Nostalgia: A Two Edged Sword

It was 1967, the Summer of Love. In the Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco young people were reinventing what freedom meant in the United States, stretching boundaries that had been in place for generations. Peace became a political force, and love a radical form of protest.

I knew nothing of this at the time. I was in 4th grade and the most love meant to me was kissing both Claire and Heidi in a phone booth outside the gym in the basement of the Brook School, making them both my girlfriend. Two girlfriends simultaneously. Maybe I knew more than I thought after all, but putting that aside, for me 1967 would become a year of heroes and memories that would last a lifetime.

The Boston Red Sox had simply sucked in 1966, an utterly forgettable collection of underachieving ballplayers, but 1967 would change that forever. A new coach, a new attitude, and as spring tried to bloom past another harsh New England winter, a new hope. Let the season begin.

To this day I can easily recite the starting lineup of that club. I was the perfect age for heroes. I would turn 10 that summer, and these guys were larger than life. Rico Petrocelli at shortstop was a favorite, as me and Danny vied for being the smallest males in our class and weren’t shortstops short? The hulking George Scott at first base, Ken Harrelson joining the team in mid season adding offense and grooviness that had not been there before. Catcher Elston Howard came over from the Yankees and solidified a shakey backstop position. Tony C. got beaned and no-name Billy Rohr pitched a one-hitter, Jim Lonborg emerged as an ace, and of course, Captain Carl.

Carl Yastrzemski would do it all for the Sox that season. He was the opposite of Ken Harrelson, straight laced, serious, a blue collar worker bee that took his job seriously and rose to the occasion whenever the team needed him. Playing the Green Monster like he had invented it he made Fenway’s left field a kill zone where great hitters went to die. At bat his routine would be copied by Little Leaguers everywhere, digging his cleats in the dirt, aggressively pressing his helmet down on his head and still swinging so hard it would sometimes go flying anyway.

They would lose the World Series in seven games to a super-human Bob Gibson and the St. Louis Cardinals. Televisions would be rolled into our classrooms to watch the games at school as we began our negotiations of 5th grade, priorities clear.

Man oh man, now that was when baseball was baseball, right? The good ol’ days.

Poppycock, really.

The kids of today who come up watching their games of choice are forging their own heroes, their own memories, their own nostalgia. In 50 years aging men will be talking about Mike Trout, Christian Yelich, Alex Bregman and Mookie Betts, breathlessly recounting their greatest plays and lamenting how the game has changed.

Nostalgia is a generational season, nothing more. Our parents looked on us as coddled as we got 5 and 10 speeds on our bikes, had ballpoint pens that didn’t require refilling and TVs that were reliable and often in color. Their parents thought they were coddled because they had gas powered transportation, telephones right inside the home and even indoor toilets. We continue the inherited abuse of our children, deriding them for their cell phones and constant communication and virtual gaming. They will have fodder to vilify their children, have no fear of that. Progress will continue to provide grist for the mill of generational self-congratulation and people will continue to fall into the trap of generational superiority. It’s all part of the dance of aging ungracefully.

Ironically, the new technology has provided a way for our generation to bitch about how the younger folks are being destroyed by the very tech we use to bitch about it. The memes and list posts of how we played and what we played with that litter Facebook and other social media can now consolidate the boomers into a collective ennui, certain the youngsters will never have it so good as they try to negotiate their way through a very challenging global landscape of our generation’s creation.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my nostalgia. There are memories I cherish, a fondness for how I grew up, with all the attendant whitewashing of it that makes it so clean and refreshing. I like my banana seat bike, my jeans that would eventually become shorts, my P.F. Flyers if money was good that fall, mint julep candy and Turkish Taffy, a skeleton key hanging on the outside wall by the front door it opened, roller skates that strapped to any shoes you had. So much more, so treasured now as they are anthropological data points of a moment in time.

I just have lost the arrogance to think this inheritance of the certainty of our generation’s superiority ends with us. Being progressive is a two-edged sword. If the world is to move ahead and grow and learn, by definition things are lost, left behind and replaced. We don’t commute by stallion, and the bank doors don’t have to be open to get our money. Our nostalgia is a function of our season, and treated carefully it can be a source of great warmth and joy without requiring us to judge harshly what came after.

If we are lucky and if we face large global challenges with courage and vigor, there will be a future that our next generation of seniors can find wanting and inferior.