I share many of the same memories, my wife (version 3.0) still looks at me funny when I ask what’s for supper. College was a strange experience, I came out long haired and plenty liberal myself. The real world spent the next few years beating conservatism into me, thank God!

Thanks, that will brighten the rest of my day, I hope yours is bright and shiny as well!

came from the baby boom generation and the first of the modern….whatever you want to call what passes for men these days. You are the former. It’s always interesting to hear the seminal events in a person’s life that turned them into a conservative. Yours was Atlanta, mine was being bussed across town in North Carolina in the early 70s and later that decade as an 18 year old watching the South Vietnamese being driven from their homeland by the junk boatload. The lucky ones who escaped anyway. You should write a book on the southern experience of that era.

I hope you have a wonderful day!

I can empathize.

you and my dad as well(Sept 3 1953). I think I say happy 56 birhtday to him.

Like you, one of my earliest memories is sitting by the radio with my dad listening to the radio. Unlike you, I know the exact date. It was November 22nd, 1963, and I was playing with a toy fire truck I had received the day before, on my 3rd birthday.

One more thing: Anyone who has never had to use an outhouse because there was no alternative–even if it was only for a few days at a time while staying with relatives–is missing a perspective-enhancing experience for which there is no substitute.

I’ll say it again, and mean it as a complement again, you and my dad are cut from the same cloth.

May you have many more happy birthdays!

We are the sum of all our parts and we are interesting people. I like how you rebelled because we all do that. It is the rare child who lives as their parents for the rest of their lives. Happy Birthday to you Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Achance, Happy Birthday to you :think Marilyn Monroe: I like to do that for all the men I know on the interwebs

Whoever has his enemy at his mercy &
does not destroy him is his own enemy

Great diary. It brought forth some memories, even though I’m about 8 years younger and grew up in Tennessee. I still had the farm life though, even though it was more part-time than yours was. I didn’t live on one, but I was expected to help all I could on my grandparents’ place when we visited.

Reco’d

And great diary too.

Socialism doesn’t work. It looks nice on paper, but it’s been tried and it’s failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
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Take yourself and SWMBO to dinner and enjoy life.

I had all this great stuff about being an old phartte, but I’m startin’ ta be a-gettin’ up that way myself, so…..

Cheers !

Your just two years ahead of me.

You just go to show that its not the circumstance of your birth that matter, but the circumstances of your life, and what you do with them.

I too, am a 49′er. Born on Washington’s birthday as a matter of fact.

It’s keeping me exceedingly busy reading all the the history I never learned when I was in public school. One thing I never forgot was when I was in 6th grade a guy had a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third German Reich (he Was sort of a nerdy type). And I thought, wow, he must be real smart to be reading such a big, heavy book. That and my parents were practically the only ones in the town who voted for Nixon over Kennedy. That was before my Dad became entrenched in teamster-union-think, and my Mom succombed to AARPitis.

Cheers & many many more.

So, one of RedState’s crotchety old men just got a bit older. {Let’s hope you’ve tipped the scales on the crotchety part. }

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Important principles may and must be inflexible. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Happy Birthday.

It’s always good to look back and realize how lucky we are. We don’t have to mope around complaining that we didn’t win life’s lottery, because we did.

I hope you have somebody back home you can send this to. I felt a good bit of love in those lines, and they will, too. Anyway, don’t lose it. Somebody’s going to want to read it again, someday.

I’m seven years younger than you, but your wonderful story resonated with me, as my parents both came from dairy farms in Wisconsin. I grew up in the “city,” a little town on the Mississippi of a thousand souls. I remember the card board boxes under the bed that were my and my sister’s “dresser” (we shared a room in an upstairs apartment in my great-uncle’s house — the full bath was downstairs, which we shared with him and his downstairs boarder). My folks’ first care was 1953 Chevy — my dad walked to work so my mom could drive 13 miles to her job as a nurse aide at the hospital over in the dreaded Minnesota where I was born. When I was in first grade, we moved into my parents’ first and only house — my dad, who learned wiring in the Army Signal Corp, wired it to say construction costs — I recall several days handing him tools while he worked his magic.

My folks, and all my uncles and aunts, saved everything — you might not know when that jar, bolt, screw, bag, whatever might come in handy. They lived though the Depression, and that left a mark on me. And the fact that whenever I asked them about it, they said it really wasn’t so bad for them, as all grew up on farms and could grow what they needed to eat.

Thanks for all your thoughts here.

Happy Birthday!

ColdWarrior

I don’t know how you do it … but I always feel as if I’m seeing it in real life when I read stuff like this from you.

Wow … just wow.

Here’s hoping you get to write the “five score” diary, and tweaking union noses while you’re at it!

---

 To me, “consensus” seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects … There are still people in my party who believe in “consensus” politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors … I mean it.
      - Margaret Thatcher
NOTE: “consensus” = “Bipartisanship™”/”Centrism™”

I wasn’t able to get back to your diary yesterday and comment, but I loved reading it again today. OccamsRazor compared you to Twain, and he is right. You should write a book. Looks like you already have several chapters lined up.

You’re observation of the “Yankees came again” stuck out in my mind. I was originally from NYC and lived in Colorado a few years. Anyway, I met my husband here in Virginia, but he was from Alabama. My father-in-law is very similar to the man you describe as your paternal forebears. My mother-in-law had been a debutant. When my husband and I got married, I was a Navy Nurse and he was in Submarines. My mother-in-law was not happy and told her son, my husband, that not only was I without “background” (an orphan), but I was a “Yankee.” My husband explained to me the insult that term meant. Needless to say, my f-i-l has been much easier to get along with than my m-i-l.

I wish you many more wonderful years, and I truly believe you are a man who can look back on your life with incredible pride and self-respect.

as well as my dad. He’s 56 today

When you were born, Art, Hell came for Breakfast for the Left!

Hope you have many, many more!

That’s “Happy Birthday” in French! (I hope the html worked)

I recently hit 57 and am NOT looking forward to my 60th! I want to live LOOOOONG past 60 (I’m shooting for 150) I just hate birthdays than end with zeros!!

I can remember a lot of the things you recounted so eloquently in your post! The world that existed in 1957 when I entered 1st grade was a distant memory when I graduated form HS in 1970!!

In the ‘old’ days (pre-Viet Nam), Mainers were a pretty self reliant lot. When winter rolled around, people in the outlying areas could be snowed in for days at a stretch. Having a large woodpile, planning and having a fully stocked cupboard was the norm.

If you did have problems you couldn’t handle by yourself you would have to find a way to get to your neighbor who would immediately drop what he was doing to lend you a hand, knowing that if the situation was reversed, you would do the same.

Now, if there is a problem, the immediate cry is for immediate government intervention. No problem is too small or inconsequential for government intrusion. The majority seem to overlook that the Constitution does guarantee the right to persue happiness, it does not guarantee it. Nor does it guarantee a life without problems.

Back to the original topic! Happy Birthday, sir! May you continue having them as long as you and God plan on it!

I hope in some dark corner of your computer, you are saving some of this stuff up for a book or two. Even if you have to vanity publish it, someone 100 years from will be real grateful that you gave them a window into your time and place.