Being Old Never Sounded So Good

Phil Brennan celebrates a birthday this week. He tells readers how old he is. Charming and thoughtful stuff. Link. Excerpts:

I'm old enough to remember that my paternal grandfather was born in 1850 and enrolled in Manhattan College a mere three years after the War Between the States, which he had lived through, ended.

I am old enough to remember that my maternal grandmother, born in Brooklyn in the 1850s, lived long to tell me how a neighbor's son had run across her front lawn shouting that Lincoln had been shot.

I am old enough to remember that her oldest daughter, my aunt Day was born in the year that George Armstrong Custer was killed at the Little Big Horn and I'm old enough to have known an old soldier who had served with men who had served at one time or another with Custer.

I am old enough to remember going to Decoration Day (now called Memorial Day) parades and seeing a number of Union Army veterans riding on open limousines and still hearty enough to wave to the crowds. . .

I am old enough to remember that most people lived where their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents lived. Families were close knit. Kids knew and saw their grandparents and their uncles and aunts and cousins all the time. As a result we had a genuine sense of who we were and who we came from and above all, what our heritage imposed on us - what was expected of us, which was what our parents expected of themselves.

I am old enough to remember that we were taught to respect our elders even those that didn't deserve an ounce of respect. They were our elders, and one respected one's elders - that was it. We never, never called our parents' friends by their first names - they were always Mr. and Mrs. . .

I am old enough to remember how we cherished the simple things, which are always the best things, and would have reacted in horror at the sordid decadence that passes today as everyday recreation and enjoyment - wallowing in the slime of the sexual pigsty where one can be and do whatever one feels one wants to be or do, no matter how revolting the resulting behavior. . .

I am old enough to remember that we knew that history - and our religious faith - taught us that the way to make a better world was not by some coercive government spending program or socialist scheme or globalist fantasy, but by making ourselves better. Good begets good. As Richard Burton once remarked in an otherwise perfectly awful movie "You can't do good unless you can be good,"

I am old enough to remember - and mourn - the glorious Latin Mass, it's solemnity and mystery that helped you rise above your mundane self and the world around you, and elevate your mind and heart in the quiet majesty of Gregorian chant. It took you out of the day-to-day world and gave you a glimpse of what could be and what was to come. . .