This article was contributed by Janice Soderling who now lives in Sweden.  It reflects the passing of times 50 years ago.
                                                               ................ Thank you Janice.

How can half a century have passed so quickly?

Recently I stumbled across some lines written by a Swedish author: First they admired me because I had learned to walk. Then they admired me because I could still walk. Between the two, only a step.

And yet, in that brief interval, we have lived through drama that would allow each one of us to write a book. We have also lived the history of our times. The second world war, the Korean war, the cold war, the Vietnam war, up to the present day. Presidents were elected, impeached, assassinated, more stars were added to the 48 that adorned the flag of our childhood. As that was happening, we—the class of 54—won sometimes, lost sometimes. Marriage for a lifetime, or slamming doors and divorce; dream car, dream house, dream job, or sometimes not. We left our parents, and then they left us. Children were born, grandchildren were born, great-grandchildren were born, all the rites of passage. In five decades, we sometimes made some people happy and sometimes made some people miserable. And got our own share in return, joy and misery, our own piece of the action.

Winslow, Indiana. A town where the main drag was two blocks long. The significant part anyway. We talked to each other over party lines, not the Internet and cell phones. The town kids trudged along the snowy sidewalks to grade school. The country boys and girls stood in the biting cold holding lunch in a brown paper bag, waiting for a yellow school bus driven by a driver whose name we all knew, who always said hello when we climbed aboard, year after year. We sat at the desks where many of our parents had sat before us—even, sometimes, under the observant eye of the same teacher who had taught those parents.

And though we are now old gals and old geezers, all of us remember when one of those teachers imparted a bit of knowledge that was an earth-shattering revelation, (so that is why!) or just rambled on, never, ever making sense. Some may recall a surge of pride for a gold star pasted in for good work, or an incident of being treated unfairly, of being misunderstood. Some one else remembers a pat on the head when it was needed, or a Band-Aid smoothed across a bleeding knee.

We lined up for Roy Rogers and Gene Autry at the Star Theater. We bicycled all over the countryside with a dog—past knee-high corn, honeysuckle, goldenrod, tiger lilies, whippoorwills, bluebirds, black moccasins, mulberry trees, crabapple, sassafras, persimmon and spreading oaks. We whistled all day long. We got broken bones, sunburn, blisters and flat tires. We roasted marshmallows and hot dogs; we went on hayrides singing Pistol-packing Mamma and Merzydotesndozeydotes and 99 bottles of Beer on the Wall and Down by the Old Mill Stream. We grew taller, first the girls, then the guys. We fell in love for the first time, but not the last. We played basketball and baseball or sat on the bleachers screaming ourselves hoarse. (Win fast or win slow, but win, Winslow.)

We were never bored. We were always busy. Sunday school, Boy Scouts, the 4-H club, the Rainbow girls. Pitchforking hay. Baking a cherry pie to exhibit at the County Fair. Cranking the ice cream freezer at church socials. Picking blackberries or plucking the old red rooster.

Swooning over the Eddie Fisher show seemed silly, but teenaged girls were supposed to swoon, so we did our best. We crammed for tests and lost our erasers, we drank cherry cokes at erstwhile Parker's Drugstore, we learned to drive and bent some fenders. We went to Chicago on a school trip that gave nervous teachers new gray hairs. We had never heard of computers, but we still remember the advent of color television.

We straightened the seams of our new nylons, hitched up our strapless formals and bathing suits. The guys watched us hitching, and smoothed a ducktail or a greased crewcut, insulted us, ignored us, threw chalk and spitballs at us, and struggled with their hormones. We all said Yes, sir and Yes, ma'm, always please and thank you. We were bewildered. We knew it all. It was horrible.

During those years of grade school and high school, some classmates left us, others came in their stead. Eventually it was time for the rite of passage of graduation day. We were such inexperienced artists when they lined us up on the stage, plonked a diploma in our hands and enjoined us to go out into the world to paint life's picture well.

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