Baby Boomer Blog

As this is written Friday morning, May 3, I’m gathering my cameras, photos, notes and thoughts. This afternoon I’ll spend a couple hours at York Middle School meeting with students to talk about what I do for a living, how and why.

I am not alone. Far from it, in fact. All over the building and even outside a small army of adults will do exactly what I’m doing, which is talk to the kids in detail about their particular career.

Middle school kids? Isn’t that a little soon to be cluttering their heads with thoughts of professions and the like? Nope. Not at all.

These kids are 12-14 years young, but they’re also less than 10 years from being spit out into the real world. In my mind that makes this a pivotal time to begin sorting possibilities.

Do I suggest kids at this age should lock into anything? Absolutely not. Still, a bit of culling is certainly in order.

At that age I knew to a certainty there would never be a ‘Dr.’ in front of my name. Not smart enough. It was equally clear I would not be in charge of grass on a golf course (despised mowing-still do) a carpenter or a mechanic (breathtaking incompetence in both).

But here’s the thing. In the early 60s we didn’t have a middle school career day. If we had perhaps I might have given it a bit of thought, but we didn’t and I didn’t.

As a result I stumbled into my present career, the one to which it’s now obvious I was best suited all along, at the tender age of 41.

How to avoid my bumbling approach to career choice?

I suggest you chat with your son or daughter about it, at least in a casual way, starting about fifth or sixth grade. I can’t speak for the girls, but up to then the boys all want to be firefighters or forest rangers or astronauts.

Reality eventually dawns, or at least it seemed to for everyone but me, and when it does meaningful discussions become possible.

If you have a York Middle School kid, please chat about what he or she saw and heard Friday afternoon. Principal Brian Tonniges and a slew of volunteers from the community have opened the door, please don’t be shy to walk boldly through it and see what your youngster is thinking.

Hold steady, oh ye semi-deaf victims of last Saturday’s track meet at York High, blessed relief is on the way.

Your aging scribe has experienced the piercing blast of approaching trains at Miller Park softball games for years. It’s loud beyond belief as the endless parade of coal trains blast their way through the crossing on north Blackburn Street. Loaded trains rumble through the outfield from west (where the coal is) to east (where the population is).

I thought what I experienced at Miller Park was as bad as it could get. I was very wrong.

I found out just how wrong last Saturday during three hours spent photographing the long jump and triple jump pits, both of which are spitting distance from the passing trains on the west end of the running track.

I don’t remember train whistle blasts physically hurting before, but those did. Trains approaching from the east hit us so hard it was almost disorienting. In chatting about it with folks then and since it’s obvious I am late to this discussion. Saturday happened to be my first experience being helpless to escape the crossing on north Blackburn, but it was anything but for adults who have been involved in tennis, softball and track, never mind the poor kids who have to practice there every day.

We can’t live without the trains and we can’t move all those facilities. What to do?

Turns out the solution is already in the works and thank goodness for that.

Mark Christiansen, York’s director of public works, said the wheels are turning, if slowly, to make it unnecessary for trains to ‘sound off’ at Division and Blackburn.

The crossing at Blackburn is particularly troubling because its elbow configuration doesn’t lend itself to an easy fix. Mark says all of it … street and crossing alike … must be rebuilt before those nifty raised medians, the ones that won’t let drivers snake through the crossing when the arms are down and the lights are flashing, will work.

In a perfect world raised medians would silence those two crossings and Delaware Avenue, too.

Here’s the hitch in Mark’s git-along. He’s just the city guy in a project that can’t happen until the railroad, the Nebraska Department of Roads and the feds all find their way to the same page.

Yup, it’s same old story … red tape (see: Nebraska Avenue) and miles of it. Happily, Mark says silent crossings, like Nebraska Avenue, are going to happen. Just not right away.

“We hope to get to it yet this fall, but I don’t know if the state’s going to get around quickly enough for that. More likely is next year,” he said.

The railroad hasn’t signed, sealed and delivered its part of the agreement, either.

So hang tough, loyal residents and audiologically ambushed guests from out of town. Relief is on the way.

In the meantime think ear protection. Make book on this: Next time I will not leave my headset at home.

If governments are allowed to have a “Committee on Committees,” why can’t we do a column on columns?

First, perhaps, a definition.

Columns are one thing in our business, news stories/articles are quite another.

In the latter we must remain as detached as possible from the subject matter and attempt to speak in someone else’s voice … someone like the star athlete, the mayor, the cop or even the criminal.

The rules are different for columns, which permit folks like me to speak in our own voice. To put ourselves into the words far more than can be permitted in a strict reporter role.

This makes columns like recess. At least I see in that light.

This is my third one this week, which is one more than normal. I did one for sports, another for the Silver Salute that was inserted in your Wednesday.

This one makes three; three different topics in three different parts of the paper.

The freedom a column offers allows someone like me to ramble on about pretty much anything.

It might be a burr under my saddle, a fractured comment or something that has/hasn’t happened at home with Good Wife Norma and me.

If it’s a column I am permitted to be funny, or at least try to be funny. Columns also come with a license to express puzzlement, sadness, annoyance and, yes, searing rage when I need to purge.

Topics come as easily some days as they are impossibly elusive other days. Sometimes a particular column idea has to be left on the back burner to steep for a couple weeks before its form is finally revealed. Other times, though, it comes boiling out and I barely get to a keyboard before a gasket blows in my head.

You’d think after averaging at least one column a week for more than two decades it would be bada bing bada boom by now.

Not so. It’s as effortless one time as it is torturous the next … exactly the same as it’s always been.

The one element that never wavers is you. Through all those 20-plus years the reader feedback to these columns has been amazing.

When I ponder what has to be nearly 2,000 columns, the only common thread running through each and every one is you, dear reader.

Thank you for that. Thank you very much.

Are you a Baby Boomer like me? Or perhaps you date to the generation before mine came along to blow Social Security and Medicare to smithereens.

Since this Silver Salute is pointed right at Gray Panthers like you and me, it seems appropriate to write on a semi-old folks topic.

How about high tech?

What’s that you say, “C’mon Steve, nothing could be more mysterious or further from the world of AARPers than high tech.”

Whoa up there, partner, this senior citizen begs to differ. In fact, this senior continues to be blown out of his over-the-ears CPAP jock strap by the incredible comforts and conveniences we enjoy today, most of which are shamelessly taken for granted and shrugged off as borderline ho-hum by the young adults among us. The very people who invented these miracles of modern amazement.

Take our trip to New Mexico a few weeks ago in which Good Wife Norma, my mother, Ellamae, and I drove almost to El Paso, Texas, to visit brother Brad, and his wonderful wife Ana.

We drove in climate-controlled comfort all the way from York to Santa Rosa, N.M., in one hop. We enjoyed our choice of local radio stations or music CDs while underway. When we stopped for meals out came my debit card from which restaurants in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico instantly extracted what I owed them right to the penny … including tip of course … directly from my checking account waaay behind us back in Tall Corn Country.

How the heck does it do that?

All the way down Good Wife Norma used her iPhone to check weather conditions ahead. The wind and dust clouds through Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle were incredible, but not surprising in the least. That’s because GWN’s incredible phone tipped us off to every weather condition …good or bad … before we drove into it.

How the heck does it do that?

Poring over maps and such is so yesterday, but how did we find Santa Rosa? I simply entered destinations along the way and let the GPS on the dash figure out each and every twist and turn.

How the heck does it do that?

If we were looking for a place to eat anywhere along our route it was a simple matter to ask the lady in the GPS. American, Italian, Chinese, Mexican … she knew about all of them. We’d pick one and she immediately re-routed us to its front door, told us how far away it was and what time we’d be there.

How the heck does it do that?

We didn’t shop for a hotel in Santa Rosa until our progress made it the obvious place to dock for the night. We knew this a couple hundred miles upstream of Santa Rosa because the lady in the GPS had already figured out our time of arrival.

How in the heck does it do that?

Once the decision was made GWN hopped on her iPhone and began researching hotels there. We picked the Hampton Inn and she promptly booked two rooms from her iPhone right in the car while we were whistling down the highway. Moments later our receipt for the night’s lodging popped up in her email inbox. All this and we’re still hours from getting there.

How the heck does it do that?

Once checked into the hotel, I settled in with my laptop and went to work checking both of my email accounts, answering a few, and posting a progress report to my Facebook page so friends and family back home would know we were safely tucked in for the night. I could do this because everywhere in the air of practically every hotel, restaurant and doughnut shop lurks a signal whose name is Wi-Fi. My little hand-me-down laptop finds it, plucks it out of the air and uses its invisible powers to hook me to the world via the Internet.

How the heck does it do that?

Finally we’ve arrived at my point. Here’s your Opra-esque “Ah-ha!” moment: Now hear this fellow senior citizens: You not only don’t need to know “how the heck it does that,” you don’t even have to care.

All you have to do is have someone (someone a few decades your junior) teach you by repetition. We don’t give a dang HOW it works; we only care HOW TO MAKE IT WORK.

Here’s what you do. Bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies irresistible to grandkids, then gush shamelessly about said grandchild’s amazing computer/social media/tablet/smart phone skills. All that’s left to do is listen, ask questions, take notes, practice and ask more questions as needed.

There you have it … Steve’s high tech tip for seniors. Stay with it and you will succeed … I guarantee it. So does my mom, the 89-year-old iPad owner who uses it daily.