Old Home

Strange to think that the old coffee shop from my younger days is still playing the old hits from the seventies. Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Little River Band. While most of the patrons are the college kids of generation Z, I could close my eyes and imagine I was in a  singles, fern bar of 1982. These were the songs of my parents that have been rediscovered somehow. Maybe it's a statement about the vapid phony-ness of modern pop music that has been almost completely captured by the industry of capitalism and replaced the genuine life of music with the synthetic oozy oil of mere commercial dollars. There seems to be more authentic pop music, for a certain component of generation Z, in this music of the seventies. No AI, no auto tune, no drum machine, just musicianship. I wonder if I'll still be hearing this music of my parents in twenty years from now. Seems likely.

Today, I took refuge in the coffee house to read Steinbeck's book Travels with Charley, his trip across America in 1960. I find it interesting he wrote it when he was in his middle fifties, an age that is close to mine own. I can see a rich educated man's point of view in it, especially one who wants to mythologize his vision of himself and America before he is forced by death to leave it. But what is more interesting to me, looking back on his view of 1960 from sixty five years later, is his "old man grumpiness" about the era in which he lived. No American-Vietnam War yet, no Internet, no global threat of climate change like there is now. 

This book is helping to pierce my concept of perpetual youth a little bit. He saw himself as old, a senior, at fifty-six. I still hope to live to and reach that confidence of settled adulthood, to give up the dreams of youth and hope and hit the highway of certitude in my life achievements and accomplishments, but it always seems far off, as if I were still in my late twenties. I am not. I haven't had the traditional markers of success: wife, great job, house, kids. Seems impossible to get all that now. I got to accept I am old, and the opportunities of my youth are gone.

I'm not a kid. I'm old to the world that keeps changing. Unlike Steinbeck, I don't want to be irritated by the changes of culture and time, but as a man in my fifties, like him, it creeps in now and again. For example, I don't want to download an app on my phone to pay a bill, have my information harvested at every turn, including by the 'rewards card' at the gas station. I don't want to pay seventy dollars for a casual dress shirt, etc.

When I was a teenager, I heard a story about my seventy year old grandfather who didn't want to pay more than twelve dollars for a pair of jeans. I laughed at the absurdity of his indignation, as good jeans then were at least thirty dollars or so. Now, he's in heaven having the last laugh at me when I balk at the eighty dollar pair in the store. I've become him. And no, I don't want to order jeans online either, but what can one do? 

For men my age, the default is grumpiness. So, like Steinbeck and my grandpa, I feel the same impulses. But, I also hope to learn from their example and try to be detached. The world is bigger than myself and antiquated opinions. Things move on, youth accepts these changes with grace, and insignificant as I am, I need to brend like the flower and not break like the oak. Difficulties abound for us all, young and old alike, and they will continue to do so. My goal is accept the passing of time with the grace of a polite guest who can't repay the favors already given him. My God give me the strength to do that.