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

True, we Boomer kids did spend most of our lives outdoors. However, there were many sweet rainy afternoons when we passed the time by playing board games inside.

Of course, every Boomer household had Monopoly. But many other familiar board games could be found on the shelves in our bedrooms.

One game that sadly was NOT in my own bedroom was Mouse Trap. Introduced in 1963 by Ideal Toys, I remember drooling over the TV commercials that showed the bizarre mechanism that you would build which would then be powered by a steel ball, enabling you to capture an opponent's mouse.

I never got the game, despite much begging on my part. Oh well, it's good to have some tantalizing things just out of reach. It prepares you to face real life.

Caught in the middle
Carol, we're middle class
We're middle aged
We were wild in the old days
Birth of rock 'n roll days

Joni Mitchell's Chinese Cafe caught the early Boomer generation just as they were entering middle age back in 1983. And it reminded them that they were the ones who spawned Rock and Roll. Nowadays, her generation is blazing the trail to retired life, and it's we younger Boomers entering middle age and reminiscing about our wild youth.

But all Boomers have Rock and Roll in common. True, many of us have expanded our musical tastes. I like the gentle Celtic sound of Loreena McKennitt. I also enjoy Tchaikovsky. But odds are that when I'm in the mood to listen to music, it's liable to be Led Zeppelin, The Boss, or Neil Young blasting out the speakers.

So when did Rock and Roll get its start, anyhow?

Many sources cite 1948. A few events came together that year to put a new musical style on the map, in the opinion of many.

Mississippi Delta Blues had long proven irresistible to open-minded white audiences, who felt soul in the raw sound that Caucasians like Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and even the great Sinatra just couldn't duplicate. Thus, whites would tune into the underpowered AM stations across the south broadcasting the songs of Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Bessie Smith. Up in Detroit, R&B music was being produced that drew on the great blues artists of history, repackaging their sounds by contemporary artists like Louis Jordan, Paul Williams, and Big Joe Turner.

Oh, and 1948 was the year that a man named Joe Leo Fender began selling a new instrument called the electric guitar. Coincidentally, that was also the year that the 12" LP record was developed, and an electronic wonder known as the transistor was invented. The three inventions would help to cement Rock and Roll permanently in the public psyche.

I hate to stamp columns with a date-sensitive comment, but watching History Channel's America: The Story of Us last night spurred a deeply-buried memory in my brain.

The show was documenting how Pearl Harbor instantly ended the Great Depression, with the mobilizing of the American economy to create a massive war machine.

And one of the developments that was soon churned out by the thousands was the classic Willys Jeep.

The Jeep helped win the war, of course, but afterwards, many of them showed up in private ownership. That's what today's I Remember JFK piece is about.

In my case, it was my grandfather Oran Tinsley who sprang for one and turned it into a hunting machine extraordinaire, its small size, low gearing, and four-wheel-drive being perfect for rainy fall days in Texas' Hill Country.

The non-nonsense Jeep was quite short on creature comforts, but was built tough. Did you ever notice the handles at the four corners that many sported? That was so you could pick it up and turn it over if it ever ended up upside down.

I've spent my entire adult life working for The Man, but always having something going on the side.

Go back to fresh out of high school, I started out as an electrician. Within six months, I had people paying me to do wiring jobs on weekends. They avoided contractor rates, I made great hourly money. Win-win, as Steve Covey would say.

When I got my first computer in 1993, I engaged in a long-suppressed passion: writing. I discovered that a word processor program would do some seriously cool stuff, like catch typos, check your grammar, and allow multiple versions of the same document. When I joined AOL the next year, I was astounded and delighted to discover that there was an actual (modest) paying market for my scribblings!

Nowadays, I lease a dedicated server and host/develop websites. I also spend an hour or two per week blogging. All the while, Little Debbie pays most of the bills. I'm just busy enough, and get some great tax breaks, thanks to my S corporation.

In my case, and, I suspect, in the case of many of you, my willingness to work evenings and weekends on my own ventures was spawned by selling Kool-Aid in my neighborhood from a stand constructed out of cardboard boxes scrounged from behind Moonwink Grocery.