Next month I will be 64.
When I bought the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the early summer of 1967, at the local Save-On drug store on Tweedy Boulevard in South Gate, California, I remember listening to the song, "When I'm Sixty-Four". I know that I must have briefly imagined when and where I would be at that age.
What I do know now is that I certainly could not have imagined, back then, of actually being that old. Ever.
And let us not now deny that, when I was still 17 in that impending halcyon Summer of Love, 64 would have been considered old by any one's definition. Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the most iconic presidents of the 20th century, and though living with polio most of his adult life, and a heavy smoker to boot, died at 63. President Kennedy, most people's definition of youthful vim and vigor in the White House, was assassinated at the age of 46. Not particularly young by most interpretations.
Today, at 63, I may not feel old in most of the ways that we now define "old". If generous, or even a bit delusional, I may not even look old in my mind's eye. But my much younger self would have thought, meeting up with me now, that I was old. No doubt about it.
For those born between 1949 and 1951, the life expectancy was pegged at just 66.31 years for white males.
By no stretch of my youthful imagination could I have anticipated living in Denver, Colorado.
If I thought of Colorado at all, I do know that the regional airline Frontier offered an incredibly low air fare to fly unlimited throughout their entire route system for a month. Problem was, their nearest approach to California was Las Vegas, Nevada, and I didn't even own a car. My mom would certainly have not let me drive her boxy 1960, 4-door Rambler. Though I took driver's training in high school the previous year, I would not even have my driver's license until the fall of 1967, and only then after taking the driver's test twice.
The 1960's were a tough decade to live through. While not on the same level of 1930 through 1945, the years were not kind. Freedom riders, Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights conflicts, and demoralizing political assassinations that never seemed to end.
Yet we always remained somewhat optimistic about the future, for all that was occurring around us.
If you avoided the nightly news, television always seemed upbeat. From Star Trek to the Beverly Hillbillies, it was other worldly or just plain silly. For most of my time, I studied for school, watched TV, and worked. And I listened to music. Bob Dylan and the Beatles alone trumped any other decade, before or since.
Of course, despite the Stonewall riots at the end of the decade, gay rights and equality were too far in the future to be of consequence. I kept my orientation a secret. I satisfied myself with visits to the Loop Market's magazine stand to pick up copies of soft-core Tomorrow's Man and other such tamely erotic publications. It would have to be enough for several years to come.
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