Cat says that history holds
the present captive. Jeff Shiltz
says that history doesn't stay put.
I've known and believed what Jeff says
but i'm beginning to believe Cat too.

What is it that draws me
to the 1960's and 70's? I'd like
to say "I'm not sure," but I've got an
inkling. My mother was born in 1953,
and my father was born in 1947. In 1971
my mother graduated high school, and my father
probably did some where around 1965.
Though my father generally never really opened up
much about his life before being my father, my mother has.
As strange as it may seem I always considered the times when they'd
share stories of their youth with me to be special
and in some sense I felt honored.

From my father, the darker stories from
the 50's and 60's came through. On those
rare occasions, he'd tell me stories about growing
up in a ghetto in up-state new york. About how he
got jumped one day and how he had to learn to defend
himself. He'd tell me about the time when his mother died
and how he, his little brother wally, and his father all with-drew
into themselves afterwards and how it became the downfall of their
relationship as a family. He told me about the time when his father married
a woman not much older than him and how she wanted nothing to do with my
father or his brother. And how right after graduating from high school his father
told him to move out; he imagined how betrayed Wally must have been when dad left
for college... "leaving him" to defend for himself against their father and that woman.
He told me about how he got out of going to vietnam because of some surgery but also
how to this day he refuses to eat vietnamese food because the memories of how so many
of his friend died because of that war are still so strong.

From my mother the stories
where more varied when it came to tone.
Though she'd never go into too much detail,
she told me about how it was to grow up in a small town
where everyone knew your family and how it was to live with parents
who were alcoholics and justified their early drinking habits with the phrase
"It's always 5 o'clock somewhere". She told me about how her little sister Nancy
told everyone that she wanted to be a kindergarden drop-out and that she was an
indian princess. She told me of trips to Texas where they'd stock up on Dr. Pepper, frito's
and corn-dogs because they just didn't have those things in Up-state New York at that time.
And how her father would let them buy as much fabric as they'd like in order to sew their own clothing
but how they could never go out and buy their own clothes despite how well off their family was.
She told me about how her father used to make everyone take their hats off inside of the house
and when she brought her potential boyfriends over how he'd inspect them and if they
had a hole in their pants how he'd put his finger in it and rip that hole right through until their entire pant leg
was open. She also told me about her friend the "long haired hippy weirdo", as her father referred to him, and how
he'd ride his bike from one county through the mountains over to Broadalbin just to see her and their friends.
She also told me about the boyfriends she had. How she'd generally date the athletic types... but how she also
ended up dating a drummer from some local band and ended up with my father a "geek". Though I heard the story
of the guy she dated in college from Long Island and her trip there to meet his family and the comments they
made about how she had a "pushed up Protestant nose" or the classic "she's a nice girl but too bad she isn't jewish",
she did tell me once the story of a guy she dated in high school that had proposed to her right before
he left for vietnam, and how she had to turn him down.

It's with that history I was raised. From the time they brought me
home, music, objects, and stories from that era have been in the undertones
of my life. There's hardly a time that I can remember we didn't listen to the so called
"oldies" when were were in the car or didn't have it blasting whenever we did chores.
As I grow older I realize that these things have wound themselves into my very being.
I am just as much a product of the 1960's as were my parents or any other person
that grew up then. And in a sense I am captive of that era. History repeats it's self.
My father taught me that. I look at events that happened when they were my age and
I see correlation's with what's happening now. I am a captive.

but, i'm not too troubled by it... but i do sometimes wonder if
it skews my views on what's happening now.