Read carefully before
Erasing this reminder
Of the past.

I am no boomer
But an aging man
With a foot in each world—
The new and the old.
Born on VJ day,
As the Pasadena
Victory baby.
Bells rang in my birth.

In the forties and fifties
California was ‘not’
A parking lot
Dotted with amusement parks
Linked by freeways.

A kid could play
Inside his imagination
Without the high risk
Of turning into road kill.

Drive-bys, yet to be
Copywrited by Hollywood
And stamped on
DVDs like
“It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”
Did not exist.

McDonalds
Disneyland;
Television;
Freeways
All arrived
While this Victory Baby
Was growing up.

Before that,
Orange groves and deserts
Covered the Southland
With real-life roller coaster rides
Along country roads
To fruit and vegetable stands
Where strip malls soon sprouted
Like mushrooms in the fifties and sixties.
Gutting the past
While Standard Oil dismantled
Southern California’s Little Red Car
To sell more tires, gasoline and oil
Making the rich, richer.

Three uncles fought in the big war
Against Hitler and Tojo.
My father’s generation.
Soon to be extinct,
And his father before him
Built the America we live in.
This is not our land.
Most of us are squatters.

The values my father grew with
Are a rare commodity
As a generation X neighbor,
A Columbine clone,
Attempts to build a three car garage
On land that doesn’t belong to him.
“Why do you have a problem with it,” he said.
“The guy you bought the house from
didn’t say anything.”

The endangered species
I’m talking about
Has been captured in books like
“It Takes One To Catch One,”
By Steven A. Knutson
Where kids could be kids
Without taking drugs
For kicks
Or shooting innocent people
From the road.