I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

The things we Baby Boomers were destined to accomplish! We would be the generation that would usher in cheap, clean nuclear power! We would be driving flying cars by 2000! And we would take the lead in adopting the efficient, easy-to-use metric system!

OK, enough with the exclamation points already. Obviously, all three of these particular dreams were overblown.

However, it may surprise you to know just how close we are to being a metric nation. Read on.

It all started by those lovable masters of illogic, the French, who decided we needed a logical system of measurement. According to metric scholar Pat Naughin:

The metric system used all around the world has three parts. In France in the 1790s, it was named the "decimal metric system". The system part came from John Wilkins in England, the metric part came from Burattini in Italy, and the decimal part came from the USA. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington were very active in getting the French "philosophes' to use decimal numbers for the "decimal metric system".

OK, raise your hand if you knew that our founding fathers were part of the team behind the metric system. THIS history buff didn't!

Today's I Remember JFK is the result of an anonymous idea from one of our readers. Please keep them coming!

One of the familiar sights that we Boomer kids grew up was an image of a sad-eyed child. The child might be accompanied by an equally sad-eyed kitten or puppy.

The paintings had a haunting quality to them. They were simple, almost primitive, but great detail was given those huge, sad eyes.

The paintings were hated by some, loved by many more, and eventually became the largest selling artwork of the 1960's. That meant that we grew up with them all over the place. Art prints, of course, but also greeting cards, magazine covers, advertisements, and probably even lunch boxes, though I'm only speculating on that last one.

The artist, Margaret Keane, was born in 1927. She describes herself as a sickly, withdrawn child who took comfort in drawing. Eventually, she met and married another artist, Walter Keane, and they ended up in Paris after WWII was over to study the subject.

A sight they frequently encountered was that of homeless, destitute children, orphaned by the war.

River's End, thanks for suggesting this week's column.

The 50's and 60's were collectively known as the Jet Age. That moniker implied that life was being lived at an accelerated rate, compared to previous decades.

I suppose that means that the 21st century should be known as the Warp-Drive Age, because the pace we experienced forty or more years ago was quite laid back in comparison to today.

One thing about life back then that may have escaped your mind was how quiet Sundays were. I grew up in NE Oklahoma, definitely Bible Belt territory. Sunday meant

(a) That you were at church
(b) That after church, about the only thing you could go purchase was gasoline and food. Everything else was closed. Main Street was abandoned. The entire town was noticeably quieter.

Reader Scott Irv sent me an email asking what ever happened to all of the glass containers.

Well, Scott Irv, and any others who might be curious, they have largely disappeared. But today, I'm going to take you back forty years, back to a day when we took it for granted that the products we obtained at the store, or perhaps delivered to us, would be in glass, tin, or perhaps paper containers.

Walking into a grocery store circa 1966, you would be surrounded by thousands of items packed in glass containers. Notice the soft drink aisle. Row after row of bottles, in six ounce, twelve ounce, and sixteen ounce sizes. There are also a few Coke bottles in 24 ounce size. All of them are in six-pack containers, and buying them requires either paying a deposit on the bottles, or else trading in an equal amount of "dead soldiers." Sometime in the 70's, a larger size was introduced: the quart. I recall most major soft drinks being sold in quart returnable glass bottles with twist-off resealable caps.

I hate it when someone just a tad older than me drops dead. This has been a bad week for that, but I'd like to say a word or two about the most recent as of presstime, Billy Mays. Billy was a Boomer, born just a bit before yours truly. I never paid him much mind until I stumbled upon Pitchmen, Discovery Channel's real life drama (as opposed to reality TV) about what Billy Mays and fellow pitchman Anthony Sullivan go through before they begin hawking a new product. The show made me appreciate the genius and heart behind the loud-mouthed purveyor of products famous as well as obscure. It also made me realize that he has a family, and they are very much in pain now. My deepest sympathies to all of you, friends and family of Billy Mays. My sympathies also to those out there like me, who will miss his whiz-and-vinegar bombastic blasts on the tube.