The Three Cohorts...

 Growing up in the golden state, during that era of extended prosperity through the decades of the 60s and 70s - there, in our west coast bubble of relaxed, sunny contentment, I thought, for a time, at a very young age, that I had found real happiness on earth. California was growing by leaps and bounds then without feeling overcrowded; there was some traffic, to be sure, smoggy days through July and August, and yet a wealth of open spaces, new homes sprouting up everywhere,  the streetcars of Santa Monica having disappeared, replaced by freeways darting in all directions; even so, long stately old boulevards still stretched all the way from Pomona to Los Angeles; there were vineyards lining the backroads to Ontario airport and vast tracks of land still available in Orange county...Where we lived was a central location as my father liked to say... to the west the Pacific Ocean, to the east Palm Springs or the high desert, to the north, mountains, Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead, heading southwest there was Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, San Juan Capistrano, going south, Temecula,  Rancho California, Vista, Oceanside, San Diego... Our city was surrounded by hills, and boasted of orange and walnut groves everywhere, gradually giving way to newly built houses; we had an actual dairy farm down from our house, with cows grazing; people kept horses nearby. Ours was a sleepy downtown, with two main thoroughfares, an old Spanish mission, an under-used train station, Mexican restaurants, balconied movie theaters, dueling mom-and-pop grocery chains (Sages, Stater Brothers, Alpha Beta) an old shopping center (The Plaza), a new shopping center (The Tyler Mall).  Magnolia avenue spanned a full seven miles, the entire length of the city to the outskirts of Corona. Victoria avenue was the jewel in the crown - a street lined with flower beds and stately palm trees that made for long scenic drives past endless orange groves and sprawling ranch houses. The climate was for the most part either hot or balmy - with long unbreakable stretches of sunny days and blue skies, with rain arriving in winter as mild drizzle or brief, torrential downpours in spring. There were fierce winds throughout the autumn that made me fret, surprisingly cold and frosty nights in December/January and orange blossoms on the trees by February... Every other home or so it seemed had a pool in the backyard. Except for tenants of a few old Victorian "mansions", most residents had no basement or or stair case or second floor to speak of...something I always dreamed about as a kid from annual summer visits to my grandparent's two-storied "summer house" in Idaho. Front lawns were green...drought was not an issue then...People watered their gardens, grew vegetables,  watered citrus (lemons, limes),  avocados,  Pepper and Eucalyptus trees. Our neighborhood was a Mecca for children - a maze of quiet streets and one large empty lot designed for the makeshift recreations of youth. Kids played street football, built forts, roller-skated, rode bikes everywhere, made pilgrimages to corner markets, flocked to local tennis courts and little league ball parks, burger joints, ice cream parlors, movie theaters and pinball arcades. The school calendar was such that a new holiday or festival was around every corner. The world outside and far away was harsh, rough, cruel, unfair - but within these bounds, existed, for us - a much-needed innocence. If not happiness - although perhaps some of that - a definite mood was in the air...call it home-y-ness, normalcy, stability...

As witnesses to this era - there were three groups worth mentioning:  my parents' generation and older, all those who came of age during the Great Depression and emerged from the war years triumphantly (cohort #1) - my siblings and their peers who came of age in the 50's and 60's ... (cohort #2) followed by those like me - the self-conscious the tail-end portion of this "boomer" generation who absorbed the postwar Zeitgeist with maximum impressionability, mild curiosity and boundless tunnel vision (cohort #3). The first of these cohorts was grateful just to have arrived on the west coast, many/most having migrated from elsewhere. The big war was over -  all of the harshness, austerity and fierce destruction of that earlier epoch seemed but a distant memory... This group had lived through more than they at first realized; they had labored, scraped, saved, volunteered, enlisted, toiled, suffered, endured and emerged alive with their wits intact, and was there ever a generation as happy, as relieved, as thankful for the outcome of such a wide-scale catastrophe - of which they were the principal beneficiaries? They accepted without question the new realities of the nuclear age and the responsibilities of America as a super power; on the bright side, or so they reasoned, the world had been remade, Europe and Japan rebuilt, a consensus formed... democracy reaffirmed...poverty was on the downturn, and most of the old nightmares of history were behind them ...it was that other, more elusive, slow-burning conflict, that anxious, anticipatory, colder stand-off with Russia, China, worldwide communism that haunted their thoughts along with a creeping sense at home that the divide between black and white was a fault line no longer capable of being fully ignored. For the majority, the postwar was a time in which they came into their own, migrated westward, achieved middle class existence and a newfound financial security with still-fresh memories of the hard times before the war.....

And here they were in the Golden State. Was there almost a guilt in having achieved all this? Perhaps not - because no one felt that they had enjoyed any of these "spoils" for very long... The outlook was relentlessly upbeat...the dream was alive and well....the buzz, the spotlight was on this new frontier, the sunbelt, the place where you went to escape from the ominous silent open spaces or the grim, grey industrial landscapes - these newcomers brought their memories, habits, old ways, their secret moods, their private foibles (and sometimes outspoken prejudices), but all agreed upon the importance of making a good impression, of keeping up appearances, of being good neighbors, of being well-groomed for work, and dressing up for big occasions.  Civility among friends and strangers was a big deal to these folks. They had grown up with church-going and "clean-living" - there were always a few incorrigibles, the "brash, wild, untamed, outgoing, headstrong" types - like my younger aunt and uncle who drank hard, played hard, demanded a longer leash, but these characters always made for a good story or last week's gossip. Everyone believed in God of course or paid deference to religion, but there were many who remained "unaffiliated" as far as church was concerned and knew how to make the most of a Saturday night. Smoking and drinking were in vogue to say the least, exercise mildly endorsed, healthy lungs undervalued, alcoholism underreported; there were nightclubs, shows, concerts, bridge games; there were dinner parties and outdoor barbecues.. Television was still the big novelty (and the perennial babysitter); movies were becoming a teenage fixation. Sporting events were big - especially the Friday night football games (my brother's team)...and college sports... cursing was a male avocation - occurring on golf courses or on fishing expeditions, but never in mixed company...  gambling flew under the radar and other vices of a sensual nature were kept from view... This unspoken paradigm was fascinating - discretion and propriety above all else... Not everything could go public and what was never measured or lamented (in public) was the price paid for that... Movies often could only suggest what people were actually thinking and much was left unsaid... But the coded dance was part of the allure. Sexuality was well-monitored having not yet become overly garish, flashy, explicit. There was a culture in place with these sustaining assumptions, buoyed by a sense of destiny, of being simply fortunate as Americans. 

My parents themselves were cut from this cloth, having brought themselves along with the rising tide of success...they were proud of a certain frugality and modesty...afraid of too much opulence or publicity or self-indulgence...  My mother told stories of the Depression - of canned goods and homemade clothes and shared hardships. They were not looking to negate what their own parents had taught them, but to realize a set of aspirations that had perhaps preceded them. In so many respects, therefore, they were not averse to the conventional wisdom. Finding a comfortable home and nice family car was a big deal  as was finding a safe neighborhood for the kids. And breathing room. A home with a fireplace and pets. A country club membership and regular vacations. They both shared a love of books having been taught to relish the workings of language, my mother especially collected good stories and wrote down funny quotes from the people she knew. She kept notebooks of sayings and churned out volumes of letters. My father, meanwhile read tomes of history (Civil War, Renaissance Europe, WWII), consumed the nightly news, and scoped out institutions of higher learning for his children to attend.  It was a Protestant world, a WASPy town even in California - because so many folks were from the midwest. My mother (a Protestant) came from Idaho, my dad from Seattle, Washington. Dad was Catholic - a partial fish out of water. His skeptical temperament was balanced out by a relentless habit of making it to Mass every Sunday. Mom relished the communal atmosphere at the First Methodist Church - never understanding why the Catholics rushed home so soon after the service had ended. The children were to be raised Catholic with my mother at the spiritual center of things. The Irish tribal impulse at work... Likewise the general division of labor was etched in stone before I arrived. Mom was in charge of scheduling, planning, cooking, correspondence and hands-on child-rearing; Dad was in charge of work and finances - work meant the pathology lab, the hospital, autopsies, biopsies, microscopes, colleagues, washed hands, fatigue, stress, exhaustion...We were told don't talk to dad before he eats, he's had a long day...... Mom, originally from Idaho, the stable middle child out of six, her parents originally from Kentucky, with lingering southern roots, with her "armies of friends" at Iowa State, had left her job as a dietician at a hospital in San Francisco to go and marry Dad...Dad, the youngest of three brothers, doted on by his Irish mother, his older and "more successful" (in his mind) brothers - both chemical engineers for Standard Oil, and how he a doctor, graduate of Northwestern,  all of them doing quite well for themselves compared to grandad who once dynamited railways for a living and carried luggage for a wealthy man across the globe..  got a job first in Santa Monica...but then later established his own medical practice in R--------- And five kids later...a large family...a slew of activity, a daily routine... arrival at the house that would be home for decades... the permanent setting of my youth... I suppose this was a typical arrangement back then...And was happiness a foregone conclusion? I assumed so - having never really explored the question. Are your parents happy? If no signs to the contrary are given - what does the child conclude? But there were changes in store for everyone living through those times...

For the most part, this town full of midwesterners had stable marriages; families remained intact, neighbors stayed predictable... Here and there were deaths....illnesses.... mishaps....bad outcomes... muted tragedies...substance abuse next door, neglectful or argumentative parents around the corner....A few affairs....a few divorces across town......new sources of tension....bohemian trends imported from other towns.... a new cultural climate...a sexual revolution imported from Europe (?) in process of unveiling itself... Gender roles still well-established...For a time it was unclear what effect the earlier waves of feminism were having on the postwar mindset...A past age of mindless drudgery, domestic toil, long hours in textile mills or on farms or in offices had (presumably) been curtailed - so what did the new decades offer to the newly-emerging modern woman? Did mothers of the 1950s view themselves as such? How did they view themselves? I remember how women in our town tended to have large circles of friends, supportive networks of neighbors and fellow- club members, sorority sisters, protective families along with reliable or otherwise predictable-if-problematic husbands...Yes, they were confined to particular careers as nurses, secretaries, teachers, bookkeepers, in sales - but to what extent did they feel constricted??? Discontents were percolating through the general culture -but how did those subtle trends affect the recipients of the new prosperity? There were other rumblings under the surface  as well... Demographically - our town was de facto segregated into white, hispanic and black sections. No one (at least among the whites) was especially bothered by these divisions given that homogenous neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves were so typical then...It had become permissible at last to announce one's hyphenated ethnic identity...It was okay to brag about being Polish, Irish,  German, Lithuanian, Swedish, Jewish, Greek, Italian - realizing of course that some of these ethnicities had a steeper hill to climb as far as inclusion was concerned...But jokes abounded among comedians and the general population... Stereotypes were in play, some more innocuous than others...( The Irish - didn't they love to drink and fight and quote poetry?....And the Italians?  wine-drinkers - more emotionally demonstrative... Germans, frugal, efficient, hard-working...The French, stubborn, snobbish, argumentative... British people - pithy, articulate, stoical - And the Swiss of course -they could fix anything... ) Playful teasing was a way to underscore the success of ongoing assimilation... only when it came to white and black - or even white and hispanic - things got a little more dicey. For no particular reason, older people then would openly admit to their engrained prejudices - dislike, mistrust of, animosity toward "group X" ... You would hear: "I don't care much for THEM, but HE'S okay.." And there was a mild class snobbery too - lest I forget... Most people were in the middle - and felt comfortable being exactly as they were, in their respectable bungalow homes. But there were also those aspiring types who looked westward to Hollywood, Los Angeles, the beach towns for their inspiration...They were assertive, brash, ostentatious, young lawyers, doctors, dentists, business owners,  - more self-confident  in their perch on the hill in Canyon Crest - the parents of those I would later be intimidated by in high school. My mother - easily in awe of outward appearances - used to say of such people "oh - they looked just like movie stars..." and these "big fish in the small pond" wore their haughtiness on their sleeve - living more in the fast lane, with their ski condos, their fancy cars and lavish homes...Those affected California voices...(Where such dialect originated, I could never tell...) And didn't my sister complain bitterly of our drab, predictable ranch house. Couldn't my father afford something much better than that? My dad told me of that one lawyer who wouldn't even acknowledge him at a party...my father, a pathologist, a known entity,  who had been in town longer, who knew people, but who looked older,  less energetic, more staid and subdued, the exact opposite of a suave jet-setter - could never abide rudeness. My father who always paid for dinners when guests were invited - liked to say: "All I want is a simple thank-you..." The people my father dislike were arrogant types, braggarts, show-boaters, blowhards and of course the dummies, dimwits, fatheads. I never forgot that list...

The second cohort who were part of this world were my siblings and their friends...I had no access to their early years except by way of photographs and home movies...They had grown up (as toddlers) in very small houses, beginning with faculty housing at the Univ. of Washington, a small house in Santa Monica, tiny homes in Riverside before we arrived at one large enough for a family of five. In the late 40's it was my two brothers (1947, 1949)  - a society unto themselves as my father called them - followed by my brother, Tim (1953), and then my sister, Mary (1957) and then me ... Sixteen whole years passed from the year my parents married (1946) until I arrived (1962)...And that whole epoch was like a prior life where a separate family dynamic ruled - the 1950s remained a mysterious enigma frozen in technicolor slides and Kodak prints. My older brothers were virtual adults by the time I knew them -  arriving and departing from the house in various cars...my one brother's used Porsche...my other brother's VW van... going surfing by day and bringing back the best of  local fast food at night...Their school years were a series of recollections from my father...One had played water-polo, baseball and track, the other sampled rugby, rode motorbikes and starred in the school play...By the time I was of age, they were living through a Vietnam draft era and the protests on college campuses...One sibling got married early of necessity, the other was a conscientious objector...My middle brother who played football in high school, and was pensive yet also sardonic, the scholar of the family - was more of a straight arrow...My sister, perhaps in response, was more contentious, rebellious, a social butterfly, a follower of trends...My father was confused (as were other fathers) about this younger generation - he reacted to the long hair, the loose hygiene, the loud music, the drug use...the lax attitude (among "the hippies") about seeking out a traditional 9-5 career path...Predictably, like some cliched plot complication, extended debates (conversations?) ensued over the merits of this jarring "rock music" the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis...my father, recoiling from the new,  defending the sounds of old country, pop,  acoustic folk and big-band: i.e. Johnny Cash, Sinatra, Pete Seeger, Glen Miller... The older generation bemoaned this change among the young...the dearth of clean-cut types, the seeming ingratitude...There were long drawn-out arguments about Vietnam and America's role in the world...If the second cohort grew up (initially) immersed in and attached to the unprecedented good fortune of their parents, over time they grew suspicious and disenchanted when outward events went haywire beginning with the JFK assassination and continuing on through the '68 Democratic Convention to the secret invasion of Cambodia and the protracted malaise of Watergate...The new wars meant something other than simply fighting for freedom...and problems at home kept breaking out into the open...It was hard to ignore rioting in the streets, big cities going up in flames, increasing crime, newly conspicuous poverty....Something about history had been kept from them or taught the wrong way or sugar-coated ...But there was still the pop culture that smoothed over these rough edges - the saccharine tv shows, escapist movies, commercial jingles, bubble-gum pop music...At least we had Cronkite, Huntley-Brinkley and Howard K. Smith to set the record straight...

I was like an archaeologist even then - poring through closets, sifting through old Life and Look magazines, scuba gear, shirts and sweaters, old textbooks, paperbacks, posters, sports equipment, left over black-and-white prints...The music - the albums - the LPs - were a special treasure trove for me...Lying around near the turn-table...It was my real window into what that slightly older generation was all about...I would sit for hours scrutinizing album covers and sampling songs...when television failed to beckon... But I was not really part of the ongoing drama of the external world - and the events on everyone's mind were like far away silent newsreels - the significance of which was lost on me... As part of the third cohort (previously mentioned), I took it all in as a visual panoply...Life for me then was an impressionistic painting - a swirl of textures and colors and voices and - mostly good moods...There were sibling squabbles - my older brother teasing my sister and my sister scolding me - but none of that seemed to be at the center of my attention span... My immediate world was like an aesthetically pleasing candy store, an open field ripe for fort-building, a big-screen movie in technicolor.... There were kids in the neighborhood who materialized at the door. Outside was always something happening... We spent our days living in the moment, sampling the seasons, wallowing in the endless summer... Much of life was spent outdoors on my mother's orders....there was street football and street baseball, tennis, badminton, volleyball, tetherball, bike-riding, skateboarding, backyard catch, hide-and-seek and basketball - my favorite sport....The time of year dictated our activities...We always stuck by the season... Football in the fall, baseball in the spring...During the winter the long hours were spent  exploring the river bottom or shooting baskets... On hot days, we'd sit around, bored, stifled and oppressed by the smog until we found a nearby pool to swim in...On rainy days we played cards, Backgammon, or Masterpiece - that long-forgotten, painting-swapping board game...

In those early days, I was a source of amusement for my parents - a happy, impressionable, precocious child who said funny stuff accidentally - and not a source of tension for them who already had so much on their plate... This feeling of being at the epicenter of their concerns, making them laugh, not causing problems, being fawned upon by older siblings, that was the source of my happiness...My mother was at home a dynamo of activity, planning and enacting schedules for various family members or else running errands around town - with me in tow...My sister's friends, it seemed were always in and out...Neighbor kids were in the yard or across the street...  My father was tired (my mother said) after a long day at work...He came home and wanted a drink. He had a heavy smoking habit and a rattling cough until my brother Time convinced him to quit....I watched him shaving on occasion and was fascinated with how he tied his ties in the morning. He was more of a presence at night and on the weekends...Dinnertime was a special event. Everyone lined up and lingered at the dinner table for a typically excellent home-cooked meal. My father loved my mother's cooking - my mother hated cooking and longed for eating out on Friday nights.  After dinner was the nightly news... and then more television - perhaps Merv Griffin... I was off to bed by 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. - an iron rule that I accepted reluctantly. The age difference between me and my siblings perhaps planted the seeds of my being something of a loner and partially absent-minded observer. Occasionally - I would give way to bouts of diffidence and mistrust, crying spells over nothing,  superstitions over what lucky shirts to wear, an ongoing wind-phobia - but largely these sensitivities went overlooked... There were long stretches of being alone - either outside or in the adjoining living room or at the other end of the house - where I let my imagination run free, where I invented story-lines and had conversations with myself...Sometimes my sister would interrupt and call me weird...Some times friends showed up in the backyard to play while I was in the middle of some cryptically invisible theater...

    Every family has its own share of trauma - I suppose - but perhaps that word is overly-dramatic... Trauma amid such prosperity and stability...? The word seems out of place... In the immediate household, there was the usual sibling rivalry - jealousies, resentments, birth-order insecurities...and my oldest brother finding himself married at age 20...My sister's rancor toward me "grabbing the spotlight" - until her travails as an adolescent grabbed it back from me - and I was left to be the good kid, quiet and out-of-sight, keeping a low profile...Vietnam had swept over my older brothers - so to speak, one becoming a CO and the other missing the draft by just "this much"...And in my extended family - veiled incidents of alcoholism, manic behavior, depression, schizophrenia, car accidents,  suicide...In real time, as the saying goes, we do not know what we do not know - until much later on - we find out... The 1970s was a time when stigmas applied - and where such pathologies were someone else's problem...These were hints and clues that one was left to piece-together like a abandoned puzzle...Uncontrolled emotions leaked out from me here and there - crying spells, a feeling of dizziness and anxiety - but there was no name for this apart from "over-sensitivity" and "excitability." The routine of grade school was the balm that covered over a multitude of future neurosis.... I loved the equality of the playground that existed back then - the sense of shared status among the kids at the neighborhood school, of not prying to long or far into someone else's business, into their family background or place of residence...A person's worth was at least partially earned by their sense of camaraderie or their feats of skill on the playing field. On the basketball court, I felt instantly at home or on a make-shift football field, be it the street or the lawn, and to a lesser degree on a baseball diamond...Grade school was a holding pattern ....

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