My Father’s Vintage Cufflinks
My father pastored small churches across the south central plains of America. Sunday mornings were his time to shine. I watched him get ready like some little girls watch their mothers. He’d shine his...
View ArticleGeneration X Remembers Molly Murphy’s House of Fine Repute
by Guest Blogger, Steve Lackmeyer, Reporter/Columnist: The Daily Oklahoman Web sites: OKCCentral and http://www.okchistory.com/ For my first 11 years of existence, I lived in Hicksville, New York, a...
View ArticleIconic Generation X: Crying Indian
By Barry Moses Fellow blogger JenX defines my generation as the collection of “former latchkey kids born between 1961-81, at the intersection of faith and culture.” Her blog explores the cultural...
View ArticleMeet Me In Montauk or Somewhere In Between
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d. –Alexander Pope In early 1999,...
View ArticleRegrets of My Self-Absorbed Youth
When the whistle caught the night And shook silence from my life As the last train rolled toward the moon… –From Dennis DeYoung and Desert Moon When I was 14, too old to play dolls and too young for...
View ArticleLaughing in the Bathroom at Church
The Kermit Church of the Nazarene, located in a small town in West Texas, closed several years ago. My father pastored there between 1976-78. One night during a revival service, the visiting...
View Articlewhy people cry in green bean salad
I pray the Lord to set me free May you never be alone like me. — from Hank Williams Sr. I sit with my father in the dining room at the nursing home. It is lunchtime and every table is filled with quiet...
View ArticleMaiden Yamboree Queen Laid To Rest
I saw her standin on her front lawn just twirlin her baton… –From Springsteen’s Nebraska *** My mom recently made a trip to California. Before she left I sent her an email. I had something pressing I...
View ArticleDream Academy and Life In A Northern Town
A Salvation Army band played And the children drank lemonade And the morning lasted all day, All day –From Life in a Northern Town I was looking up songs the other day that were popular in 1986. I...
View ArticleDowney, California [1971]
I am three years old and my mother has left my fatherShe’s taken me with her. I don’t rememberOur goingOur arrivingOur leaving or The day we returned to our green stucco houseReturned to my father I...
View ArticleHow to find courage in the face of an avalanche?
We used to talk about all kinds of things, but especially about a subject which interested me above all others: myself. — From Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Sometimes, I think...
View ArticleClimbing Ropes in Gym Class
My Army-supply-store sneakers squeaked against the lacquered wood floor as I sunk into the locker room. I hid inside a stall until everyone was gone and hoped by the time I emerged I’d be at the end of...
View Article5 Reasons To Tell Your Stories
Carl Wilson has written an essay, My So-Called Adulthood for The New York Times, which explores the anti-nostalgic set of Generation X (those who came of age in the 90s versus the 80s). Despite what...
View ArticleAttack of the Crickets
“But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry, From the waters lifted me, now safe am I…” –From Love Lifted Me and James Rowe, 1912 I thought I would tell you about the crickets. When we bought...
View ArticleMy Father’s Legacy: Tell the Truth
Sometimes, my father would joke, “I feel like I’m fading.” Other times, sitting across the table from me at breakfast, he’d tell me he felt out of sorts. I’d ask him what he meant, and he’d wave a firm...
View ArticleJacob Wetterling and Why the Bike Rides Ended: A Memoir of Generation X...
I first caught up with Justin, “a quiet guy in the Midwest, waiting to be seen…” after I read his piece on Open Salon. It was a letter to the Class of 2012. I liked it so much I asked him if he’d be...
View ArticleOvereducated, Underemployed in America: Generations Lost in Space
Gen-X Memoir: Overeducated, Underemployed It was not the life I planned, but it was the life I feared. Graduating college with loads of debt and job prospects that were no better than what I could have...
View ArticleThawing of Cold War Precipitated Hundreds of Base Closures
[KOSU Commentary] In the spring of 1993, thousands of people of all ages held hands and formed a circle around Tinker Air Force Base. They gathered outside the fence wearing T-shirts that said SAVE...
View ArticleIf You Could Have Only One Memory What Would It Be?
In order to write your memoir, you must first know how to remember. If you could have just one memory, what would it be? Here is mine. I am 29-years-old and six days from 30. I’m on my side in a...
View ArticleHow To Keep Dreaming When Your Hope Is Boiling In The Sun
I was 10-years-old and life unfolded like laundry on a line. We were sheets baked in the wind, our dreams heavy like wet, pilling blankets pinned to wire. I was pulled taut between two poles, my...
View Article5 Forgotten Protests of Generation X
The Children’s March For Survival, 1972 On March 25, 1972, 30,000 people, most of them African-American school children, gathered on the streets of Washington D.C. to protest welfare reforms. The...
View ArticleChloe
…Now we went walking in the rain talking about the pain from the world we hid Now there ain’t nobody nowhere nohow gonna ever understand me the way you did… –Springsteen and Bobby Jean The best...
View ArticleGen Xers Playing On The Freeway and Other Free Range Things Before Free Range...
Back in the 1970s and 80s, half of all Gen-Xers grew up in households headed by single moms. They didn’t call us free-range kids back then, but I suppose that’s exactly what we were. Latchkey kids that...
View ArticlePen Pals Revisited: Helga’s Pictures and Letters from Germany, 1981
Of Scrapbooks and Pen Pals Here is my old scrapbook from my high school and college days. The days before mounting squares and acid-free paper were easily found. I glued and Scotch-taped cards,...
View ArticleRoute 66 Blue Whale
My father lived for roadside attractions along the rural byways of America. He loved to take Sunday afternoon drives and he loved to take long trips across country. Born in 1930, he was a member of the...
View ArticleRepost: Life in Mossley in Lancashire, 1978
The following is an excerpt from My Life In Music: 1978, a post on the blog Imaginary Friends. That’s a well-chosen name for a blog written by a Gen-Xer. Excerpt In 1978 I was living with my mother and...
View ArticleDog Story: Once Busted, Always Loved
The following is a rough-cut chapter from the memoir I’ve been working on for a few years. I thought I’d share it with readers today. Thank you and God bless you, Jennifer “If you put shame in a Petri...
View ArticleJunkyard Memories: Salvage Yards and Salvation
I remember when my burdens rolled away; I had carried them for years, night and day. When I sought the blessed Lord, And I took Him at His word, Then at once, all my burdens rolled away. —Minnie A....
View ArticleDealing With The Loss of My Father
A couple of weeks ago, I was pushing a cart down the aisle of a thrift store. To my left was a rack filled with dozens of linens, blankets, and drapes and to my right were shelves full of toys and...
View ArticleAnchor Aweigh
Anchors Aweigh, my boys Anchors Aweigh –From the song of the United States Navy On Saturday, I visited my father at the nursing home. When he saw me, he called me Becky, and when I told him I wasn’t...
View ArticleMichael Vale (It’s Time To Make The Donuts)
Do you recall the short little man in the Dunkin Donuts commercials, the one who got up before dawn every morning to make the donuts? In a zombie-like state, he’d repeat over and over, “It’s time to...
View ArticleMy Dad and Edgar Allan Poe
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober As the leaves that were crisped and sere – As the leaves that were withering and sere; And I cried: “It was surely October On this very night of last year That I...
View ArticleI Don’t Want To Live Without You, Dad.
Some days, I don’t want to live without you. Today is one of those days. The other day, I was sitting in front of my laptop Writing that post about Motel 6 and Roadtrips when I was a little girl. And,...
View ArticleThe playground at the Ensfield Power Station, Brimsfield
I recently came across this picture on Flickr of a playground near the Ensfield Power Station in Brimsfield, England, a suburb outside of London. It’s been generously made available by the...
View ArticleWhat is the hole in your tree?
When you draw a tree does it have a knothole, cut branches, or wounds in the trunk? According to some experts, these could be indications of trauma. When I was a girl we had a tree in our front yard...
View ArticleThis Oklahoma Life: Metallic Fringe, Used Cars
Now, the neighbors come from near and far As we pull up in our brand new used car I wish he’d just hit the gas and let out a cry and tell ’em all they can kiss our asses goodbye Last night, I asked...
View ArticleMy Brother Billy, U.S. Marine, Late 1970s
Happy Veterans Day! This is my brother Billy during his time in the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1970s. He joined in 1978, when I was 11. He was only five-and-a-half years older than me, which means...
View ArticleThe further I travel the nearer comes my understanding.
Growing up, I went to church three times a week, and even when I wasn’t listening to my dad’s sermons, some part of me was paying attention. My recall of things I didn’t know I knew surprises me...
View ArticleWhat Do You Want To Say?
Here is an excerpt from a poem by Natalie Goldberg called I Want To Say. It’s from Top of My Lungs, © The Overlook Press. Before I’m lost to time and the midwest I want to say I was here I loved the...
View ArticleMorning Rain and Mercies
This past year, 2014, has been harder than most. My father died in February and things came undone. But, if it’s possible, 2013 was even worse. What I’ve been through is probably exactly what you’ve...
View ArticleVintage Christmas Kits and the Fascinating Contribution of Bernhard Ulmann
In these frozen and silent nights Sometimes in a dream you appear… Our hearts were singing It felt like Christmastime Two thousand miles Is very far through the snow I’ll think of you Wherever you go...
View ArticleMemories of Gibson’s Discount Center
Do you have any special memories of this song — Heartache by Bonnie Tyler? The year it was released, 1977, my family was living in West Texas, and I had just turned 10. The following summer of 1978, my...
View ArticleJoe
Oh thinkin’ about all our younger years There was only you and me We were young and wild and free —Heaven, Bryan Adams (1983) Here are some memories I thought I’d share on this Memorial Day. This is a...
View ArticleA Thanksgiving Story
I used to be a public information officer (PIO) for a large ambulance service. Much of my job involved responding to media queries about “bad calls” that reporters would hear on police scanners. Every...
View ArticlePics of 1970s Kids with Magic Mountain’s Heavily Sedated Lion
As if the 1970s weren’t dangerous enough for kids, Magic Mountain let children pet and sit atop a heavily sedated lion inside their “Enchanted Cottage” attraction. Named Major, the lion once starred...
View ArticleRainbow Connection
The following blog post is from regular contribute Chloe Koffas. It first appeared on her blog, Light From A Pixel. Republished with permission from the author. Rainbow Connection For a short time, I...
View ArticleIntroducing My Patreon
Today, I invite you to join my Patreon community. For just $1 a month you can unlock one or two posts a week and listen to a new monthly podcast. Click here to join. What You Get for $1 A Month Ad-free...
View ArticleAdventures with Cousins on Bikes with Vinyl Flowered Baskets, 1980
“We need a place just for us. It would be so secret that we would never tell anyone in the whole world about it.” –From the Bridge to Terabithia, 1977. My cousins are posing with their bicycles in this...
View ArticleRemembering Puddingstone and Huntington Beach
The Elliotts, 1968 I hope life, treats you kind And I hope that you have all That you ever dreamed of… (Dolly Parton, I Will Always Love You, 1973) The experiences that form my early childhood memories...
View Article1970s School Halloween Party with Pumpkin-Face Gen-Xers
I don’t remember people loving fall so much when I was a kid. Certainly, there were no pumpkin-spice lattes or other fanciful autumn drinks readily available in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or even 90s. I get a...
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