Confessions of a Drugstore Car Guy

As a card-carrying Baby-Boomer I’ve been thinking a lot lately of re-writing history from the viewpoint of my generation. What better a vantage point for looking at the world of the last sixty-some years; my fellow boomers and I have witnessed (and perpetrated) some amazing and truly significant stuff! Realistically, I’ve mostly witnessed, but some boomers have actually contributed big time.

None of us can take credit for some of the things that mean a lot in the context of baby boomers as car guys. We weren’t around for the development of Tri-five Chevys, for instance. That’s not to say we weren’t totally responsible for preserving them as American Automotive Icons and insuring that succeeding generations also appreciate them. And, if it wasn’t for us, the Muscle Car would never have happened; you think it was our parents who bought all those GTOs, Mustangs and Chevelles? They may have been designed and built by our parents generation but they were for US!

Yup, before we were in a position to actually do important stuff a lot of important stuff was done for us. Think about it: drive-in movies and restaurants; 45-rpm records, transistor radios and eight-track tapes; tract homes and supermarkets, interstate highways, cable television. These are part of our heritage, some of what our parents made sure was available for us. Bless their hearts; they’d just gone through the Depression and World War II and they wanted to make sure we had it better than they did. Honestly, no generation in history had ever done as much to make things better for their kids than our parents’ generation did!

Our parents left us with Rock and Roll, small-block Chevys, Mr. & Mrs. Cleaver and the fastest growing, most rapidly changing world in history. I’d like to think we met the challenge and carried on the tradition; left a big load and a great example for our kids and their kids.

Looking back I have to think we also succeeded; we left plenty for the generations that followed us. Baby Boomers can take credit for many things that add character to the lives of subsequent generations: heavy metal and disco, the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, Big Macs and Macintosh computers (PC’s, too). Although we can’t take credit for political-correctness we can certainly take a bow for elevating it to an art form.

Getting back to what’s important; we took the Jeep from the previous generation and turned it into an SUV. Put one in darn-near every driveway in America, too. Harley-Davidsons were motorcycles when we started riding them; now they’re a lifestyle. Earlier generations put a car in every garage, we upped the ante to three or four, sometimes more.

I guess the hardest part of growing older is the realization that stuff is being done by and for a younger generation. It’s our kids, and their kids, who are in charge now and they are doing what they want, the way they want. All my life it was the older generation that was running things; all of a sudden the President is just barely in our generation. And movie and sports stars are the same age as our grand kids. There was a time when I couldn’t understand my parents’ objection to the things I did and the way I did them. Now I know exactly how they felt!

If there is an upside to all of this it is that I’m getting to the point where I welcome someone else taking the heat; it’s suddenly good to not have to be responsible for the fate of the world. Good thing, too, because I really don’t think I’m up to the job any more. Thanks both to my parent and my kids!