The Front Porch Time Machine: My Farewell To A Generation
In the Spring of 2012, my wife, Jewel, and I joined the roughly 68% of Americans who are homeowners. I was so excited and proud that I immediately began doing research on the house's history before we even finalized on the loan. I felt that I needed to share in the same "American Dream" experience that past owners must have felt when they were about to move in to that very house. I soon found out that my new home was built in 1912 – one hundred years before I myself would call it home. I was completely humbled. Some people have football, others have Pintrest. Me? I nerd-out at the idea of history.
So naturally I began to imagine who all could have lived in my new home over the past century. And I was practically foaming at the mouth at the possibility that the first brick could have been laid right as the Titanic was making her maiden, and final, voyage in April 1912. I tried to get Jewel excited by these thoughts, but she was much more enthused by which color she wanted to paint the master bathroom. As I said, to each, their own.
The closing process for the house was soon underway. I took the second week of March off work and began the various renovations that needed to be done. On the third day, I heard a voice calling for my attention from across the street. It was an older man who was sitting on the porch of his house directly across the street from mine. His name was Tom Carrol, an 84 year old who, as I would come to find out, had lived in that house his entire life. After the proper introductions, Tom invited me to have a seat. For the rest of that afternoon, Tom's porch was a time machine that would take me back to the early and middle years of the 20th century. I was shocked to learn that Tom's father had built the house in which Tom now lived, and that his house was the second one built on the street. What was even more shocking? Mine was the first! Tom told me that he remembers that while growing up, there were only three or four houses as far as the eye could see in the neighborhood, and the surrounding area was grassy hills with the occasional tree. Tom's father then had several other houses on the street built in the 1930's, during the Great Depression.
I was enamored by this old man. He had literally seen with his own eyes the building of America in which his father had directly participated. After I left Tom that day, I began to think about how the generation in which I belong, the 'Millennial Generation' - those born between 1982 and 2000 - may be the last generation that has a direct link to those who helped build the world that we currently live in. Those Americans who were born between 1901 and 1924 - otherwise known as the 'Greatest Generation' - were not only the ones to defend the U.S. in World War II against the threat of Adolf Hitler's Germany, but, in my opinion, they were the ones who shaped the United States as only two generations had done before: those of the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. Tom's father essentially had seen a perfect opportunity to improve his neighborhood, and in doing so, he, along with millions of others in the first half of the 20th century, improved our country immensely.
Tom Carrol was born in 1928, a time when the population of the U.S. was only one-third of what it is today, and roughly one in three Americans still lived on a farm. Women had only been able to vote for eight years and Hebert Hoover was just elected president. Although Tom would be too young to serve during World War II by 4 years, and was not considered a member of the 'Greatest Generation', he had witnessed it all.
It was hard for me to imagine a time when most roads were still dirt in many towns across the country, but the pictures Tom showed me of himself as an eight year-old boy in front of his house portrayed that very scene; a dirt road where there is now asphalt and rolling hills in the background where there now stood a sea of houses. I don't know if Tom realized it, but through the many stories he would tell me over that summer of days gone by, he was providing me with insight into a time in which "Manifest Destiny" still echoed from the pioneer days of the 19th Century.
Months progressed, and so did my improvements on my new home. Then one cold day that December I was at the store buying Christmas lights when Jewel called me with some sad news; Tom had died during the previous night. When we got off the phone, I began to think about all of those guys, like Tom, who sit on their porches, waiting to take anyone who is willing for a ride in their time machines. The 'Millennial Generation' will be the last to be able to hear first-hand what it was like to build America without having to Google it. The innovations of today's world are mostly technological. The internet, better reception for your cell phone, or higher quality on your television, are not physical. These innovations enhance your living experience in an already-constructed world. Here in the U.S., you would be hard-pressed to find a place outside a state or national park that did not have signs of human interference. The Millennials, along with our 'Baby Boomer' and 'Generation X' parents, who would have been born between 1945 and the late 70's, are all second-hand witnesses to Tom and his father's generation. My daughter's generation will only be able to read stories or watch TV programs on World War II or the Great Depression – just as my generation had to do with the death of Abraham Lincoln or Reconstruction in the American South, post-Civil War.
The difference now is that America's foundation is already there. The Greatest Generation and Tom's generation have laid the foundation and built the houses – my house, for example. All I did was show up, buy the house, and spend the past year putting my own personal improvements on its already-sturdy, brick structure and oak interior. But maybe that's the point. Subsequent generations have now been given the key to the house, so to speak, and it is our responsibility to improve and build on to that home.
Sitting on Tom's porch, listening to him talk, truly are moments in my life that I will never forget. At the time, I thought it would have been corny of me to thank him for his insight, and of course now that he's gone, I wish I had. My daughter's generation, 'Generation Text' as some historians are now (jokingly) calling it, will in all probability be interested to hear the Millennials' first-hand accounts of September 11th, or what life was like without cell phones or the internet. But will they really care about where I was the day I heard that The Jersey Shore was cancelled? I sincerely hope not. We will be able to teach them about how our generation progressed from out of the dark days of school shootings at Columbine and Sandy Hook, and battled human rights infringements both domestically and internationally.
I'm saddened to think that our last link to Manifest Destiny is becoming extinct; the youngest member of the 'Greatest Generation' turns 89 in 2013. But if the Millennials can learn one thing from Tom and his father, it's the ideals that our country has produced – the need to build, expand, and then to teach future generations of these principles. The weather is once again warm, and I'm back outside once again making some improvements to my front porch's overhang. Unfortunately my street will be a bit lonelier without seeing Tom on his porch; but in order to carry on his generation's legacy, I have to make sure my porch is just as strong as the one Tom's father had built.
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