Teach Your Children

A Postcard from the Boomers

“Don't you ever ask them, ‘Why?’
If they told you, you would cry
So, just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.” Refrain from Teach Your Children by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, 1970

We were brilliant.

We came of age in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. That is back when political and cultural leaders were routinely shot. We objected to that. Young men were conscripted into military service to make horrible life and death decisions in a faraway land, against their wishes, and were lied to. We objected to that. Our rivers caught fire with pollutants. We objected to that. There was social upheaval, there was violence, and there was a clear generational rejection. Our parents fought in World War II and Korea and we were sick of war for all time and we weren’t going to have it anymore. So, we stormed university administration buildings and protested conventions and made ourselves heard. The government pushed back and, in some cases, shot back. We objected to that. J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI as a protection racket. A break-in at Watergate was investigated, finding that our President was an honest-to-goodness convictable criminal. We objected to that.

Women celebrated the new freedom of birth control in a pill. Nobody objected to that.

Admittedly, I didn’t really participate. Born in 1958, I was too young. I lived in a rural community where we read it all in Time and Newsweek and wondered what was going on. Why were other people so nuts? We, my siblings and I, didn’t act in Timothy Leary’s turn-on-tune-in-drop-out stage play. But we had front row seats.

“Music is the universal language” Mac Davis sang, and we agreed. Music was our social media.  “The times, they are a changin’,” Dylan told us. But whatever was happenin’ here wasn’t clear to Buffalo Springfield. All we knew is we were next. And we were brilliant.

Sammy Davis, Jr. was not allowed to perform in Kennedy’s White House, but he lilted us with “Candyman.” No, I never thought it was about drugs! It was just joyful escape, like Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

Dion’s “Abraham, Martin, and John” lamented with the words “the good, they die young” well before Billy Joel celebrated them in pop. Jeremiah may or may not have been an actual bullfrog, but “Easy to be Hard” was Three Dog Night’s plea for social justice.

Neil Young was right when he told us there were “Four Dead in Ohio.” But he was wrong when he said rock and roll may never die, hey, hey, my, my, because drugs and plane crashes made life a one-night stand for many. The Righteous Brothers mused a hell of a heavenly band, and that was good because Don McLean confused the shit out of us with his Chevy at the levee, even though we knew every word.

You could see all the signs, according to The Five Man Electric Band. Or man, are you some kind of sinner? Creedence told us if you ain’t no senator’s son, you ain’t no fortunate one, no, no. Did we want a Revolution? The Beatles told us “we all want to change the world,” well ya know, and maybe they were prescient.

We did change the world. And we were brilliant.

We respected Aretha, and we agreed when Helen roared in numbers too big to ignore. We saved Elton’s life one night, but we get no credit. We got stronger every day in Chicago, and we teamed up with Coca-Cola, of all things, and taught the world to sing on a hilltop. Paul Simon begged us not take his Kodachrome away, but we did. We took it to the streets with The Doobie Brothers, and we took it to the limit with The Eagles, but they got over it eventually.

Boy, did we teach our parents well! Equal rights! Environmental protection! No draft! Abortion! Drink at 18! And Imagine, no religion, too! No more Ma Bell to tie us to our family with spiral cords. We changed it all and we celebrated! We welcomed back Kotter so Frankie Valli could grease the way for John and Olivia. We wore satin and talked jive with the Bee Gees under mirror balls. We went next door and put on jeans while Waylon and Willie went on the road again back to Luckenbach.

Then we looked at it and we thought it was good. We thought we had it right. We considered Marx but noticed twenty-five million Chinese really did starve while we were told to clean our plates. So, we went to work. We were fruitful and multiplied.

But Mick had warned that we can’t always get what we want. An artist who couldn’t be called Prince stopped laughing in the purple rain. And as Michael suggested, we looked at the man in the mirror and said to ourselves “OK boomer. We’re done. We did what we did and maybe we weren’t that brilliant.”

Nobody is.

So when we look at you and sigh, just know we love you.