Another
year passed already???
Or
have we done this column before?
Readers
with long memories will recall that the first line did indeed
begin last year's inaugural column, while the second is from the
first column of 2006. I confess I simply couldn't resist summoning
up these little wraiths from "folklores past", if only
to underscore the fact that the coming of each New Year seems
to invariably send me into contemplative musings upon life's Passing
Parade, and the inexorable march of Time.
At
such times we would do well to muse sparingly, lest we find ourselves
overwhelmed by the enormity of just how much has changed, and
just how many years have actually crept by while we were otherwise
distracted. It is personally mind-boggling for me to realize how
many faces, faces I still fondly recall from my own childhood,
had their origins way back in the 1800's!
It
has already been a hundred years now since the hull of the Titanic
was first lowered into the sea, many months before her first and
only voyage. Saloon buster Carrie Nation died, and Lucy was born
(that would be Lucille Ball for you youngsters). We should probably
also mention the happy arrivals of Ronald Reagan and Ginger Rogers,
not to mention Phil Silvers, Vincent Price, "Boy's Life"
magazine and the Indy 500.
Seventy
Five years ago the Green Hornet (great nephew of the Lone Ranger)
made his radio debut early in the year. At the end of the same
year (1936), England's King Edward VIII abdicated the throne.
(This look back is certainly timely, isn't it?) That year saw
the departures of Kipling, Pavlov, and Irving Thalberg, though
we welcomed Mary Tyler Moore, Jim Henson, Buddy Holly, Dennis
Hopper and Porky Pig, not to mention the Phillips Screwdriver
and the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile.
Fifty
whole years have now passed since the first human traveled into
outer space, since JFK moved into the White House, since an obscure
Liverpool group called the Beatles first played a small club called
the Cavern, since we first met Mr. Ed, Sprite soda, and "Frito-Lay"
(Frito and Lay having merged that year).
Finally,
it has now been twenty five years since--
Oh,
would you look at the time... I'm afraid I've got to wrap this
up. I'll be back in March, and perhaps by then we will have been
able to come up with some noteworthy events that took place way
back then -- back in March of 1986, to be exact.... |
