Zero to Sixty, Chapter 9. It's Up to You

I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Time marches on — it’s a cliché. Even if you dye your hair or get a tummy tuck, you can’t change the clock or the calendar. But you can live fully today, and try to bring everything that has ever meant something to you into the present and do something about it. 

I wanted to play the bass when I was 18, but it took until I was 50—an age where I could join AARP — to actually make it happen. In the ten years since, it has blossomed into a vital part of my life.

From chasing down the annual model changes at the car dealers as a teenager, I now write a weekly auto column, and yesterday took delivery of my 1,000th test vehicle. It took me 21 years to get here, but it has been well worth it.

Car No. 1,000 - A 2013 BMW M6 Convertible

As a 60-year-old with a white beard, I have the right to dispense a little advice. Here it is:

Don’t wait to do what you love. Start now.

Zero to Sixty, Chapter 8. Who's that Old Guy in the Mirror?

I remember my father saying that he didn’t identify with the image reflected back at him from his unkind mirror. My grandparents seemed perplexed at being in their 80’s. Approaching 60, I’m beginning to understand what they were talking about.

Maybe there’s something in the way I talk to myself that reinforces my identity. Does everyone do that? I wake up in the morning and as I turn off the alarm and sit up slowly, I start to list the things I have to do that day. It sets the tone. Is there an important meeting? Do I get to go listen to an interesting new band after work? Is that leak in the bathroom still not repaired? Is there a rehearsal to run to after dinner? Am I late on a project? I find that the day normally proceeds differently than I projected — and my feelings, once I show up at work, change over the course of the day regardless of my first thoughts at 5:15 a.m.

Is life that way, too? We tell ourselves who we are, perhaps forgetting that so much has changed, and is always changing. We think we’re the same person but we’re not. Or maybe we are essentially ourselves, inside, forever.

I was looking at a photo that I uncovered recently in a neglected corner of my home office. It shows my wife’s 1991 Toyota Tercel, when it was new, parked in front of the townhouse where we lived from 1990 to 2002. Isn’t it amazing that an image captures and freezes a moment, while time marches on? That car is long gone. We don’t live in that townhouse anymore. But I can remember looking out the front window at the car. I was there—now I’m here. The memory remains.

Looking at old photos of myself gives me the same eerie sensation. Young, slim, dark-haired. The thing is, I still feel like that person, despite the many changes that have taken place to my body — my brain’s container.

The changes are hard to miss. Heavier, by as much as 35 pounds, depending on when the photo is from. Hair is mostly gray now, and thinning, especially in the crown. Beard — white. Eyes — lines under them. Skin — starting to look more like parchment; more moles. Chest hair is turning white. Muscle tone – diminishing. Back – sore more often. Prostate? Enlarged (within normal range). 

But—beyond all that, I still feel like “me.” What do the people in the store or restaurant think? They see an older guy. They don’t know that it’s really me inside. I feel like I’m misrepresenting myself. Don’t they know I’m just a young guy, starting out? I’m guessing that most of us have this disconnect.

In a funny sort of way, being able to develop my adolescent interests in music and cars into real activities in my 50’s has made me more vital that I might have been if hadn’t made decisions years ago. I’ll never be a young bass player in a band, but I can play the music of my youth now, hoping to get the feeling I might have had if I’d had the fearlessness of my middle years back when I really needed it.

Zero to Sixty, Chapter 6. 50 Years of Reading Motor Trend

One of the good things about getting older is that you’ve had time to do some things for a long time — or a lot of times. For example, I started reading Motor Trend magazine at the age of 10 — that means fifty years of monthly issues. I’ve followed the annual model changes since the 1964s — and visited the showrooms too. With early 2014s already on the road (I’ve tested a couple already), that’s quite a spread.

I’ve been driving since 1968 — and got my license in 1969. That means I’ve got 45 years of experience. That puts me in the middle between the “maniacs” and the “geezers” out on the highway. The former, normally but not exclusively young, typically drive old Honda Civics or Mustangs and dart from lane to lane as they hurry along. I explain this by assuming that they learned to drive from playing Grand Theft Auto on their PlayStations.

The “geezers” are the old folks who occupy the left lane in their Camry or Buick, going 55. Or, they betray their weakened eyesight and degenerated nerve synapses by starting up slowly when traffic begins to move. I’m not sure whether it’s better to be in back of them or in front.

I learned to drive in Driver’s Education in high school, a program that is apparently no longer offered in these times of school budget cuts, How shortsighted!  Today, most certainly, I am not vision or nerve-ending impaired (as far as I can tell). I am not looking forward to moving toward geezerdom in the future. My (younger) wife promises to take away my license gently when and if it’s necessary for everyone’s protection.

When you’ve been around a while you may have been performing a task for a long time. I am about to test my 1,000^th car for my auto review column (now a blog, too). It took me 21 years to do that. When you’re 21 years old, you can claim to have eaten breakfast for that long but not much else.

I’d like to think that doing something for a long time makes you better at it. I know that I can write an 800-word auto column first draft in an hour and a half—including research time. I then return and edit it before shipping it off.

I’ve played the guitar since 1967. I would say that I am not much better at it now, since I’ve not worked at it much since the 1970’s. However, starting the bass ten years ago, I’ve now accumulated six years of band gigs and orchestra rehearsals and chamber music workshops, so yes, I’m a whole lot better at that.

Zero to Sixty, Chapter 5. Four-Cent Stamps and Nickel Candy Bars

Living to be 60, along with inflationary trends, creates some interesting memories of prices of yore. I remember the purple Lincoln four-cent stamps—and the beautiful commemorative stamps, too. I routinely spent my 25-cent allowance on two comic books—which were all of 12 cents apiece. I remember riding in the car and seeing gas selling for 26.9 cents a gallon.

Of course, money was worth more, too. You got 50 cents an hour for babysitting and that was pretty useful cash. My brother and I would wash Mr. Kramer’s Pontiac LeMans every now and then and split his whopping $3.00 payment. Wow.

As a young man, I earned $1.65 an hour as a bike messenger in downtown San Francisco at the start of the 1970s. I could actually live on that.  A couple of years later, I shared a three-bedroom flat in the upper Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco for $198 a month — total — not each.

It goes on and on. I’ve gotten used to spending two dollars for a cup of coffee (just the regular kind). Gas is more than $4.00 a gallon at this writing. I’m also used to earning the equivalent of around $45 an hour, too. I’m doing better, and the economy has, well, inflated.

This means that in my six-decades-old mind, things are supposed to cost a particular amount. While I can deal with four-dollar gas, sometimes a shirt at 75 dollars seems like just too much. But an iPod, which didn’t exist when I was growing up, can be whatever the price should be—there’s no basis of comparison. I do remember buying vinyl records at $2.98 at Long’s Drug Store and 45 singles at Earl’s Music in Concord for a whopping $1.00. By inflation’s standards, that single would be something like $8.00 today, right? You can buy a song on iTunes for 99 cents today, so some things are actually getting cheaper.

Zero to Sixty, Chapter 4. I Remember That

If  you're old enough, you know him instantly.

There is an advantage to being around a while. I am old enough to remember when particular and significant things happened.

My wife and I were watching Meet the Press recently. At the beginning, they roll a collage of changing faces of historical persons in black and white. I recognized everyone. Someone who was 20 probably wouldn’t know anyone. On the show, Tom Brokaw spoke, as a guest. Boy, he looks old, but I remember his youthful face delivering the news. Heck, I remember Walter Cronkite in the 1960s with his pencil mustache, and trademark “And that’s the way it is…” Walter who?

There are painful memories, certainly, including assassinations —the Kennedys, Martin Luther King and others in the 1960s, Harvey Milk and George Moscone in 1978—right at the same time as Jonestown. John Lennon’s sudden murder in New York in 1980.

More pain—the Vietnam War, and its protest movement. The Draft. The 1968 Democratic Convention. Nixon’s  election as president and crushing McGovern in ’72. Watergate ending it. Chernobyl. Biafra. 9-11.

There have been many good and or interesting things too. People still talk about the Beatles. I saw them play on the Ed Sullivan Show and got my first Beatles album for my 11^th birthday. I took a walk down Haight Street in 1967 with my dad and it changed my life (not his—he was an elderly 40 at the time). I have nearly 50 years of musical memories starting in 1964 with the aforementioned Fab Four and running through the 70s and 80s. The 90s — not so much. Today, I listen with experienced ears, and some of it I like, while some of it bounces off.

I remember when if you left the house, you were off the grid. No one had cell phones. There were phone booths everywhere, and for a dime, you could call someone else—at their house or job—but you were out of touch. Some may look back at that time nostalgically.

I remember when you waited until the news came on or even to the next day’s newspaper to find out what happened. The 2012 election was the first time that I didn’t even see a newspaper the next day. I had the facts online before Election Day had even ended in California.

Is it important for people to know about these events, to give them historical perspective? Or is it just one way that younger people are different—in not having that experience? Only time will tell what is truly relevant to today’s young people and what will fill their memories when their odometers hit 120,000.