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| Road Trip...Mid-September
by jph53 at 9/21/2009 5:35:32 PM
Today I drove to North Carolina on business. I travel a lot. Maybe more than I care to, but in order to make a living, some windshield time is required. A few notes from the road:
Have you ever noticed the only vehicles on the highway carrying a sign that says "not responsible for objects thrown up from the road" are dump trucks carrying objects prone to be thrown up from the road. Hey, maybe it's just me, but don't you have to get inside the 100 feet of death to even read the warning sign? Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I could swear the pinging and poping against the front end of my truck was more than objects thrown up from the road.
I began to review mentally the notes I had taken a few days prior from my 17 year old son regarding how to handle the fairer sex. "Dad, just ignore them, treat her like she's not even there". Hm....something tells me it's not great advice, or perhaps I'm just 40 years past that working for me. Sure it works for him, hell...he's 17, how can it fail? Sometimes I wish I had it all to do over again. I realize this may be somewhat controversial, but you know that old chestnut...if I knew then what I know now...When I was his age it was the summer of love, 1969. Camaro's were hot, buds were cool, Hendrix was king, Crosby Stills and Nash, Joan Baez, Buffalo Springfield and everything was groovy.
I think a great gulf exists between our generations, not only in terms of politics but also socially. I like it that my son likes Led Zep but I know he just won't ever be able to jump on the Grateful Dead band wagon. He just wasn't there, nor am I present in the rapid stuccato driving drum beats of the new screaming generation he loves that I can barely make sense of.
This year I took him to the Georgia Reunion. It's a bunch of old (I say old...and I guess we are getting there) hippies that gather annually up here in the mountains for a few days of social experiment, music and fellowship. He was astounded. He had never seen something like this (and through his eyes I saw it for the first time again too) and loved it. It was his first party of 600 complete with theme camps, freaks, side shows, lights, weirdness and general loving fun. He plans to attend next year with some of his friends. I think he realized that dad was kind of cool after all.
I never went to Woodstock. I probbly could have, but wasn't really aware of it until it was over. Three years later I was immenently facing the draft so I joined the US. Navy. Those were interesting times, many of us just getting out of high school, idealistic and ready to taste the world, naive of the sinister side of life, protected by our fathers and mothers of a generation we could barely understand and comprehend. Now I look at my children nearly stepping into adulthood and likely they will never understand the world I came from. So the world turns.
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