Second Hand Rose

The recent death of Sir Edmund Hillary was noted with respect in our house. Sid has climbed around the world and said of Sir Edmund that he was there for the “glory years.” That interested me. It didn’t sound like the term “good old days” that I hear from retirees. What they mean is that the good old days were more leisurely, more gracious, and a lot less dangerous. Sir Edmund’s conquest of Everest did not fit into any of those categories. Sid had to mean something else. As it turned out, he did.

Sid is part of a generation of pioneers. I just missed out on that. Sadly, I have to consider myself part of a transitional generation: too young for the great generation, too old for the boomers. Sort of like Second Hand Rose in the musical Funny Girl. My generation still shared the values of our parents and weren’t gutsy enough to be cutting edge like the generation behind us. I personally envied both generations their certainty. Part of me wanted to rebel but the other part told me I had to behave. I was a very mixed-up teenager with a non-conformist streak shackled to a need for approval.

Sid never had to suffer this angst of confusion. He is a retired oral surgeon who worked with a small group of fellow surgeons to create a new field of oral-maxillofacial surgery. What he means by the term “glory days” is that time when a sport, or an idea, or a process is developed before it is widely adopted and metamorphosed into what I call “massification”-- in other words, become overcrowded and routine.

During WWII, the Colorado Rockies were the site of training for the 10th Mountain Division, which was designed to be the US equivalent of European mountain troops. When the war was over, some of the veterans remembered the perfect snow and came back and started the Colorado ski industry. At first, the ski areas had chains and t-bars, skiers had to mash down the snow with their skis, and people sat communally around fires in the evening, sipping Chartreuse. Today quad chairs are common, people ski the runs with a sort of grim determination to get in the most number of runs, and no one shares anything after the day. The glory days, as Sid would say, were when the slopes were uncrowded and the expensive resorts just an idea.

Then there's Hawaii. I can remember the first time I saw it. It was 1959, just before statehood. At that time, the Lurline and Matsonia still sailed between the Mainland and the Islands. Jet service was in its infancy. The pink lady, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, was the tallest building on Waikiki Beach. Now you can hardly see the Royal Hawaiian as hundreds of aircraft deposit hundreds of passengers who want transportation, lodging, and services. Hawaii is as massified as are the slopes on Colorado’s mountains.

Even Bill Gates has moved on. Tracy Kidder’s book, The Soul of a New Machine, described the creativity and excitement surrounding the development of the personal computer. Now it is so routine that Mr. Gates has turned to philanthropy.

The “good old days” are nostalgia for a more familiar world. The “glory days” are a time of invention and collaboration. The enemy of “good old days” is time. The enemy of “glory days” is massification.

Sir Edmund climbed during a time when courage and daring took the place of sophisticated climbing gear and space age electronic communication. Everest now is littered with the bodies of those who failed and the equipment left behind by those who find it not cost effective to carry it out. People climb the mountain with various handicaps—blind, double amputees—trying to recreate the sense of frontier that came naturally with the “glory years.” But there can only be one time called that. The old timers of Everest may lament this new emphasis on extreme experience, but there is nothing they can do about it. Those glory days have gone.

I suppose we all must at one point let go of the glory years if we have been fortunate enough to participate in them. By definition, they are only the brief moment of excited possibility. The wisest among us can accept that they are fleeting. The unlucky among us will never know that they existed.

If you would like to comment on this blog, please feel free to click on the comments button. Or if you prefer, you can e-mail me at coololdtech@gmail.com I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions. If you are interested in my other writing, including my WWII novel called "Extraordinary Things," please go to my website http://www.dmdeluca.com/ I'll look forward to hearing from you and thanks for reading this blog!