cities. physics. food. environment. fatherhood.
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Childhood

I was 34 years old when my son was born; my father was only 29 when I was born. Yet despite the fact that more time will have elapsed between my childhood and my son’s than between my father’s and mine, my perception is that while the world in which I grew up was fundamentally different than that in which my father grew up, my son is growing up in a world that is a slow, gradual evolution of the world of my childhood. Perhaps it’s because it’s only relatively recently that I’ve self-identified more as an adult instead of as a young person, and have wanted to categorize more years of advancements as belonging to my youth than I would acknowledge belonging to my father’s youth. I don’t really know what the right comparison to make is–Matthew is several years away from an age against which I can compare any real memories. And when he’s old enough to think about it, I could imagine Matthew reasoning that the lack of digital photography, a ubiquitous internet, and the need to buy music on physical media all as evidence that my youth was stone-age by comparison. We don’t really know what the world will look like when Matthew is old enough to remember it, but we can make some comparisons about the years in which we were born.

First, transportation. Amtrak was formed in 1971: passenger rail when Matthew was born is roughly the same as when I was born, and completely different from when my father was born. At some point before I was born, the passenger-miles of the airlines overtook that of the railroads. The present Interstate Highway system, begun in 1956, is similar to when I was born.  

Figure 1943 1973 2007
Population (M) 137 212 303
Cars (M) 26 124 232
Cars per capita 0.19 0.59 0.76
Interstate Miles 0 35461 46837

 

So I think its fair to say that the transportation world in which I was born was fundamentally different than that in which my father was born, but Matthew’s transportation world is similar to mine.

For sports, my dad grew up in the era of the original 6 NHL teams, and before interleague play in Major League Baseball, but looking at the figures per 100 Million population is interesting:   

Figure 1943 1973 2007
NHL teams 6 16 30
NHL teams per 100M 4.4 7.6 9.9
NFL teams 10 26 32
NFL teams per 100M 7.3 12.3 10.6
MLB teams 16 24 30
MLB teams per 100M 11.7 11.3 9.9

 

So while the NHL has definitely grown in each era, there was more football per capita when I was born than either now or when my dad was born. Most significantly, there was more baseball per capita when my dad was born than either now or when I was born. Sort of makes me wonder about all the hand-wringing that goes on about how baseball expansion is supposed to have diluted the available pitching talent.

One other facet that I thought was different about my dad’s youth, but isn’t really, is candy. I remember my dad telling me about ads for Clark bars when he was a kid–even though they’re still available, they really aren’t heavily advertised, nor were they when I was young. But according to this timeline of American candy bars, it looks like the golden age of candy bar inventions were the 1920s and 1930s; pretty much the same selection had been available for my dad as for me, and Matthew benefits from the rather small handful of candies (Whatchamacallit, Twix, Skittles) that were introduced during my youth.

2 comments

1 mbm { 01.23.08 at 9:12 am }

I always thought that my parents’ childhoods were truly in the “olden days.” That used to amuse my mother!

2 Commander Plaza { 01.30.08 at 2:01 pm }

I’m reading this the day after my 35th birthday and I found it quite thoughtful. I vividly recall your father as being Clark Bar kind of guy.

For the first few months after turning 34, whether it was psychosomatic or not, I felt like my metabolism was slowing down a bit, and I accepted it. With this birthday, I had lunch with Tojo @ West Coast U. and then had dinner with Babs; both are birthday activities that I could have done since 1988 with the former an activity that could have been done since… 1980. I also read an article about giving up the clothes of a younger man, baggy jeans, baseball caps, etc. I ain’t havin’ none of that.

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