January 2020: UCLA Woodstock 2020

This picture from our January UCLA family and friends trip evoked memories of August 1969. I think that had I not provided a date for the photo, one could almost accept the claim that the picture was from Woodstock in 1969 -- young people listening to music.

The more I walk, the older I grow, and the more I reflect, my thoughts most often return to my teen years in Eden (1964-1969) and my undergraduate years in Binghamton (1969-1973). Life was so much simpler then, with fewer responsibilities and even fewer resources. No internet, no cable tv (and only four television stations), with AM radio as the soundtrack for life (no streaming, no digital anything), minimum wage of $1.60, much more affordable college tuition, day games for the World Series, the NFL and the AFL -- and no Super Bowl, AFS pizza sales ($1 for a frozen pizza sold door to door on an early fall Saturday), literal sock hops (save the gym floor!) dancing to Beatles records, playing junior varsity football (in leather helmets) at 10:00 on a Saturday morning (at one time, after a 90-minute bus ride and a frigid, bare locker room, to play in light snow in November), swimming, plunging 'into the hole' or sliding down the rocks at Kromer's Mill falls in the cold, fresh water of Eighteen-Mile Creek, riding the big yellow school bus to away basketball games, pizza after the game at the Eden Pizzeria, three-hours of softball under the American Legion lights on a warm summer night, days at the beach at Evangola, CYO bus trips to Crystal Beach amusement park, plowing the driveway pre-dawn.

I could go on...