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48 – BODY MODIFICATION

For thousands of years, people have stuck holes in their bodies and put some kind of object in them.

And, while they’ve been at it, they’ve found a way to use their bodies as canvases or writing pads.

The term, I understand, is body modification. Or body art.

The year I was born, 1954, was not a high water mark for tattoos and piercings. My parents didn’t have any – my mother never pierced her ears. 

My father’s father had a tattoo – I know I must have asked him about it when I was little – but I seem to remember he changed the subject. He had been in the Italian navy and apparently that’s what sailors did.

But, starting in the ’70s, body art came back into vogue. There were less than 100 tattoo artists in the United States when the decade began; when it ended, there were thousands. Tattoos went from being a sign of being less than savory to a form of expression.

If you have any doubt, go back to Sunday’s Super Bowl pregame and get a look at singer Post Malone, whose solid rendition of “America the Beautiful” came with all kinds of tattooed writing on his face.

There are folks with no real estate left to draw on, thanks to “arm sleeves” and other totally tatted body parts.

As for piercings, other than women’s ears, they were generally unheard of in this country (there are certainly cultures throughout the world in which they’ve always been common) until the early 1980s. The punk movement spurred people began to pierce more than just their ears. Tongues, eyebrows, lips, navels, genitals. 

If you can think of a part of a body, it appears it can be pierced.

Yes, the idea of that would have shocked my parents when I was born. If you had told them that, I would have gotten the first lecture about not doing it right then.

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49 – T-MINUS

Walking through the Phoenix airport last week, I was struck by one of the many large video screens overhead. Phoenix will be hosting the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four this year, and the screen showed how many days, hours and minutes (no seconds) until tipoff of the first semifinal game.

Counting down to a big event is hardly new. A little more than three months before I was born, my parents most likely watched the Times Square crowd shouting out the final 10 seconds of 1953.

More analoggy, advent calendars were a form of counting down the final 24 days until Christmas.

But countdown clocks, the 00:00:00 format that has become ubiquitous, really came into vogue in the early 1960s with the telecasts of the first manned space missions, Project Mercury.

A clock on the screen would show the minutes and seconds until the scheduled launch. When the clock was ticking down the numbers, there was nervous anticipation. 

And then, just as you were thinking you’d be seeing a launch, the clock would stop. That happened often in the early days, especially in the leadup to John Glenn’s first U.S. orbital flight.

Then the voice of the NASA, Shorty Powers, would explain what was going on. The hold was at T-minus 6:00 because of some warning light.

Those countdown clocks survived the early space buzz. There are digital countdown clocks everywhere. TV news networks use them to hype big events. Chambers of commerce love to count the days:hours:minutes;seconds to some festival or sporting event.

And people who write things love to use the countdown to tick off the days until, say, their 70th birthday.

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50 – A THIRD-RATE SCANDAL

Richard Nixon eventually becoming President of the United States wouldn’t have surprised any adult in 1954.

He was President Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president and only 41 years old. And, obviously, very ambitious.

It would have a mild surprise that Nixon didn’t become president until 1969 – and a little more surprising that he won after losing in 1960 to John F. Kennedy and in 1962 when he ran for governor of California against Edmund “Pat” Brown.

So, would Watergate have been a shock to anyone had you explained it to them in 1954?

I think the answer is no and yes.

No, Nixon displayed some nasty tendencies even before he became Ike’s running mate. His Red-baiting campaigns for Congress in California displayed his bare-knuckles style. His shameless invocation of his daughters’ pet dog, Checkers, to avoid being thrown off the ticket for a potential conflict of interest showed his cunning.

But you have to think Watergate was among the dumbest scandals of all time.

Nixon’s path to re-election was pretty clear in 1972. While his people sabotaged the early Democratic front runner, Edmund Muskie, it would have been difficult for the Democrats to take back the White House. 

And by the time the break-in at the Watergate Hotel took place, the Democrats were weeks away from nominating George McGovern – maybe the best presidential candidate I’ve ever vote for, but a doomed candidate who couldn’t carry his home state of South Dakota.

However, here’s the thing that secures Watergate’s spot on this list:

It’s surprising that this is not close to being the worst political scandal of our lifetime.

That’s all I’ll say for now. Except, look around.

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51 – SUPER BOWL minus XIII

The biggest one-day sporting event in 1954 was any of:

— the Kentucky Derby; won by Determined on May 1;

— the Indianapolis 500, won by Bill Vukovich on May 31;

— Rocky Marciano’s two defenses of his heavyweight boxing title against Ezzard Charles on June 17 and September 17;

— or game one of the World Series, on September 29, won by the New York Giants with the help of a spectacular catch by center fielder Willie Mays.

The National Football League champion was the Detroit Lions. But they won their title on December 27, 1953, edging the Cleveland Browns 17-16. The season was only 12 games long; they didn’t play NFL games in January until the mid-1960s; in February until 2001.

There was a full house at Briggs Stadium in Detroit, where the game was played. But the game was broadcast on the DuMont Network, a network that would cease to exist by the end of 1956. The other three networks weren’t interested. 

So, yeah, the idea that more than 100 million Americans will watch today’s 58th Super Bowl – sorry, Super Bowl LVIII – between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers would blow the minds of adult Americans in 1954.

For one thing, the Chiefs – who played in the first Super Bowl in 1967 – didn’t exist. In fact, the American Football League, from which the Chiefs (nee Dallas Texans) emerged, began play in 1960. For another, Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas holds more people than the entire population of the city in 1954.

What else would amaze them? Probably everything.

That the buildup for the game would last two weeks. That major companies would use the ads during the game to make a big splash – so big that some people watch the game for the commercials alone. That CBS will use 165 cameras – on drones, on cranes, in people’s hands on the field – to show the action. 

That billions of dollars will be bet legally on the game and almost every aspect of it. That perhaps you and most of the people you know will spend the day ordering chicken wings, making nachos and guzzling beer. That, in some places, the water pressure will drop just before the halftime show.

That one of the big names in entertainment will curtail their act to about 15 minutes in order to perform for his, her or their largest audience ever at halftime. That the streets of your town will be deserted for 4 hours. That the game is so dramatized that it’s numbered in Roman numerals.

That the total gross receipts of that 1953 game between Detroit and Cleveland, about $359,000, would buy you about one second of a commercial during today’s game.

How the National Football League surpassed other sports to hold such sway over the American public is a matter for another time. How Taylor Swift became part of the 2024 narrative is not my problem.

For now, happy Super Sunday for those who celebrate! (And, tomorrow, happy first day of the baseball season for the rest of us.)

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52 – DRAGON ROLL

If you said the words “Asian food” to my parents – or any adult – in 1954, their response would have been “You mean Chinese food?”

Certainly there were other Asian ethnic groups represented in the U.S. population – Japanese immigrants notoriously were detained in internment camps during World War II. But the predominant one for most Americans were the Chinese.

The Chinese had come in big numbers during the late 19th century as they basically built the transcontinental railroad. But after that, immigration from China was held in tight check by the racist exclusion acts.

That racism wasn’t just meant for the Chinese. Immigration laws passed in the 19th and 20th century were stacked so that there were lots more openings for western Europeans and fewer for anyone from anywhere else. From elementary school through high school, the only Asians I knew were Chinese kids whose families ran local restaurants.

In Flushing, Queens, where we lived, there were two Chinese restaurants – Lum’s in the heart of the community and a place whose name I don’t remember but had a big green sign that said “CHOW MEIN” over the sidewalk.

My parents, who were married in Flushing and lived there for the first 12 years of their marriage, would – by the late 1980s – no longer recognize the place as immigrants from Asia took over.

The main catalyst for the change was the Immigration Act of 1965, which loosened the quotas from outside Europe. And it was not just Chinese immigrants – Koreans fleeing hard times and hostility, Thais fleeing political unrest and the Vietnamese, who endured hardship to escape when the Vietcong and North Vietnamese took over their country.

There were other influences as well. Japan’s rise as an economic power led to interest in its culture and food.

Sushi was an idea that made Americans (including this one) cringe when it started showing up in the 1970s. Now, there is almost no place that you can’t get it – even at gas station convenience stores (Caveat ficedular!).

Other Asian concepts were adapted by Americans just about everywhere. Yoga. Pad Thai. Bahn Mi. K-Pop. Acupuncture. Chai. Taekwondo. 

And the Lunar New Year, which is not only a holiday in the countries of East Asia, but is becoming a day off in U.S. school districts.

Which is, by the way, today. So Happy New Year! Or, as we say in my family, Goong Hay Fat Choy!

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53 – BIG WEED

On the corner of Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. and North Greenway Hayden Loop in Scottsdale, Arizona, within walking distance of this weekend’s Phoenix Open golf tournament, is a former bank building. All the old drivethru structure is there, save for the machines, tubes and signs.

But the parking lot is pretty busy from the time the establishment opens at 8 a.m. every day – except 6 a.m. on Saturday – until it closes at 10 p.m. every night.

The establishment is the Scottsdale location of Curaleaf, the nation’s largest retailer of cannibis, a.k.a. marijuana.

At this point in telling my parents about this nearly 70 years ago, I’d like to gauge how far their jaws would have dropped. Because it gets wilder, from their point of view.

Curaleaf has locations – the word used is dispensaries – in 14 states. You can choose the THC and CBD levels of your cannibis, which can be smoked, inhaled, rubbed on, drank or eaten. There’s plenty of knowledgeable sales help and a base of steady, otherwise sober customers ranging from age 21 to senior citizen.

My parents grew up at a time when the federal government had successfully completed the demonization of marijuana. As a result, they believed that it was totally and irretrievably evil.

While not a user myself, my college years were filled with the aroma of smoked reefer. It didn’t seem any more of a problem than when I tended to dormmates getting over a failed romance with rotgut booze.

I thought marijuana would be legal by the time I was 30. But like so many things about my generation, we talked a good game but didn’t deliver. It took this generation of 20- and 30-year-olds to make the push to legalize cannibis.

Twenty-four states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories have either legalized marijuana or are in the process of doing so. Many of these states – New York among them – actually promote locally grown weed.

President Biden has pardoned those convicted of federal charges of simple possession and his administration has downgraded its status among drugs perceived to be dangerous.

And Curaleaf, based in New York but traded in Toronto, recently reported 2023 revenue of nearly $1.4 billion.

Far out.

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54 – YEAH, YEAH, YEAH

Ten days after and 13.5 miles west of where I was born, a 28-year-old singer from Michigan walked into a Manhattan recording studio.

He was about to help launch a genre of music that would be a point of contention between a baby boy in Flushing and his parents.

The singer was Bill Haley, and on April 12, 1954, he and His Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock,” the first really popular rock-and-roll song. Until then, genres such as country, blues and jazz were picking around the edges of what would become the dominant form of popular music in the late 20th century.

As Haley was recording “Rock Around the Clock”:

— 19-year-old recent high school graduate Elvis Presley was trying to get Sun Records in Memphis to use him in recording sessions

— 10-year-old Mick Jagger was moving with his parents away from his childhood buddy, Keith Richards

— 12-year-old Carol Klein of Brooklyn was in junior high, years after she skipped first grade and years before she changed her name to Carole King to perform with her friend, Paul Simon.

— and, in the British port city of Liverpool, four tweens and early teens were beginning to get interested in a musical world that they would revolutionize a decade later.

None of this was remotely imaginable in 1954, where band singers like Patti Page and Perry Como still topped the charts. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby were still active stars, although both were getting more involved with movies: Sinatra won an Oscar for best supporting actor for “From Here to Eternity” eight days before I was born.

My parents, who loved singers like Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald, were not totally antagonistic toward rock. My Dad bought me the “Meet the Beatles” album shortly after the group’s famed appearance, 60 years ago this week, on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I think Mom came around to realize that Lennon and McCartney were amazing song writers.

But, perhaps like I am with a lot of what I hear now from younger people, they didn’t really have the patience for rock and roll. So I was late to discover a lot of the great music of the ’60s and ’70s – I found a lot of it in college and my early adulthood, thankfully.

And, truth be told, neither I nor my parents really liked Elvis.

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55 – FUN, FUN, FUN

The nation’s most populous state in the 1950 Census – based four years and a day before I was born – contained just 14.8 million people, 4 million more than the No. 2 state.

The No. 1 state was New York. No. 2 was California.

New Yorkers, like my parents, don’t like to think of themselves as second in anything. But New York’s status as No. 1, something it had held since 1820, was in jeopardy.

California’s population more than doubled between 1940 and 1960, the last time it was second. By 1970, it had taken over the top spot and has held it since.

With California’s taking over as the most populous state has come its dominance in setting the tone of day-to-day life.

It was exemplified by TV shows. All the quiz shows done in New York moved to California. So did “The Tonight Show,” which on the day I was born was hosted by Steve Allen and aired only in New York.

California’s contributions have their pluses: environmental consciousness, technological innovation, The Beach Boys.

It also has its minuses: freeway congestion, smog, driving too fast

And the shoulder shrug: a casual lifestyle, fast food drivethrus.

There is, to be sure, a lot of California envy in the U.S. – even in the arrogant wilds of New York. 

But, as I recently saw in Arizona, there’s also a lot of antipathy. I saw a sign on a lamppost that decried the way Californians are ruining the state; and one T-shirt tried to belittle the neighbor by showing Arizona with a semi-automatic rifle and California with a phone saying “911.”

Like it or not, California replaced New York as the center of gravity in America after I was born. Whether that will last is an interesting question as California deals with problems such as wildfires, massive rain events and the high cost of living there.

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56 – A RANDOM PRESIDENCY

At 9 p.m. EST on March 26, 1954 – a week before I was born – the CBS anthology series “Schlitz Playhouse” presented a 30-minute drama entitled “The Edge of Battle.” It’s the story of a troubled GI who’s holding an Army lieutenant captive.

I don’t know if my Mom, who loved ’50s anthology series, or my Dad were watching. But I would have liked seeing the look on their face if someone told them that the guy playing the captive Lt. Paul Random would – 30 years later – be seeking a second term as the 40th President of the United States.

My parents knew who Ronald Reagan was. He was one of those actors in a lot of B-movies and TV melodramas. His big role was as doomed football player George Gipp in “Knute Rockne: All American” just before World War II.

My Mom might have known that Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild. I’m not sure she would have known that he had given the FBI a list of actors he believed had Communist leanings during the blacklist period. Being up on such things, she might have known that Reagan was on his second marriage, having divorced actress Jane Wyman and married lesser known actress Nancy Davis.

The first question my parents might have asked, once they were convinced you weren’t pulling their leg, would be for what party did Reagan head the ticket. He strongly backed Franklin D. Roosevelt. But like a lot of Democrats, he supported Dwight Eisenhower in his 1952 campaign.

My mother, a loyal Democrat, would grow to hate Reagan and his presidency. She came to admire Jimmy Carter and felt Reagan maligned a great man – an unpopular view even in liberal circles on Long Island. My father had a hard time taking him seriously – Reagan played a louse in some of these dramas and that sometimes would color Dad’s view of a person.

And, in 1954, I’m not sure even Ronald Reagan imagined what he’d be doing in exactly 30 years. My parents wouldn’t have been alone.

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57 – HOW MANY DOES IT TAKE?

Keep in mind that Thomas Edison’s first incandescent lightbulb came only 75 years before I was born. So 1954 is a little more than halfway to when we are now.

But, in 1954, it would have been hard for my parents to imagine there would be anything other than the kind of bulb that lasted a few months, at best, when you screwed it into a lamp or ceiling fixture.

Or that light bulbs would become political footballs.

The biggest problem with old incandescent bulbs was their relative inefficiency – only about 5% of the energy used to power those bulbs lit a room; the rest was just heat. And not only did they waste electricity, but you needed to replace them often – lightbulbs came in packs of four and six because one was never enough.

Starting in the 1980s, the compact fluorescent bulb – those tubey things – came out to offer far more efficient lighting. But they contained mercury, making them a problem for landfills. In the 2000s, the LED bulb, even more efficient and less of a waste hazard, took hold.

LED lamps last up to 100 times longer than incandescent bulbs – with the added bonus that, with some of them, you can make them change colors.

And the energy they save is considerable. According to the Department of Energy, U.S. electricity usage declined in several of the years before the COVID pandemic as people replaced incandescents with LEDs. Usage is climbing again primarily because computers, not lights, have become larger consumers of energy.

Not everybody loves this. In 2019, the Trump administration rescinded rules that would have accelerated adoption of LED bulbs. They don’t think the light they get is the same brightness — or something.

Which reminds me of a joke.

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