Where We Came In

Kids of the Baby Boom

Our daddys won the war and came home to our moms
They gave them so much love that all us kids were born
We all grew up on Mickey Mouse and hula-hoops
Then we all bought BMW's and brand new pickup trucks
And we watched John Kennedy die one afternoon
Kids of the baby boom

It was a time of new prosperity in the USA
All the fortunate offsprings never had to pay
We had sympathy for the devil and the Rolling Stones
Then we got a little older, we found Haggard and Jones
A generation screaming for more room
Kids of the baby boom

Kids of the baby boom, we had freedom, we had money
Baby boom, here in the land of milk and honey
Counting our chickens way too soon
Kids of the baby boom

Now we all can run computers and we all can dance
We all have Calvin Klein written on our underpants
And at six-o'clock, like robots, we turn on the news
Watch those third world countries deal out more abuse
Remember the first man on the moon

Kids of the baby boom

Kids of the baby boom, we had freedom, we had money
Baby boom, here in the land of milk and honey
Counting our chickens way too soon
Kids of the baby boom

As our lives become a capsule they send to the stars
And our children look at us like we came from Mars
As the farms disappear and the sky turns black
We're a nation full of takers, never giving back
We never stop to think what we consume
Kids of the baby boom

Kids of the baby boom, we had freedom, we had money
Baby boom, here in the land of milk and honey
Counting our chickens way too soon
Kids of the baby boom

Our optimism mingles with the doom
Kids of the baby boom

--Howard and David Bellamy, 1983

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I started working-- really working, in the early 1970s.
It was a time when the real men I knew were about the age
I am now.

Like the song says, they won the war, came home, raised families
and believed in the American dream.

They also ended their working lives seeing the industries and jobs they'd known, so drastically changed, that they knew their sons and daughters would not be able to continue their way of life.

I heard someone Sunday refer to the American automobile industry as a dinosaur. Monday evening the headlines screamed "Help for U-S Automakers Delayed 'til 09."

It is not 230,000 jobs, it is 600,000 jobs. It is cities like Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Atlanta and Oklahoma City.

I don't need to see autoworkers sacking bags at Wal-Mart.
I think we still need to build things in America...

Trade has always fueled exploration, but manufacturing know-how has always built great societies.

We cannot just sell other people's goods and hope to be anything more than a nation of clerks in the future.

I came into a the workplace at a time when Americans made steel, cars, and most of the stuff we used in our homes and lives...

There's a world economy out there, sure, but everybody can't work behind the shop counter... some folks need to work in the factory....

Just a thought....

(Behind in my Working Man's Brew series. Natty Bos are Baltimore's best.)