A day that will live in…what was I saying?
September 24, 2010 (Friday)
In the same way that we are in the 21st Century but the year is 20 something, I am 79 now but beginning my 80th year on planet Earth. Hard to believe, but it is so. Based on something Dale Pogue recently said, I would guess that 1/3 of those born in 1931, as I was, have passed on. Dale said his graduation class (about my age) had 300 graduates and 100 of them are no longer with us. So I’m just guessing, but I’d say that sounds about right for the general population in our country. Not all of us will make it to 80, and fewer still to 90. Only a few will see 100. And that’s only 21 years from now. That’s not a long time, 21 years. I can tell you very quickly what was going on in my life 21 years ago in the year 1989. Just like yesterday.
How about 79 years ago, the year I was born? What was going on then? Unemployment reached 16.3% that year, and people were beginning to realize that the 1929 stock market crash had introduced hard times. The Empire State Building was completed after only one year of construction. Believe it or not, there was a T.V. Broadcast tower at its top. The little desert town of Las Vegas decided to legalize gambling. Average annual wages were $1850, a gallon of gas was 10 cents, average rent was $18 and a loaf of bread cost 8 cents. If you could find the money, you could buy a brand new car for $640.
We were poor, but my father always had a job, and that was something for which to be thankful, even though his wages were $10 per week. There were many people much poorer than we. I’ve always felt I was born at a good time, because the economy got better with each new decade. That may well have been the last time one could say that about a century. From the time I was about eleven, I always had some kind of a job, from the produce market and grocery store to the cinema palaces to the restaurants owned by my parents. I worked on campus at college, then at a medicine company, later, as a seminary student, at an automobile assembly plant and after that at a granary and feed store. I was pastor while in college at age 20, and the church graciously paid me every time I preached. My first real job in the ministry had come when I was 18 and Associate Pastor at Groesbeck. That was the first of six churches I served before moving to Rockport in 1964, to become pastor until 1996. Since retirement, I have continued to preach as interim pastor or pastor until a couple of weeks ago, when I finally retired again.
I am in good health and I feel good. But there are a few little things now and then that remind me that I am, after all, 79 years old. As I said a few blogs ago, it’s great to be alive.