I stumbled upon a Wall Street Journal article the other day that outlined what a watershed year 1971 was in many, many ways. (You can read it here with a WSJ subscription.)
It was the year that Nixon/Kissinger reached out to China and opened the U.S. to an important trading partner that had only been seen previously as an arch enemy.
It was the beginning of the end of AT&T’s monopoly of the nation’s telecommunications industry, with an FCC ruling that opened the door to a second long-distance calling provider.
It was the end of the link that tied the U.S. dollar to the value of gold, opening the way to what are known as “floating exchange rates.”
Walt Disney World opened in 1971, as did a little coffee business known as Starbucks, as well as the Nasdaq trading market. The 26th amendment passed that gave 18-year-olds the right to vote. Intel introduced the 4004 chip, considered the first “computer on a chip” and launching a wave of technology innovation that continues today.
The Journal article pointed out that all of these events happened in a single year exactly 50 years ago.
Then it hit me. I graduated high school in 1971, which means I’ve been out of high school for half a century.
The thought almost brought me to tears as I was hit by a wave of nostalgia.
I’m not nostalgic for my high school class, because I never, ever sat at the cool kids table. I was a cool kid wannabe, but never made the cut.
I was mostly invisible to my classmates at Southside High School in Fort Smith, Ark.
So, why did this article hit me so hard? I think it’s because I had never really given any thought to how many years had passed since Graduation Day in 1971.
And how I’ve lived sort of my own version of Forrest Gump’s life in the intervening 50 years, still trying to be one of the cool kids and never quite making it.
But I’m proud of the newspaper career I pursued for more than 30 of those years, a career that brought me to OKC where I would meet the woman who became my wife, the kids we raised, yada, yada, yada.
Enough of that.
Just know that 1971 was a really, really cool year. I’m proud that it’s the year of my high school graduation.
Even if I wasn’t one of the cool kids.
Jim Stafford's BlogOKC 