UNDERSTANDING BOOMERS IN A FEARFUL TIME

A brave guide for understanding boomers.

To start at the beginning, baby boomers dropped into the scene after Johnny marched home from WWII.

The early stages of the population wave were raised by WW II vets and lived around WWII vets.

From unchecked online WWII stats:

Out of the more than 16 million Americans who served, 2 million served in Europe, though the war against the Nazis has an outsized place in the American imagination.

That number of enlistees is remarkable. The US population in 1945 was 140 million, so roughly 11% of all Americans fought in World War II. Compare this to Iraq, where only about 1% of all Americans served (not including private contractors).

This is a key to understanding boomers: The first part of the demographic, from 1946 to 1952, was raised by trained killers.

They were either trained killers, knew trained killers, or felt guilty for not being a trained killer. Which is why few young boomers back-talked.

Early boomers lived in small towns, cities, and new suburbs built just for them. Their WWII vet dads made sure little boomer would grow up better than them.

It’s easy to imagine how angry the parents were when their kids rebelled against the good life they provided. It was as if they didn’t know how good they had it.

Daddy didn’t crawl off of a Great Depression dirt farm, hit the beaches to save humanity, get GI Bill college money, buy a house in Levittown, and wear a gray flannel suit to see his kid move to a farm commune. Preposterous, unbelievable, against the laws of nature and man.

Understanding Boomers Today

Find an old guy in a suit and he’s probably a boomer. Same with an old guy in a boat.

The people wasting time and money? Boomers.

For boomers to recapture the idealism of their flower power youth, a few things have to happen:

Learn to be fair: If you’ve got yours and it’s everything you’ve worked and dreamed for, send the elevator back to the ground floor to lift someone else. Being helpful won’t hurt you.

Learn to forgive: Those less fortunate didn’t get that way because they knew how to forgive. They didn’t get there because that was their goal, either. In a world of fake forgiveness, be true. First forgive, then find a way to help. Re-read the paragraph before this.

Learn to see better: Tuesday night I attended a monthly Willamette Writer’s meeting in the church across the street from the Oregon Historical Society. Every month features a guest speaker.

Tuesday night a Portland novelist named Rene Denfeld spoke to the full house. It was harrowing, if that’s the right word.

As a girl, she’d been homeless, trafficked, and slept under the benches in the Portland Park Blocks just outside the church. Inside the church, she spoke in a way that reflected her early life as if it had been someone else. Her’s was a voice that had no ambivalence.

In the early 80’s I had a job as a museum guard at the Oregon Historical Society. I opened the building in the morning and talked to some of the street people in the neighborhood. Most of them were old men, younger than I am now.

Now and then a group of younger people occupied the space in the park between my museum and the Portland Art Museum. Men and women, boys and girls, but no notions of trafficking or sex trade.

Ms Denfeld had been in those groups and reported in last Tuesday that she’d lived that life. I wanted to ask a question, but didn’t because I knew the answer to, “Do you ever see yourself in the young people in Portland today when you walk around?”

Her life has been a long pull to lift others. She sounded tired, but ready for more. That’s all anyone can ask.