Life after James Dean
The restless rebel exited the world the day I entered it. Here’s what’s happened since ...
I was born the day James Dean died.
Call it fate … providence … a cosmic accident, but this Boomer came screaming into the world the exact same hour actor James Dean departed it, slamming his Porsche Spyder into a Ford Tudor at an intersection near Cholame, CA.
Dean’s death certificate: September 30, 1955. My birth certificate: September 30, 1955.
Sadly, Dean had only made three movies — East of Eden, Giant and Rebel Without a Cause. He was 24. So young and talented. The look. The hair. The hunger. The brooding. Nobody could brood quite like James Dean. (OK, maybe Brando)
The Eagles wrote a song about him. “Too fast to live, too young to die.” Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said he drew the title of the group’s famous track — “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” — from a Gottfried Helnwein painting of the cultural icon walking alone in the streets.
I wonder if the rebel was searching for his cause.
Either way, on that fateful day I began pursuing mine.
Here’s what’s happened since.
By the Numbers
A little perspective …
So, 24,627 days have since passed since I became the Rebel incarnate. My heart has taken nearly 2.5 million beats. And I’ve walked roughly 80,000 miles.
On that September evening there were 2.8 billion living souls on the planet. The average home sold for $9,100. Gas was 23 cents a gallon. Rock and roll coincided with my birth, as did the first color television.
Think about it….
Rock and roll coincided with my birth, as did the first color television.
While contemplating my place in history, it came to mind that I was born closer to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic than COVID-19.
Even harder to fathom, but my paternal grandfather, Charles Geschke, was born in St. Louis in 1879, two years before the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday slaughtered three Cowboys at the OK Corral, and nine years before Jack the Ripper’s summer of terror in Whitechapel.
I Will Survive!
I have lived and survived through –
… 13 presidents … three nuclear plant disasters … deadly riots and global upheavals … terrorist attacks … mass genocide on four continents … the building and tearing down of the Berlin Wall … the Civil Rights movement …
… women’s liberation and #MeToo … assassinations of dozens of world leaders … at least 20 pandemics and epidemics … cyclic inflation and recession … near catastrophic climate damage … Sept. 11 … Jan. 6 … a Cold War …
… floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides, tornadoes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters … the rise and fall of 50 countries around the globe … a moon landing (yes, it happened) … growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) …
… and disco.
“Stayin’ alive… stayin’ alive … ah ha ha ha stayin’ alive!”
Ch-ch-changes …
Civil Rights
Three months after I was born, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, AL for not giving up her bus seat. A young pastor from Atlanta leads the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December, thus beginning his meteoric rise to national consciousness.
For the next five decades, however, things slowly got better. Or seemed to. Then suddenly – within the last 10 years – they didn’t. Colorblindness was tossed aside. Content of character became irrelevant. #MeToo stuck its heels into the spotlight for a year or two. Then deconstruction of identity took center stage. Everything went sideways.
Health
Polio still crippled the planet in the ’50s until Jonas Salk saved millions. My scar from his vaccine remains today. Salk’s formula worked miracles, but it was years in the making. Not so sure about mRNA technology.
— When I was born, antidepressants were non-existent. Depression was known as “having the blues.” Today, 50 million Americans are on benzos.
— About 40 percent of the population smoked cigarettes in the 50s, a result of the tobacco companies handing out their product for free to World War II and Korean War soldiers. Today only 15 percent fire up heaters.
— In the 50s, a small percentage of Americans were overweight. Did you ever see any portly folks on Leave It To Beaver? Today, 71 percent of the American population is either overweight or obese.
Music
When I became Rebel by proxy, John, Paul, George and Ringo were just hitting puberty. Elvis wasn’t King, yet. Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James were unknown to white America.
— Rock and roll has gone through multiple iterations since Elvis got all shook up. It was at its best in the 60s and 70s. Then everybody died, or split up, went solo, had multiple final reunions, and then started dying again.
Except for Keith Richards.
— Country became more like rock than rock — still incredibly popular — just more predictable.
— I can’t speak to rap and hip-hop, though I know Tipper Gore and law enforcement objected to their potty mouths in the ‘90s. Other than that, I am decidedly unqualified.
— This much I do know: most of today’s music – of virtually every genre – is not created by musicians playing real instruments. It is generated on laptops using virtual studio technologies, software synthesizers and effects units. Auto-Tune smooths out the defects of markedly inferior vocalists.
And now Aerosmith and Rod Stewart are Las Vegas ballroom acts.
Fuck me!
Pop Culture
I’m totally nonplussed as to the popularity of artists Harry Styles and Sam Smith. Apparently, these gender-benders have “It” … or are “FIRE!”
OK. Sam won’t drown. But he (they?) might get shot down by an F22.
And here are three of the Top 50 best-dressed men of 2023, according to GQ:
Do any of these guys compare favorably to James Dean?
Yeah, I don’t think so, either.
To be fair, I shouldn’t be so derisory. I remember Ziggy Stardust, Dee Snyder, Alice Cooper, 80s hair bands and KISS.
But at least we Boomers had something in common with Gen Z and the alphabet people ...
Technology: The ‘80s shook the world
The Internet and World Wide Web
The first personal computers (PCs) were introduced in the early 1980s. Networked mainframes had been around for a while.
At the beginning of 1983, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) – a small network for academics and researchers – transitioned to a standard TCP/IP data protocol suite. It would become the foundation for a decentralized global network — the Internet.
Then, in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee – a British computer scientist – implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet. He used a simple code: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
The World Wide Web was born.
Cell Phones
You may remember the DynaTac 8000X – it looked like a Spaceballs version of a World War II walkie-talkie. Motorola pioneered the cell phone in 1973, but it took a decade before it became commercially available. So you paid $800 for your iPhone? The first DynaTAC 8000X cost $3,995 in 1983.
Science/Space
In 1955, the only thing that orbited the earth was the moon. Sputnik was two years away. Today, almost 5,500 satellites circle the globe. And that’s not counting SpaceX, which has 3,500 low-orbit Starlinks and plans for launching 9,000 more in the next five years.
— After a rocky start (remember the blurred mirror?), the Edwin P. Hubble telescope — launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990 — was fantastic for 32 years. Still is. Hubble opened the wonders of the cosmos from its orbit 350 miles above the earth’s surface.
— But as great as Hubble is, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched on Christmas Day 2021, is unworldly. The JWST is changing the way the scientific community views the origins of the universe. JWST recently traveled back in time to capture the most distant galaxy ever discovered — JADES-GS-z13-0 — about 13.45 billion years old, formed 325 million years after the Big Bang.
Trends: Then and Now …
People married and had children in the 50s and 60s. Today, more than half of women are childless by age 30.
Then: College was the providence of critical thinking, open debate and free exchange of ideas. Now: DEI statements.
Then: Biology recognized two genders. Now: There are 472.
Then: News was objective. Now: Performance outrage
Then: Lassie. Now: Drag Queen Story Hour
Then: Bogey and Bacall. Now: Harry and Meghan.
Then: Marilyn’s dress. Now: Amber’s turd.
Then: Disney created the anodyne couple Mickey and Minnie Mouse! Now: Mickey is transitioning to Minnie, and Minnie is making millions on OnlyFans.
Then: Going to a hip, new joint. Now: Getting a new hip joint.
Then: McCarthyism/Red Scare. Now: Book bans/Cancel Culture
Then: Bozo the Clown. Now: Donald J. Trump.
Then: Howard Hughes. Now: Elon Musk.
Then: James Dean. Now: No comparison.
###
Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.
Joyous, thanks for the read. It’s a good reminder to take a look back - I was born in 62 - yep, then and now, radically different words in so many ways. What can remain is how we live life - I love the idea that life’s not a journey, but instead a dance.
Excellent. I was born in '56. Your comment about being born closer to Spanish flu than Covid blew my mind. Then I did the math. 38 years from 1918 to 1956, but 64 years from 1956 and 2020. Then I recovered from mind blown, and I'm now quite depressed. ;) Enjoyed your article, Jim!