DEFINING NOSTALGIA
BUYING BACK OUR GOLDEN YEARS
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
Little things pile up and can overwhelm us. Even when they don’t, so many of us have huge things hanging over our heads, sick kids, cancer, diabetes, dying parents, no jobs, an endless list that a moment of peace, a walk or a half hour with a good book may be all we have.
How do we describe ourselves. I am a Vietnam vet. That puts me in the late 50s to 70s age range. I am in between. This means I grew up in the 50s and 60s in a country where change and a total alteration of expectations was a big part of our lives. We never accomplished what the guys who won WW2 did. I would call Vietnam a win, perhaps a wrong war, perhaps a dumb war, but a tough one with dead just as dead as if they fell on Omaha Beach.
They wanted it to be the last war. Korea proved them wrong and Vietnam proved them hopelessly wrong. We wanted Vietnam to be the last one and our kids and grandkids have been fighting now for nearly a decade. We expected so much. Our kids were supposed to have what we didn’t but grew up surrounded by drugs, video games and pornography. You could move to Alaska and find yourself surrounded by the same things that befouled any city.
I think we spent the middle of our lives protecting our kids and working to give them everything we didn’t have. I see that in everyone I know. It defined our lives. Too often, it failed miserably, the more we tried, the more we failed.
Teaching kids values, that hard work builds character, is nearly impossible when they look around them and see money, power and privilege in the hands of the lazy, the inept and the immoral. For every huge home built thru hard work, you find ten built thru telemarketing scams, stolen investments or unpaid borrowed money.
This week, my college roomate and his wife came to visit for a couple of days. We hadn’t really seen much of each other since East Lansing nearly 40 years ago. I am heading to NYC next week and will be seeing them there. John and I are both vets, he was Army, me Marine Corps. Michigan State had 8000 vets enrolled and most of the faculty were WW2 vets, some of them "big names" in the War effort or diplomatic corps.
It seemed like a wonderful time, so many of us, survivors, some shot to pieces but alive. We didn’t live as vets but we knew. You could look across a classroom and you knew.
Sitting up for hours talking, years of jobs, kids, more jobs and the utter bullshit required to survive and hold a family together, not always successfully, painted an indelible picture. More stuff involved health issues. One thing we all agreed on is that old age isn’t going to make any of us better and is likely to be fatal.
Whatever we talked about, jobs, faculty politics, the anti-war movement, the things behind it all were the friends, living and dead, that were part of our lives. It is so easy to lose each other. I still have a couple of squad members from Vietnam, one like family. For every person I have kept and everyone I have gained, so much as disappeared as time and distance moved us around the country and around the world.
More kept us apart that just that. We were all going to make a difference. We were going to be the things we loved talking about but had to make different decisions, decisions that fed kids, made house payments and kept bread on the table. We all compromised. For veterans, compromise isn’t easy, sometimes its unacceptable.
Like most Americans, I live within 50 miles of where I grew up. Not much family is left. There are kids, some in school, working or no longer with us. I miss them being little, Christmas, Halloween or camping and back packing. Not much of that anymore, not with kids. For awhile, I dragged them around Europe with me but they eventually outgrew that too.
I grew up in a family that fished but don’t have the patience for it. I grew up a shooter, competition for years but now only fix guns. Arthritics don’t win medals for shooting.
I spent much of my time looking at issues, some as a journalist/blogger but much tied to work. Why can’t we stop IEDs in Afghanistan? Will Nigeria have a fair election? What will Sarah Palin say next? Are Brad and Angie really aliens?
Issues. Are issues like badges? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges……
None of it can move the clock back, make the kids small again. Camping trips, big fires, canoes, flashlights in the woods, those things seem so much more important than some doctor telling me I am living or dying or opening the mail to see how many airline miles I have.
I always return to the same vision. I am flying, flying in vision is really cool, plus you can save tons of time as you can go really fast. Its always a farm house with a big tree with a swing. Cars are parked everywhere and there kids all around. I’m old. I guess I am old now, though I try to fool myself I am not.
Kids are there with their kids. There is no internet, no video games, the world never invented those things. I drive a Ford F-150, not the Mercedes or BMW. Nobody is rich. Nobody gets calls from around the world or summers in the Alps or on the Riviera. Jobs are in factories, food is grown in the garden, then canned.
Neighbors come by, more friends, people I have known a lifetime. There is no football game on a 60 inch HD TV with 7:1 dolby sound. Food is fried chicken, potato salad, no French cheeses or wine cork sniffers to contend with. Summer air, the sun going down, stars coming out.
Then its all gone.
The TV is here, HD, and computers everywhere, connecting me to friends but also spilling the rot of the planet into my home. A million years on the internet isn’t worth a minute playing with a child or grandchild or a cat.
The friends from the memory, where are they? I don’t know. Some of my family is how halfway around the world. Some dead, too many, now even kids. What about the feelings? There is no time for them anymore. Feelings can’t live in a world where only the numb can survive.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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