Hope Springs Eternal, No Matter When You Start

I was sitting on my back steps at 1310 Garrison Avenue the first week of January. Thinking. And watching three cats roaming around in the yard. Only one of the felines halfway belonged to us. It was the one my first wife stole from our nice, polite, but unsuspecting next-door neighbors.

I was wondering if cats realize a new year is upon us. Do they have some kind of innate dreams, hopes, or premonitions of things to come? I asked them about it several times. You’d never heard such silence. They were more interested in the extra expensive cat food Cathy routinely piled on the steps for them.

They probably didn’t know, or care, that this New Year’s “resoluting” game has progressed mightily during my lifetime. Me and Yogi, and sometimes Buddy Wigglegon or Ricky Hale would sit on another set of steps on our side porch and just guess at what was going to happen in 1956.

We didn’t have no hints. This was way before television had been invented in our neck of the woods. We only read the sports section of the Nashville Banner. We had never heard of the Zodiac, Ouija boards, Tarot Cards, or Madame Rue.

Now, there was a lady out on the Shiloh Road that most everyone swore could read tea leaves. Golly Bill, we were only nine years old! And would never throw off on what a grownup said, or believed. But you think about that for a second. A lady, in all seriousness, could look into a cup with some dirty tea leaves floating about…and tell you what was going to happen tomorrow, or next month.

Yogi said he’d have to see that to believe it. We all nodded in agreement. But come Sunday lunch, the only time we had tea, I did sneak a peek into that pot Mom boiled the tea in. Nothing spoke to me at all. Those tea leaves were as silent as the cats running around in our back yard.

Truthfully, in those days most every year was like the preceding one. We didn’t have much movement in the 1950’s. We’d sit on those steps and wish for a new baseball glove in the upcoming year. Or maybe a BB gun. The prevailing thought was we’d all have a better year than the last one.

Here’s how naïve we were; a war of sorts broke out in 1956 between Israel and the Arab nations. Nobody foresaw that in January. And we didn’t even know about it till several years later when we were studying the Middle East in junior high. By then, we were not forecasting for better toys; we were trying to figure out how to get Jane Hill to notice us….

I reckon you could say the future arrived slowly back then. It ambled in much like Butch Dickson entering the pool hall after a stint at his cab stand in front of the City Café.

Sitting on the back steps looking at the cats running to and fro, I got to pondering on how the youth of Apalachicola, Eastpoint, and Port St. Joe are bracing up for the New Year. I don’t believe it is going to stroll in for them.

Not when they have automatic updates vibrating in their pockets. Teenagers in 2026 live in a sharply different landscape. They’ve got screens all around, filling them with constant, up to date information about anything, and everything.

They knew about America’s recent insertion into Venezuela almost before it happened.

They don’t have to imagine. All the knowledge, entertainment, connection, and mindboggling opportunities are right at their fingertips.

Forget about the tea leaves lady out on the Shiloh Road or Ouija boards. They don’t have to guess what’s coming around the next corner.

Just dial up any AI platform. And ask!

Of course, that brings in a whole set of “situations” that me, Rick, Buddy, and Yogi never encountered: political unrest, climate anxiety, an economy that bounces around like a ping pong ball, social inequities…and it is delivered to them daily, in high definition.

I’m not sure which generation was better off. We didn’t know enough to be frightened by coming attractions. Today’s teenagers must be burdened by the dark clouds floating over so much of their future.

But I think, deep down, there is a lot of similarities. Young people want to belong. They want to be happy. They want to be loved. And feel safe. They want lives that count, whether they are looking forward, or backwards.

We sat on the porch steps, not knowing much, but looking for better things to come. Modern technology cannot keep youngsters today from echoing that same thought.

Different generations. But the same hope. That never changes.

I looked at the cats fighting over the food at my feet, and told them I’d give anything to have had one of those smart phones back in 1962. I guaranteed them Jane Hill would have noticed me then….

Respectfully,
Kes
kesley45@aol.com