Forty-eight years ago, the United States celebrated its bicentennial.
It had been 200 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which seemed like a big deal to me at age 26. There had been 38 presidents (if you count Grover Cleveland twice) and I had been alive for six of them (if you count Gerald Ford).
The numbers don’t seem all that overwhelming. My 26 years made up 13 percent of American history.
I certainly never considered that July 4, 2026, would be an actual date that would happen and would represent the 250th anniversary of the good old USA. Or that by then there would have been 47 presidents (if you count Grover, er, Donald Trump twice). After all, to believe in July 4, 2026, I would have to accept the fact that I would live to the incomprehensibly elderly age of 76.
Oddly enough, both of my maternal grandparents were past 76 by then.
Well, I’m not 76 yet.
But I can see it from here. I will be 76 years old in a year and a day, which means I have a scarier sounding birthday coming in a little less than nine hours as I write this.
Seventy-five.
Three-quarters of a century old.
The first time I ever thought of age in quarters of a century was a Phil Ochs song I first heard in 1971, still four years from being a quarter of a century old. Ochs was another one of the musical greats of the ’60s who died far too young, committing suicide at age 35.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if my life had ended at age 35, but I realize nearly all the meaningful work I have done came after that point. There were several songs I cowrote with my friend Bill Madden in 1973 and the first draft of a comic novel in 1982. That novel was finally published in 2022 as “The System.”
Some of the journalism of which I am most proud came in two years in Colorado from 1986-88. I was sports editor and sports columnist for the Greeley Tribune, and I wrote more than 400 columns. The only work that compared in my opinion was the five years from 1996-2001 when I was a metro columnist for the Daily Bulletin in suburban Los Angeles.
It’s the last five years that I have really hit my stride, not least of which is the nearly 1,140 posts on this website.
Following the 2022 publication of “The System,” I finally had the book I always considered my magnum opus published last year. I wrote a first draft of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” in 1990 and worked on an off to improve it for 30 years.
Now I have three other books in various stages of completion, two novels and an anthology of 40-plus years of columns and blogs. “Heart’s Desire” is completed and at my publisher. I’m hoping it will be out sometime in January. The other novel, “Twice in a Lifetime,” should be finished as a first draft by the end of the week.
The anthology is finished, but might require some rethinking.
I mention this by way of apologizing or explaining for so few posts recently. To be honest about it, I also have gotten very tired of writing about Donald Trump.
Who since I have to count him twice will become the 15th president of my lifetime late next month.
Ugh.