The biggest generation America ever produced, the Baby Boomers, is dying out in typical grand and noteworthy style: 5,000 every day. What can we say? Our idols always were the late Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. Death, I can hear the older Boomers say now, is the greatest trip.
Though technically I am a Boomer, born at the end of the generation spanning 1946 to 1964, I never felt like I was one of them. In many ways, we don’t have a lot in common. But from afar, I always admired the hell outta the original Baby Boomers: those who remember the 1950s; duck and cover; the JFK assassination; The Beatles; Woodstock; the Vietnam War; integration; free love; psychedelic design; the peace sign; expressions like ‘groovy,’ ‘far out,’ and ‘sock-it-to-me’; hippies; rap sessions; all the drugs; and all the protest marches. What a happening—yet of which I wasn’t apart as a teen, joining them, like a late-in-life sibling, in the ’70s.
But I got an eyeful, thanks to TV (reruns) and shows watched in real time like “The Monkees” and “Laugh-In”—and some older cousins, the epitome of cool, Original Boomers, electric rock musicians since the Beatles. They grew their hair long and wore it in a ponytail. One wore John Lennon glasses.
My sub-generation of the Boomers thought our elder peers too old—like the kids confronting the hip young congressman in “Wild in the Streets.” [I saw the flick on video.] We laughed at their yearbook pictures featuring wild clothing and bubble words, the influence of acid trips we were told. There was a distinct difference in the drugs of the older and younger Boomers. Ours were less LSD, uppers, downers, and needles yet pot and cocaine a bonding staple.
The Boomers ushered in the most liberal era in American history. And you wanna know why? Because they were born into an uptight suffocating hypocritical joyless generation, their parents and authorities after World War II. After a lot of growing up, naturally the older Boomers saw the error of their presumptions. Someone has to be the adult.
Adulthood was a long time coming and a whole different meaning for the Boomers. Staying young (the long hair, the short dresses, the don’t-give-a-damn attitude, the hippie vans) was the way to be. Disrespectful was how shocked parents saw their offspring.
The reason I admired the Boomers when I was a kid was their … nerve: one, to experiment with drugs. This generation expresses no regret in past drug use. They knew some people would develop an addiction, not unlike their alcoholic parents or uncles. But not everyone who smoked a joint or tried LSD and other drugs would turn into an addict. They knew it and were right, for the most part.
I admired other liberalities of my older Boomer colleagues: sex before marriage & living together; more seriously, organizing and protesting the government; burning draft cards; demanding the voting age be lowered to the age fit for military service (18); millions of young people demanding social and legal change in laws regarding abortion and marriage—but mostly to end the draft. By the time the smoke cleared, I consider this generation most brave to fight against norms they didn’t believe in. One being war, any war, all wars. Many of the older Boomers became teachers of the rest of us, the younger Boomers.
Their music reflected their times … and in our days was played only the months when popular. There were no oldies stations. And when the oldies stations were created, they played the music of our parents: early rock-n-roll, pre Beatles, no ’60s. So there was a whole decade of the coolest music ever heard that I was unaware of. It wasn’t until “Soundtrack of the Sixties,” a radio retrospective in 1981, that I experienced listening to the great music of the older Boomers: full of innovation, talent, studio effects, sincere message, social significance. Let’s forget about the popularity of Tiny Tim and any weirdo who came along, which was a feature of the ’60s. The Boomers were … open minded. They gave everyone a chance.
For decades the adult Boomers dominated innovations in American culture, from the acceptance of jeans and halters to new ideas in raising children (sans spanking) and schooling (at home), vegetarian cooking, health food stores, holistic medicine, and even automobiles. Boomers demanded government change for clean water and air and better living conditions for everyone everywhere. They gave us Earth Day. Many Boomers went into sociology and government, to help people. They wanted to make the world a better place. Boomers were idealistic. From decade to decade, elected leaders became younger and younger and more ‘with it,’ able to talk with regular working people. When Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, the first Boomer to hold the nation’s highest office, there were many who felt he was too young, though he was the age of John Kennedy.
There are criticisms, too, of the Boomers. That they were bad parents, producing kids who got into drugs and sex too young, producing teens with STDs and pregnancies. That they were too liberal with alcohol and drugs, rarely attended church, questioned the existence of God, left cable TV to teach their children and grandchildren to be cynical about life, to listen to music with profanity, to cuss aloud, to divorce, to allow their kids to get into so much trouble they ended up in prison—to want to be their child’s friend instead of their parent. So the Boomers are blamed for poor parenting and even worse for society providing no structure or morality for young people who desperately need it. The Boomers and their all-important freedom-loving trek through life turned our society into the array of filth it is today. Some say.
Let us not forget the Boomers were the Love generation. They loved freely and honestly … and they wanted to avoid ‘hang ups’ of their parents like racism and prejudices. Freedom was their mantra. Movies and music of their generation reflected their era.
And now, as a generation, they (and the rest of us) are coming to an end. This time for real.
As to be expected, the Boomers have prepared all their lives for leaving this world. They are more spiritual than their parents realized. As a generation, they lived their lives with purpose—and most notably—with joy. That is the old hippie adage. They were, and in old age, still are, a very beautiful people to observe.