a cheerleader.

Ah....the 7th grade picture

Somehow I manged to pull myself together and go back to school.  Just by chance a few weeks later one of the girls who got elected as a cheerleader found out she was moving over the summer. Mrs. Chance put the three names of the next runner-ups in a hat and drew one to replace the moving girl's spot.  She drew my name.  Mom was not happy. 

It was over that summer between the 8th and 9th grade that a lot of the characteristics of the baby boomer generation began to show up in all of us.  The "me" generation was beginning to emerge and patterns of behavior changed.  Life was getting more fun and more interesting.

How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Early Years

Lucky me being born in the first year of the Baby Boomer generation that let me experience all the culture and societal changes of the decade and a half. It was the era of the great housing boom that created the suburbs, the huge increase in car ownership and the phenomenal economic change that made class distinctions less noticeable. 

I grew up with two brothers, Paul two years older and Kenny two years younger.  We lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma which was a town of about 38,000 people in an after-the-war little tract home. My dad was a pharmacist and my Mom was the epitome of "June Clever". The neighborhood of about a hundred and fifty similar houses was filled with young families and lots of children.  The majority of the houses were only two bedrooms but no one thought anything about three twin beds and a dresser in a tiny room. Dad added another bedroom when I was about ten so I could have a room of my own.

                 About 1950 - Kenny & Mom back row - Me, Paul and a friend

With two brothers I naturally was a tomboy. Mother shooed us out of the house early on the days there was no school.  I can remember playing Cowboys and Indians, army with real army surplus canteens and helmets, hide and seek and baseball.  Superman was fun until a neighbor boy jumped off the roof thinking he could fly and baseball for me lost it's luster after my brother, Paul, hit me square in the forehead and knocked me out.  Broken bones, cuts and bruises were almost considered part of the play. The street was our playground, good for sledding when there was snow or clamping on the metal skates and racing down the street.

                                              Kenny and I

School days always started with the whole family around the breakfast table.  There was no way you were going off to school without a balanced breakfast.  I developed phobias about eggs and prunes but trust me, I ate them.  Dad would always go around the table giving everyone a kiss on his way off to work in his suit, tie and hat.

                                 Dad's first new car - 1956

                                         Mom's Very First Car

Needless to say we rode our bikes or walked the ten blocks to school. That was the fun way to start the day since all the kids walked or rode bikes.  I couldn't wait to get to school each day not only to see my friends but also because I liked to learn. The bad part was that my Mom was President of the P.T.A. for years and all the teachers and the principle expected Kenny and I to be good.  Not much hope for Paul.  But it was tough if we were bad since the teachers always told her if we got into trouble.  Those were the days when if you got a spanking at school, you got one when you got home too.

Recess was the time to play baseball, shoot marbles, jump rope or run around like crazy kids.  I remember having bandages on both knees for years from falling down on the playground.  Mom was constantly upset about the hems torn out of my dresses or dirt ground in a skirt.
Yes, those were the days when we wore dresses and little flats to school.  I think it was about the time I was in the fifth grade that Paul stopped telling me on the way home how much trouble I was going to be in for the messed up clothes and I started acting a little more refined.

                    Annual Whittier School Picnic at Spaulding Park



All holidays were fun.  Halloween back then was really the best.  Mom made costumes for us and we went out with brown paper grocery sacks to Trick to Treat.  No parents went, we were on our own with Paul being responsible for us.  We would fill the sacks and run home, dump them out in our own piles and run out to fill it up again. The house that gave out good stuff would probably be hit a couple of times. Christmas Day we would wake up early and sneak out to see what Santa left.  The stockings came back to bed with us and we had a chocolate high the next morning.  My Dad put on a huge fireworks display in the street every year on the 4th of July.  I loved the sparklers and worried about Dad holding the Roman Candles in his hand to shoot them off.

I remember Saturdays when we were all still in grade school was movie day. Muskogee had two movie theaters which were packed with kids every week.  Our next door neighbor had five children and each Saturday our Moms took turns either driving all of us to the theater or packing little sacks of candy.  We had a dime extra to buy something to drink and we would spend the afternoon watching the cartoon, the news reel, a Flash Gordon serial and some kid-orientated feature.  Paul was the oldest so he would tell us all to sit in our seat and not move until he came back - we actually obeyed an eight year old.

There were swimming, piano and dancing lessons. We were all three Girls Scouts and Boy Scouts, went camping and on cookouts.  Mom gave us birthday parties every year in the backyard and seemed to enjoy it. Sundays were filled with going to church and sometimes a drive in the country or a rare chance to go out to eat. I learned to dance at The Pioneer Room at the Severs Hotel by standing on my Dad's shoes when we went there for dinner.  Actually going out to eat was rare and everyone was always home for dinner around the kitchen table.

Not to give the impression that the early 1950's were without some fear. This was the Cold War/Russia/nuclear bomb era.  We spent a lot of time in my grade school years practicing "duck and cover" under the desk or in the hallway in case of a nuclear bomb attack.  We did the same tactic for a threat of a tornado. Seems funny now that "duck and cover" would have protected us from either one.  The other thing we learned from a film every year for six years was about Danger,Stranger.  Danger,Stranger was what to do if a man in a trench coat and a hat pulled over his eyes told us our mommy said for him to pick us up or that he had a kitten he wanted to show us.  It taught us what to do if approached by a stranger and how to stay safe.

Sometime in the early 50's we got a television set.  I read recently that when TV's came into vogue families started watching four or five hours a day. Ed Sullivan actually started in 1948 then came the Mickey Mouse Club, The Lone Ranger, Lassie. Hopalong Cassidy, Sky King, Sea Hunt and many more. Remember how you would die if you sat too close to the screen or that you could only watch one or two shows a day?

                                   Vacation to Wisconsin in 1953

My family wasn't perfect but my parents taught the three of us the value of work by giving us chores to do.  They taught us independence and responsibility by letting us do things on our own. By the time we were out of grade school we knew how to take care of ourselves in any situation and that if we did something wrong it was our own fault and there was no one to blame but ourselves.

                   Whittier Graduation  Book - 45 Girls and 65 Boys 
         {Interesting that now days they think 20 kids in the class is too 
            big.  We had the classes with 33 or more in each.}

If the years before age eleven are the so called formative years the baby boomers in my neighborhood were well on their way to the free-spirited and creative generation we were to become.  After elementary school we were headed off to the junior high to meet up with more children who were beginning to imitate the combined characteristics of Leave It To Beaver and the Little Rascals.  Life was getting more fun and very interesting.

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How Lucky I am To Be A Baby Boomer - Part I

Being a member of the first official year of the Baby Boomer Generation I have heard for years about how we were going to break the Social Security and the Medicare systems due to the sheer number of us.  Most of the articles you read have us all moving to Florida or Arizona to live out our years playing golf or bridge. I think they have us mixed up with the G.I. Generation ahead of us.

The Baby Boomer generation is defined as those of us who were born between 1946 and 1964, the result of a population boom after World War II.  The oldest will be 70 next year, the youngest 52.  Most of us think we were very,very lucky to have grown up in the greatest generation ever. The analyst that sits in some little office and dreams up the statistics has it all wrong.

Boomers don't think that the normal idea of retirement is cool.  It doesn't fit our image or our lifestyle.  Baby Boomers redefined each stage of life as we experienced it.  No other generation had more influence on fashion design or hair length.  We influenced education, music, race relations, sex-roles and child rearing in a larger way than any other age group.  Boomers will change what we know about old age. We don't consider ourselves senior citizens but rather Vintage. Classic. Resilient. Fun.

Here are a few statistics:

Boomers are more educated and occupied more professional and
     managerial positions.
They are more racially and ethnically diverse.
Boomers have a higher rate of separation and divorce and lower rates 
     of marriage.
They had fewer babies.  Boomers were 40% of the population in 1964
     and 20% in 2014.
They had varied work histories and worked for more of their adult years
     than previous generations.
Boomers were not great savers and were hardest hit by the 2008
     recession. A recent survey by Merrill Lynch found that nearly 80%
     of boomers intend to keep working.
Boomers will not only enjoy a longer lifespan but a healthier one.  

Interesting statistics with really interesting reasons.  The reason for Boomers working longer is in part financial but is also due to the fact that many of the boomers chose a career that made them a good living but have created a new one doing something they always wanted to do.
Great time to open a bakery, become and artist or a writer, work part time in a bookstore or some other place of interest or teach others on what they have learned in their lifetime. Retirement means doing what you like to do - not what you have to do.

Surprise!  Boomers will enjoy not only a longer lifespan but a healthier one.  The age-adjusted death rate for heart disease was 67% lower in 2005 than it was in 1990.  The age-adjusted death rate for stroke has declined 74% since 1990. This suggests that many Boomers may be aging more slowly than previous generations.  It also points to the fact that they have healthy habits such as less smoking and exercise even if they started later. 

As much as retirement places in Florida and Arizona are promoted, most of the Boomers will remain in their homes or downsize to urban lofts or condos.  This is a group who always wanted to be where the action was and the urban setting gives them all the cultural amenities usually with in walking distance.  Interesting fact that the current hottest spot for retirees is Oxford, Miss. Oxford, a college town, offers a huge variety of things to do including golf courses but also rock concerts and plays. The free spirited and social cause orientated Baby Boomers will stay engaged and have a great time.

So, now you have a few facts about the Baby Boomers.  Chances are that we will not make the "entitlement" programs such as Social Security and Medicare go broke and it definitely be fun to prove them all wrong.

Why is the Baby Boomer generation so very lucky?  Tune in next week to find out why.  Please feel free to send me your comments - good and bad.

I Should Have Known: I Will Not Vote For Anyone Who Talks About Reducin...

I Should Have Known: I Will Not Vote For Anyone Who Talks About Reducin...: I am sure that there are a lot of people will not even look at this posting due to the title.  They are the same people who want better ro...

I Will Not Vote For Anyone Who Talks About Reducing Taxes

I am sure that there are a lot of people will not even look at this posting due to the title.  They are the same people who want better roads, wonderful National Parks to visit, better health care for our veterans, teachers and schools that can educate our children, funds for the many natural disasters that seem to be occurring more often and on and on. If you are still reading, stick with me and maybe you will see why I feel this way. I am no expert but I have done a lot of research.

The theory that I keep hearing on why taxes on corporations  keep going lower is because of the "Trickle Down" idea.  Looks to me like there isn't much of a trickle down happening.  Manufacturing jobs have been disappearing for years to other countries and many of the big corporations are no longer based in the United States so they don't have to pay taxes.  Our government, both state and local, gives companies huge tax breaks and the companies pay few, if any, tax returns.

Ten of our largest corporations pay no taxes at all.  Let's take a look at the top four.

1. General Electric
    From 2008 to 2013 General Electric made $33.9 Billion in U.S. profits. They stashed $108 billion
    in offshore accounts.  They received a tax refund of $2.9 billion from the I.R.S. and if they would
    have paid taxes it would have amounted to $37.8 billion.  So their tax rate was -9%.  At the same
    time the CEO made $19 million a year and has a retirement account worth $59 million.
 
2. Boeing
    From 2008 to 2013 Boeing made $26.4 billion in U.S. profits.  They paid no taxes but received
    a tax refund of $401 million dollars. Their tax rate is -2%  They have outsourced tens of
    thousands of jobs to low-wage paying countries and is one of the top recipients of corporate
    welfare.  Last year the CEO made $23.3 million.

3. Verizon
     From 2008 to 2013 Verizon made $42.4 billion in U.S. profits. They received a tax refund of
     $732 million from the I.R.S. and if they had to have paid taxes it would have been in the amount
     $630 million dollars  They also stashed $1.8 billion in offshore accounts.  Their CEO makes $15.8
     million currently. Tax rate of -2%.

4.  Bank of America
     In 2010 Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the I.R.S. even though they made
     $4.4 billion in profit. To top it off, they received a $1.3 Trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve
     and the Treasury Department. From the money they have stashed in offshore accounts they should
     have paid $4.3 billion dollars in taxes. Their CEO made $13.1 million last year.

The list of the worst ten goes on to include Citigroup, Pfizer, FedEx, Honeywell, Merck, and Corning
but the list of other companies goes on and on.  Interesting about these four companies is that all the CEO's sit on something called the Business Roundtable.  They all recommend that the retirement age be raised to 70 for Medicare and Social Security with deep cuts to Social Security. Guess I wouldn't have to worry about a cut to either of these programs if I made millions of dollars a year.

For the past four years President Obama has proposed a reduction in the amount of $4 billion a year
in fossil fuel subsides, Congress would not even discuss them so the fossil fuel industry still receives $37.5 billion dollars a year, from you, the taxpayer. These companies are making billions a year but still getting a handout at the same time tens of thousands of workers are being laid off. Where is the "trickle down" here?

The states operate in much the same way.  There were 23 states the end of July who could not pass a budget by the July 1st deadline due to shortfalls.  They give tax incentives to big business to move to their state and then the state does not have the money to build roads, maintain schools and goes crying to the Federal Government when a tornado or flood occurs.  At the same time they holler about states rights
and not wanting the federal government in their business.

The war in Iraq and Afghanistan was projected to cost $200 billion dollars.  The cost has risen to
$4 trillion dollars and may go to $6 trillion dollars when you include the medical care to our veterans.
All of this money, $4 trillion,  was borrowed with tax cuts for everyone in the country at the same time. The on-going debt ceiling battle is in great part due to the expense of our eleven year battle in the middle east.  The first time in U.S. history that we went to war without a tax increase.

No, I do not want a tax cut. I want our government to make everyone and every corporation pay their fair share.  Get rid of the tax loopholes, stop giving refunds to corporations who pay no taxes, stop the subsides to billion dollar fossil fuel companies and get the money out of the offshore accounts. You and I, the voters, do not get away this behavior.  I will be voting for people who realize the "trickle down" effect has never worked. How can you vote for tax cuts when our government is living on borrowed money and half of our states are broke?

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