A 21-year-old woman, a blushing bride a mere 10 1/2 months prior to today, goes into labor. Her 23-year-old husband rushes her to the hospital. In that era, his job was over once she was admitted; he and the other husbands were relegated to a waiting room where they paced and chain-smoked unfiltered Pall Malls, Camels, and Lucky Strikes (filtered cigarettes were available back then, you understand, but weren't considered "manly").
The young father-to-be waits hopefully. He wanted his first-born to be a son.
At 12:07 MST, the young mother delivered the child -- a son.
They called him....Vulture.
Okay, I made that last part up. It's my story, after all!
I still can't wrap my wings around 1/2 a century. It's a big concept for my wee brain to process.
50 years ago the only computers that existed were predominantly owned by the government and Fortune 500 companies. They were huge monstrosities, but not as big as they had been just a decade before, with vacuum bulbs having been replaced by transistors. Now, my 3 pound laptop has more power than a thousand of those antiques. There are at least 10 computers in my home - 4 personal laptops, 3 company laptops, 3 desktops, perhaps 1 or 2 others the boys are using for game servers, storage, or parts. Even comparing using today's inflated monetary value for our computers against the more stable 1958 dollar for the giant behemoth, our 10 computers cost about 1/1000 as much as the behemoth. Technology is good.
50 years ago families had one TV on which they could watch 3, maybe 4 channels. Now there's a TV on every floor plus one in my office; the one in the family room is a 52" high-definition set with 5.2 Dolby surround sound. DirecTV satellite feed means hundreds of channels plus NFL season ticket; I can watch any game I want on Sunday in glorious 1080i high definition. Technology is good.
Technology is good, but the other changes haven't always been good. The nation sacrifices freedoms for "safety" more each passing year. The nanny state, like the cancer it is, extends its tentacles into more and more aspects of our lives. Endless war seems to be the theme of the day.
Perhaps I have 50 more years to live, perhaps only a dozen. Such are the vagaries of life. It matters not to me; God will bring me home in His good time. I've lived to see two fine sons become young men. I've had the blessing of a wonderful, supportive wife whose patience and love have buoyed me for the past 2 decades. I've been truly blessed.
So, let's have a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday for the Vulture, who's now 50! Woo hoo!
