Sharing a Generation But Not a Haircut

Johanna, Jim, and Shayne holding Joseph.

Playing Pat-a-cake with Joseph.

Bishop Gary Earl, Captain USAF and commander of the small helicopter unit at George AFB, CA.

I just had a very pleasant experience. I was checking your blogs and preparing to write something here when I noticed a comment that I hadn't seen before. A gentleman from California said he'd stumbled onto my blog by accident. He expressed sympathy in the loss of my gun collection and said he had been forced to sell off his collection of old vinyl LPs. He went on to encourage me about the future. This kind of behavior bespeaks the presence of a heart full of good will.

I checked out his blog then. He writes well and uses pleasant, ethereal music. He wrote of experiences in his youth after he'd moved to California. He posted pictures of himself and other young people. I realized, looking at those photos, that he must be about my age. Already, a type of cameraderie! And, before I knew it, I was writing a long response to his blog and telling him how very different we had been in our youths and how close I felt to people who had spent their youth as he did, even though I never lived like that for a moment.







Church leadership tells us that most of the great inventions have been brought into being so that the restored Church can be spread abroad more quickly and efficiently. I truly believe that. But I also believe that our Father in Heaven is as practical as He is kind. He knows before we do that every stride forward we take in science or thought will benefit us not only in one major way but in millions of yet undiscovered ways.


When personal computers first came out, I rather hoped that they'd be just a passing fad. Like that one old lawyer in the original Star Trek who got Kirk off on a murder charge, I loved books, the older and dustier the better! I can still hear his line as he fondled decrepit law books. "This is where the law is. Here! The Law of Moses. The Code of Hammurabi." Sigh... But computers were eventually forced down my unwilling throat. And, much to my surprise, I began to find uses for them that were almost unique to me. They were certainly unique to people in the various categories into which I fall. The seriously religious. The thoughtfully conservative. The lover of a little bit of nearly all kinds of music and of nearly all of a few kinds.







I still use a dictionary from time to time. But it's been years since I felt a need to reach for an encyclopaedia. That's amazing to me. As we grew up, we had several volumes of the World Book out at any given moment. My mother prided herself on the middle name "look-it-up" which some of the young women at Church had given her. When Joseph was still a baby, I ran an errand to the base exchange one day and found a salesman for the Americana there for a day or two. I hurried home and spoke with Shayne who agreed with me that our home would be a lousy place for kids to grow up if we didn't have a fairly complete set of reference books. It was expensive in 1970s dollars, but we just had to have them. My kids all remember them, I'm sure. Big, heavy, and dark blue.







My thanks to a fellow named Ed in California for stumbling into my blog. His words, music, and photographs have put me in a very nostalgic frame of mind. I'll attach a couple of photos here to show life in the seventies for those whose hair was ridiculously short for the period.