50 YEARS AGO

June 21st 50 years ago was a life changing day for me. On that day in 1958 in Des Moines, Iowa I became a father. Kevin entered this world after 12 hours of hard labor. In those days they didn't let the dad be a part of the 'miracle'. He had to sit in a waiting room with other 'fathers to be' and smoke cigarettes. I was so nervous I lit the wrong end of a filter cigarette that one of the other dads had given me (I didn't usually smoke filtered cigarettes).

So much has changed in the 50 years since that day. Can you imagine smoking in hospitals today? Can you imagine the father not being allowed to witness the birth of his child? If you weren't around then you probably think it's poor memory to claim gasoline was 28 cents a gallon! But then you probably wouldn't believe I married and started a family making less than $50 a week either. With that salary we paid rent, bought food, made a car payment and sometimes could afford the 5 or10 cents for a Dairy Queen ice cream cone. McDonald's was selling hamburgers for 15 cents and on their way to their first 100 million burgers sold.

Were those really the good old days? They were good in many ways I guess. Color TV was a few years away - personal computers were not even imagined - you still needed an operator to call long distance but most people couldn't really afford it anyway. If you lived in town (rather than on the farm) you could dial the phone to talk to a neighbor. Yes you literally "dialed" the phone - no push buttons or touch tone phones. Calculators were mechanical machines though some used electricity to turn those mechanical wheels to add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Automobiles were big and heavy things and actually had bumpers that worked. You could rear-end someone at 10 mph or so and not damage either car. Seat belts were only used in race cars but turn signals were on all the new cars by then. Iowa didn't have a speed limit and my 1952 Buick with it's straight 8 engine would easily exceed 100 mph on the flat. Alaska would become the 49th state thanks to President Eisenhower signing the statehood act on July 7th that year. It officially joined the Union on January 3, 1959.

A lot has changed since that morning when Kevin entered this world. The thing that hasn't changed is how proud I was of my "son" that morning. Of course the love for Kevin and my two daughters, who followed in rather quick succession, has changed. It has grown with every passing year. It's hard to believe 50 years can go by so quickly. HAPPY BIRTHDAY Kevin.