Hey Doug,
It's been quite a while since we talked. Like about two additional lifetimes for you, but I thought I should update you on this amazing life.
Forty years is really only half of an average American's lifetime, but that's about the time since you were last around. Looking back on the past forty years is really illuminating. Gosh, a lot has happened.
Take calculators, for example. When we were in college they were just hitting the scene. You could buy a simple math calculator for a hefty chunk of change, and you could go out and spend a lot more on a scientific calculator. Guess what. Calculators are all over the place, either stand alone models, or they are incorporated into watches and telephones. Pretty amazing, yeah?
With each month, and each year I think there's really not much new on the planet. But then I look back on the past forty years and there is an amazing amount of new things, things that would just boggle your mind if they happened all at once.
I remember you driving around in the Ford Mustang. That was a smart looking car. But now there are cars that run on electricity, and cars that run on gas AND electricity. The motor vehicles are starting to become slightly more energy efficient, but you know that I would have wanted that forty years ago. Sometimes it takes a while for things to go your way.
And how is everyone doing you might ask? Julie and Eric got married, had a couple fine young boys, got divorced, and both have since remarried, Eric going on to have two more kids. Eric pursued his dream of becoming a journalist, and has worked for the Register-Guard and the Oregonian. Julie recently retired from the State of Oregon, having worked in the employment department in Eugene.
JB never married, and works as a teacher in Longview, Washington. Jim, last I heard, was a buyer for a department store, Nieman-Marcus, in Houston, Texas. Harve married a couple times, we went to his second wedding, and he had a passel of kids, six or eight, and then decided he wasn't cut out to be a heterosexual. He lives, and I think is retired now, in Nampa, Idaho.
Flash worked as a photographer for a couple different newspapers, no surprise there. Liz married George and they worked in Germany, and are now retired in Arizona.
It's interesting how life just keeps going for some of us. I should be much more appreciative, waking up every day with a joy and happiness at being alive in anticipation of a brand new day. But it is almost as if a person grows tired of it, or not tired so much as complacent.
Could you imagine, forty years ago, thinking that the United States would ever, or could ever have a black man as President? Yeah, it would be hard to imagine something so preposterous. It hadn't been too long after race riots across the US, and not too long after the integration of Boston public schools. Yet, Americans did elect, in 2008, an African-American by the name of Barack Obama. Not a name you could possibly have dreamed up in the mid 1970's. And the US was on the verge of electing it's first female President last year.
October first was the first day I could sign up for Medicare. Did we ever think we'd be old enough to be on Medicare in the 1970's? That was sooo far away, we never dreamed of it. And Social Security is coming up soon. Jeepers.
I married Cilla, somebody who wasn't around when you were, and we've had a great life together. She is soon to retire from the Fish and Wildlife Department, and I'm continuing to work for the Forest Service. We became Peace Corps Volunteers in the late 1980's and served in one of those obscure countries on the continent of Africa: Botswana. It was truly an amazing experience. I should write up some of the details from our journals, but will save it for a later time. We had a child, Miriam, and feel that she is the best kid in the world, although it's getting hard to call her a kid for she is twenty-five, a college graduate and working in Portland.
Remember when Harve bought a telephone answering machine? It had a tape so he could record a greeting and take incoming calls if he wasn't within answering distance. The phone was plugged into the wall and had a dial with numbers. Those were the days.
Remember going to the library to do research for a class, and looking in encyclopedias?
Remember putting long playing vinyl record albums on the turntable to hear such classic songs as Jerry Jeff Walker's "Up against the wall, red-neck mothers" or Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album?
Remember going downtown to shop for shoes? Once Jim and I went into a local shoe store and were unable to buy anything because the store didn't stock anything as wide as Jim's feet, nor did it stock anything as long as my feet.
It can all be done on a phone in your pocket now!
Think about this. People can take their phones anywhere, and they use them to take pictures, to look up facts (or cute cat videos), play music, buy things, play games, and to do calculations. They can do that even out in the woods.
It is becoming increasingly common, while I'm at work in the out-of-doors, to have a question that can only be answered by somebody in the office. In the good ol' days, that usually meant waiting until that night, or the next day, to get an answer. Now, people take a phone out of their pocket, and call the person. Immediate answer!
There are phones in cars! There are computers in cars! These things were unthinkable forty years ago.
I sometimes drive by what you used to call "the perfect place". It overlooks the valley, there's some neglected apple trees, and aspen trees, and you can look across the valley to the Elkhorns. Below, in the valley, is a farm house that Jackie lives in with her husband. She became a first grade teacher, and by the way, was one of my daughter Miriam's best teachers, married a fish biologist, and now they are both retired, raising produce for some of the restaurants in the area.
I've gone on way too long.
It's been an amazing ride. And I'm hoping it goes on for quite a while longer, although last year, Cilla and I were hiking up the Falls Creek Trail in the Wallowas, realizing that forty-one years earlier we had gone on our first hike together on that very trail. Then we started philosophizing, and realizing that forty-one years from now we would both be in our hundreds. We probably won't make it. Which means we need to maximize our enjoyment of this life, to make the most of it, to cherish every single day. It can sometimes be hard.
I mentioned that we almost elected a female President. The person we collectively chose as our President seems to be a small minded, hateful, bully. He has called nearly everyone, including his own staff and members of his own party, derogatory names. He seems very capable of inciting hatred from even America's allies such as Britain and Australia. He doesn't seem to care about diplomatic issues, and just blurts out his negative opinions of others with ease.
It's not the kind of place that I think you would have cared for.
