To those that have come after me

I would like to let those born in the last 20 or 30 years know just how much life has changed.
When I was a child Elvis was topping the charts and Sinatra was still the real king. I would have nightmares about Atom Bombs in the closet, not because I was a paranoid little wussy, but because when I started school they showed me movies about how Yertle the Turtle could survive an attack that was coming any day from the evil Reds. It could be the Russian Reds or the Chinese Reds but some Reds were going to Atom Bomb us soon and we had to practice curling up in the fetal position under our desks.
I remember how when the Russians put missiles in Cuba it seemed like everyone was holding their breath, waiting for the big war to start. When it didn't everyone sighed and life went back to normal, then the breath was sucked out of the entire country when the President was shot in the head. A few Months before the assassination in Dallas a friend of my Fathers took him and my Mother out to his desert ranch and showed them his Barn. It was full of rifles, hand grenades, ammunition and other implements of destruction. Dad's friend invited him to join him and his friends and move the cache of weapons into Mexico and then on to Cuba. I'm glad Dad decided not to join the CIA that night.
When I was a child there were several distinct types of music. There was real music, the Mozart type stuff that taken quite seriously, and there was Country and Popular Music, which were less serious but still far above Rock and Roll. There was Folk, Jazz and Blues, but they were for a different sort of people. Then Rock and Roll started to change, to become something more then just kids music. The kids started to grow up and the music grew up with them. Today it is common for someone to write a song and it becomes an event, a cult, a rage, a video, a movie, a movement, an anthem and then fades into classic status. When I was a child perhaps a few Folk songs that had some sort of power to motivate and cause actual change, but somewhere in the 1960's music became a powerful force for actual social and political power.
And the Powerful saw that and did everything they could to stop it. Elvis and Pat Boone were safe, because they didn't poke at the Lions, but the Byrds, Animals, Stones and Beatles were starting to make music that made people think about more than girls and cars. And when people started to think things started to change fast. People started questioning the Government, not just complaining about it, but actually questioning, and demanding answers. They didn't get the answers of course, but they no longer believed that Uncle Sam was always the benificent guardian of their own best interests and only Commies questioned their motives.

We had a big Bakelite Telephone. The handset was big enough to hammer nails or knock a man out. Sometimes the sound would start to get a little scratchy and you had to rap the mouth piece on the desk to loosen up the charcoal in the microphone. And when you picked up the phone you would first listen for a few seconds to see if any of your neighbers that shared the telephone line were listening. My first portable radio was about the size of my head, a few years later I got one that was almost small enough to fit in my shirt pocket. It was AM, the only ones that listened to FM were those Jazz and Classical people, and AM was just fine for Country music and carried a lot farther.

Pretty much everyone where we lived didn't bother to lock their doors, and the occasional killing was usually either a crazy drunk or a crazier "lone nut". We didn't worry about "Gangs" unless were were driving the Southern California highways and a few hundred Harly Davidsons would roll by us. The only real fear we lived with was the ever present Red Scare waiting for us to blink so they could Nuke us in our sleep.

I blame the Jazz music crowd for ruining our paranoid Eden. They were the Hop Heads, the Reefer smokers, something in the evil weed they smoked made the lies they were told sound like lies. Then the serious damage came from Albert Hoffman and his LSD, it made people see just how complete the illusion we were being fed was, how tragic and irrational the bullshit of our supposed leaders was and how burdoned they had been with religion and politics.

Life has a far richer texture and depth for you then it did for the last few generations, you know and understand more because you are starting from a level of understanding that was not understood by your parents and grandparents. There were a few with that understanding, but they were an extreme few and peer pressure usually kept them silent or outcast.

Al Kaida has replaced the Reds, and the evil men in power have only become more powerful and more evil, but they no longer can hide in plain sight their evils, and you know that there are more important concerns then Al Kaida and Commies. You have been given a World on the edge of ruin, but you have also been given the wisdom and understanding to take it away from those that have pushed it into ruin and hopefully bring it back from the edge.