FIFTY YEARS

"Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” (John 8:57)

A few days ago it hit me.  The house I (mainly) grew up in...the house my sister now owns...the house I remember as a brand new house, and that in fact I can remember being built, is fifty years old this year!  To distinctly remember the world of fifty years ago is a strange feeling.  It does make you feel old.

This is also the anniversary of what came to be one of the most famous automobile models of all time- the Chevrolet Impala.  For 1958, the Impala was only available as a 2-door coupe or as a convertible.  The Impala, with its distinctive racing flag logo, was so “cool” and so popular, that beginning in ‘59 it became available additionally as a 4-door family sedan.  I drove a ‘65 Chevy Impala many years later.  For a few years in the 1990s, General Motors retired the model, but reintroduced it as a totally redesigned full-sized Chevrolet for 2000.  Can the Impala really be fifty years old?

But back to the house in Canton.  I remember when it was nothing more than a wooden frame.  We’d drive out from the inner city of Boston to look at it on Sunday afternoons.  I was only around 4 but I remember that distinctly.  In fact, at that time, I remember Route 128 in the Canton/Milton area being under construction as a brand new highway.  I THINK 128 opened up in that area in early 1959.  There were glitches with the new home in Canton.  Shortly after the walls of the garage were done in finish cement, some wise-guy kid ran his finger through the cement and spoiled the job.  It dried that way and remains that way today as a permanent memory of a jerky kid who is probably around 60 today.  Some of the workmen opened a bottle of beer in the new living room and stained the ceiling.  It was that way until sometime in the 1970s when my mother painted it out.  I remember that house being all new, smelling of new plaster and being all “echoey” the way new houses are.  We moved into the house only about a week or two before Christmas in December of 1958.  I can still see my father and his older brother Raymond carrying the Crosley refrigerator up the cellar stairs.  Can that really have been fifty years ago?

In some ways, the world of 1958 was very different from today’s world, BUT in other ways, it wasn’t all that dissimilar.  We DID have radios, television, and passenger jet planes in 1958.  What’s really freaky to think about is that there were middle-aged people in 1958 who remembered 1908 as clearly as I now remember ‘58.  Think of it, 1908 was the year Henry Ford introduced the very primitive Model T Ford.  Chevrolets weren’t even being manufactured yet.  Television had not been invented, nor had radio.  Telephones were a luxury item and were quite primitive.  Airplanes were very primitive biplanes.

Fifty years from now, I will be 103.  If I’m still alive, I will be a decrepit old man in a nursing home, but in fact, I don’t even expect to live to see 90.  I hope I have not depressed anybody, but the fact that the “new” house in Canton is now 50 years old; well it is mind-boggling to me!