Paying for a Life of Leisure

I'm reminded of the fable of "The Grasshopper and the Ant," where the ant spends all summer and fall preparing for the harsh winter while the grasshopper plays. The grasshopper tells the ant he is silly for working so hard, that food is abundant and the weather's far too nice to be working. Of course, the ant warns the foolish grasshopper that winter is coming and if he's not prepared, he will suffer the consequences. The ending is as obvious as the moral and as such it reminds me of my baby boomer generation, and our easy summer living.

Most of the baby boomer's parents were born into hard times, suffering through the great depression. Many times, they were not sure where or when their next meal would be coming from. Second hand clothes and shoes with holes in the soles were the norm for school or church. There were no safety nets for our parents and if they failed, they were lost.

Almost as soon as they became adults, the world went to war. Our fathers marched off to war to save the planet, knowing they were doing the right thing. At home, our mothers who had stayed home their whole lives and were trained only as homemakers now went to work in the defense factories as their part in the war effort. They made further sacrifices with rationed foodstuffs, tires, gas and more. They endured nightly blackouts to keep our cities safe from foreign bombers as they prayed for the safe return of their husbands.

After the war, our fathers came home and our mothers returned to homemaking because that was what women did. Many had enjoyed the freedom of being away from home and yet they still accepted their fate. The defense factories were converted into the manufacture of household goods and these were sold to the returning service men and their families. As their families grew so did their desire for housing and a building boom was set off across the land. All this created more jobs and more spendable income and things were good.

Because so many returning service men could now finally risk having children, they began having them in droves. These baby boomers soon needed schools and parks thus adding to the booming economy. Schools that at one time might have had a hundred pupils in the whole school now had a hundred in just one class. Our parents began filing the suburbs with this new generation only later called baby boomers. Our parents didn't want us boomers to suffer as they had and they went out of their way to fill our lives with the things they never had as children. Chores that our parents had been expected to do were not assigned to us or if they were, often would be rewarded with some kind of remuneration. They not only wanted us to have the things they never had as children, they also wanted us to have fun as well.

Our parents ever mindful of their dark past always saved for that rainy day. They kept their debts to a minimum and their savings to a maximum. If they tried to teach us to do the same, I fear that it fell on deaf ears. We were grasshoppers not ants and we knew nothing of harsh winters and going without.

The hard life our parent's generation led made them better not only at running our country but industry as well. Their time in the military made them leaders of men able to make the hard decisions to improve our standard of living. Our greatest leaders have always been strong men with the courage to lead our country in the right direction. Our parent's generation produced the captains of industry who not only worried about the bottom line but by the quality of the products they produced.

I don't wish to portray our parents as perfect for they had their warts as well as their qualities. They believed in giving an equal chance to everybody, as long as they were white and male. They also believed in the freedom of religion but only if that religion worshiped the same god as they did. The racial injustices committed in the south as well as throughout the country was ignored and swept under the carpet. Migrant farm workers were brought up from south of the border to pick the crops from the fields of California's great farming region. These people were housed in squalor paid a wage close to slavery and then shipped back to Mexico when we were through with them. All of this was overlooked by not only that generation but by many before them. That this was all something that was accepted as it had been for years did not make it right but it was our parents excuse.

It is now years later and a new century and we grasshoppers are running not only the country but the business world as well. We, having only lived the good life seem not to be capable of making the hard decisions that our country needs to right our way. We grasshoppers are now facing our first winter and we're not prepared. We should have listened to the ants but alas now it's too late. Our generation seems to lack both the ability and the courage to right our ship of state.

It appears to me our only hope will be with our children, the generation who is suffering most from our lack of preparedness. As this generation suffers the upcoming hardships maybe they will end up tough enough to run the world as it should be run. As I close this piece, I want to stress that I have used many generalities here and of course, it is not true with whole generations, either our parents or our own. I write this not as an excuse or a reason for my generation's failures but more as a 'Mia Culpa' to our children for the mess, we are leaving them.