After Passing 65: June 2013

Remembering The Fifties

Studebakers, Hudsons, Pontiacs

Great cars with horn rings

Bench seats that allowed you to sit close

And put your arm around a girlfriend

Sometimes more than that.

No buttons

Radios with dials

Door handles

Windows rolled down by hand

Those straight 8 gas hogs - twenty-five cents a gallon . . . Ethyl.

No idiot lights

It was assumed drivers had brains.

I saw Bill Halley & The Comets

Little Richard in St. Louis - Live

The ticket price – two bucks.

Drove an MG-A convertible with spoke wheels

From St. Louis to L. A.

Crossed Death Valley at high noon

So hot it melted solder out of the generator

I was twenty and it all felt so cool.

L.A. to San Francisco

Highway lined with orange trees

Beautiful . . . Clear sky and no pollution

People thought the government was honest

If Truman or Eisenhower were hinky we never heard about it.

There were no terrorists

You could carry a knife on airplanes.

We had fought a war for understandable reasons

And actually won

No one thought to be politically correct

People with holes in their jeans were poor

And only sailors had tattoos.

It seems so long ago

A world away

After Passing 65