Old Camp Grounds

My wife hates it when I write about the old days or revisit my past in some blog. I’m not sure why this bothers her since I’ve still got my feet stuck firmly in the present. Now, with social media sites like Facebook (and specific groups within), any of us can go back to revisit our hometown or familiar ‘old haunts’ with just a couple of simple key strokes.

There’s even is a group page for my community, a nice but rather non-descript third ring suburb which began as Lebanon Hills and then back in the 70s was re-crowned Apple Valley. You name the hometown and there’s probably an ‘Old________’ Facebook page for it. Recently, I saw that an old acquaintance of mine, who had left Minnesota years ago, has found a group page just focused on the small town where she was born and raised. I’ve done the same with several ‘Old Saint Paul’ Facebook group sites. We’re both now privy to the old camp grounds and can reflect on how its changed over time.

Revisiting one’s past can be part of reflecting on a life lived for so long. Not all of us get the opportunity to do that. It also helps explain just how we got to where we are today. Despite what my cloaked-in-black advisors told me back in grade school and high school, thinking about oneself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Pride isn’t the sin we were once told it was. I came, I saw, I conquered some of the time. For that, I get to look back in anger, forgiveness, pride, and deep, deep appreciation for the life I’ve lived thus far even if most of the landmarks are long since gone.

The fact is that so many, if not almost all, of the landmarks, monuments and structures that played a background part of my youth and young adulthood have vanished. It’s a past history that only exists now in old black and white photos, old documentaries and textbook illustrations. It’s the result of decades of growth and change and evolution and bringing with it an erasure of any physical evidence of those places that once encompassed my life as I grew up.

Granted, we’re talking about a period of over eighty years. My grade school is gone. My high school has changed its stripes. My college is now a university and my first employer (minus time spent on the University of Minnesota Minneapolis campus) has decamped for downtown St. Paul.

Normal evolution and urban development have erased any and all vestiges of those times past. It’s almost as if they never existed in the first place. Beginning with early homesteads on Smith Avenue, Exchange Street and Randolph Avenue. The first two are devoid of any housing stock and the third has increased in value a thousand-fold over time.

My hippie hangouts in Dinky Town have been replaced with towering student high rises and a ‘tiny Target.’

KTCA, the old public television station on Como Avenue has moved downtown. The Neuman Center moved off campus and the West Bank has changed colors and flavors since I hung out there. My old favorite bar is now an off-site treatment center.

But it’s not just local landmarks that have disappeared. WTVS, the public television station in Chattanooga, Tennessee bears little resemblance to the Southern enclave of rednecks and cowboys when I came there as a ‘Yankee’ back in the early seventies. MCPB, Maryland Public Television, has evolved over time and now my time period spent there is now considered their ‘Camelot years.’

Each new generation has created, found and/or changed any semblance of what used to be. My old hangouts, dens of iniquity, lodging, love-making, entertainment and employment are but dust in that memory bank called my past life.

Now when my grandchildren ask me about the fabulous fifties, the turbulent sixties, the seventies and beyond, I can only smile. It’s all there (or some of it) in those Facebook group sites and in my mind. But I don’t have any real landmarks we can visit anymore.

There are only old photos, sketchy memories and true embellishments that only a Papa can spin to the delight of eager and receptive young ears. It was the best of times and…

Teaching Ambition

It’s invisible, elastic, demanding, and can play head games with your brain. It’s the power to do good and evil, to create and destroy. It’s an elixir, a real high and can be a pain in the ass. Ambition is all of those things and more. It comes in all sizes and shapes. Iteration be damned, it can be all around us and we don’t even know it.

So, who is that fat old man slogging along the blacktop pathway at 6:00 in the morning? He’s over-weight, in poor form, carrying his head down and is probably in a world of hurt. He’s so slow that turtles are passing him on their way to breakfast. Why isn’t he at the coffee shop with the other retirees; those oldsters who spend a good part of their days bitching about the government and life in general?

Who is that lithe young girl running like a gazelle so easily and eloquently in the morning dew? She passes the old man and they smile at one another, if only for one brief moment, then they’re back to their own space; encapsulated in their own thoughts and reflections.

Who is the middle-aged woman at a Community Ed painting class sitting beside that macho guy, both focused on their hard scribbles few other people would call a painting? Yet they don’t seem to care or even notice. They keep dabbling, experimenting, making smears across the canvas that only they can understand and appreciate.

Most of us are familiar with the successes of Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon). What were these folks trying to prove? Why engage in these mundane endeavors? Obviously, it wasn’t for anyone else because nobody else gave a hoot what they’re up to.

I would suggest they’re following their passion, their ambition. That internal engine that drives them to push their bodies, push their desire, push their need to do… I tried to explore that concept in one of my first novels. The best way I found to describe my protagonist was to say that he was ‘hungry.’

But what is ambition? What drives ambition? And more to my point of interest, how do you instill ambition in your kids or grandkids? I have no pat answers. It’s always easier to ask questions than to pull answers out of that cauldron called life.

For example, what happens when you’ve worked hard all your life for those things you feel you deserve and you want your kids to have? There’s nothing wrong with that but how do you keep your kids hungry when you’ve fed them so well?

How do you balance giving your kids material things and still hope they have a desire to go beyond those sundry distractions for more real substance in their lives? How do you feed ambition in your kids when they’re living a privileged life (relatively speaking)? Privileged because you wanted it that way.

How do you help them understand the power of money and the responsibility that goes with it? Yet you don’t want to deprive them of any of the experiences you had or didn’t have growing up yourself.

I don’t think there’s a set answer out there or a guidebook that details how to build desire and want in a young person’s mind. Some have it and others don’t. I was lucky. I was born poor and didn’t have far to go to move in another direction. Absence does fuel a strong desire in some people to…

With our own kids, we simply had expectations. Most were unspoken, unwritten, seldom talked about but always understood. And we gave them opportunities. Lots and lots of opportunities. That seemed to work for us.

Now with the grandchildren, we’ve taken on a supporting role in raising and educating them; always in deference to our own kids and their spouses. Their parenting decisions always pull the most weight. But that doesn’t mean we can’t suggest, offer, volunteer, or otherwise support ideas of our own. Seems to be working for us.

My theory is to let kids explore whatever they want to. And encourage them to do so.

Sharon and I tend to give our grandkids lots and lots of experiences and opportunities. And have plenty of expectations for all of them at the same time. I want them to be like that old man and young girl jogging in the morning. And the middle-aged woman and guy exploring their respective talents for painting. I want my grandkids to do, to try, to experiment, to fail more than once and to try again. And again. And again.

And that old man who is out jogging each morning. He’ll probably never run a real race, even a 5k. But he keeps chugging along. Day after day. And yet when he’s done and he’s hurting and rank and exhausted, he is still in his own world of Valhalla. Because he’s done what so many of us only wish we could do. The irony, of course, is that we all could too.

If only…

If only…

If only…

City Hippies

I heard a new phrase recently that really caught my attention. A friend was talking about some of her neighbors who don’t believe in spraying for mosquito control, grow a lot of their food in their backyard, brew a little hooch in their basement and use the sun for heating their homes (as much as possible.) Urban homesteading is one label attached to these folks, ‘City Hippies’ is another new moniker given to them.

The last time I heard about ‘city hippies’ was during a review of one of my latest plays ‘By the Salton Sea.’ It was pointed out to me that rich hippies were buying property around Joshua Tree National Park and converting old cabins, homes and shacks into trendy upscale modern abodes for other rich hippies from the coast.

It was almost a repeat of the migration of drug-fueled musicians, artists, film makers and other creatives from the coast to the high desert. Gram Parsons of Country Rock fame provided the signature moment when he overdosed in a rundown motel up in Joshua Tree and thus the legend was born.

So, what ever happened to those granola-crunching hippie chicks in their long flowing dresses? The ones with a flower behind each ear and a naked baby wrapped around their waist. Whatever happened to the back-to-the earth movement and all those folks embracing mother nature? I think I found them and in a place you’d hardly expect. The children and grandchildren of my generation have moved back to the city.

Back in October of 1967, that psychedelic generation, of my generation, disappeared with the ‘Death of the Hippie’ ceremony in San Francisco. By then, time and politics and media sat-uration had hastened the gradual demise of their tribe as a cultural icon for peace and love and living the simple life.

Now they’re back in plain sight and unabashed contentment. If you look carefully, they’re all around us and it does make perfect sense after all. They’ve been reborn in the children of those cultural pioneers of women’s rights, women’s sexual freedom, political activism, social-involve-ment and community-caring.

But these new hippies are no longer into paisley prints, flowery skirts and a flower in their hair. They’re back living in the city instead of a commune in the country. They’ve spearheaded the movement back to the city and found their own community of like-mind souls in the rubble of those old vestiges of their parent’s city. These women are smart, intuitive, vested in their community and still carry subtle hints of the flower children of their mother’s era. Instead of being college drop-outs, they’ve got advanced degrees and aren’t afraid to show their gifts of intelligence and grounded observations of the world around them.

They’re reshaping their urban environment. Most urban areas have a sameness about them. Urban populations are heterogeneous, consisting of various shades of people-different castes, classes, ethnic groups, religions, etc. City hippies have carved out their own unique group based on mutual interests in the environment, education, conservation, sports, etc.

While urban life can be dynamic, social relations there can be temporary. There seems to be a high rate of geographical as well as social mobility which hippies accept as the fluid condition of most neighborhoods. Chicken coops and vegetable gardens are one sign of this new kind of urban dweller. But to really understand their stance on the world, one has to look deeper inside their home.

It’s the new woman of today who sees her children as precious uncut gems, her home as her sanctuary and the community as her extended family. She can grow vegetables in her backyard and still find great wine deals at Traders Joes. She wants her kids in sports but says: “hold off on the trophies if it’s just for showing up.” She values education above all else and places expectations on her children’s teachers as she would on herself.

These new hippies are raising kids and managing households without being encumbered by the old axioms of the’ little woman at home.’ In many instances, they own the real estate themselves or have negotiated the deal alongside their husbands.  They’ve come a long way, baby…but don’t ever call them baby!

They’ve traveled far beyond the homestead and have seen and done things only early female pioneers could imagine. They’re as comfortable behind a podium as they are on a glider nursing their infant.

They see experience as food for the brain and the soul. It’s much the same for their children. Summers are no longer for hanging around the playground or being glued in front the boob tube. Now there are camps for every activity imaginable and then some.

Back in my day, hippies had the Oracle in San Francisco and local mimeographed rag sheets to get the latest news of community events. Most large cities had their own version of the Oracle. It was probably the precursor to today’s ‘Reader’ rag sheets.

Now in the Twin Cities, they’ve got internet message boards and news sites. If they want to communicate in person from a distance, they can do Face time or use other face-to-face mobile devices. Back in the day, there were communes to raise the kids. Now these women have ECFE, Park and Rec. programs, play dates and the old, reliable but newly energized resource on the horizon, their grandparents.

Community gardens are still community gardens. But now there are direct farm-to-table supply lines of fresh produce. Stimulants have changed from pot to fine wines and craft beers.

And of course, Whole Foods and Trader Joes, are available for organic fare. To save money, they’ve got Savers and Good-Will and the old standard garage sales.

Many of these women handle the household finances and know more about the globe economy than a lot of the newly minted sprouts on Wall Street. They’re forging new trails in women’s rights and equality. They’ve come a long way but they’ll all tell you, there’s still a long way to go. Many seem to have taken a line from the New Frugality in which ‘living within one’s means’ is the new norm instead of the exception. And living a simpler, sustainable lifestyle is the way to true wealth in mind and soul.

Maybe those hippies of my generation were on to something after all.