We’ve come a long way in these last 60 years

MOST of our mob turned out for a surprise 60th birthday party for one of our number last weekend.

The party boy’s family had been planning it for months, and I was very surprised if not flabbergasted that our lot had kept quiet about it all that time.

Usually, when there’s a secret about, someone blurts it out during one of our weekly sessions of calm and thoughtful discussion on the world’s troubles and solutions for same at the pub.

But somehow, our mate got the surprise of his life when he walked into the gathering at the pub to see mates who had travelled from across south Queensland for the occasion.

The one common theme that emerges whenever our lot get together for such parties is “How the hell did we get here?”

Most of us have been mates for 50 years or more, so we know the shenanigans each got up to in our younger day when we thought we’d be lucky to make it to 40 … and, sadly, some of us didn’t.

Most of us went to school together, and surviving an all boys Christian school in the 1960s and 70s was a feat on its own.

We’re that old that we can remember the afternoon Harold Holt went for a swim and never returned.

I remember it well because it was a Sunday afternoon, and I was watching a black and white Three Stooges movie on ABC TV (we only had two channels in North Queensland).

They broke into the middle of the Three Stooges to announce the Prime Minister had gone missing.

My parents came into the room to watch the live coverage as Harold Holt’s wife Zara arrived at Cheviot Beach where the PM had gone for a swim.

I couldn’t believe it!

No, not Harold going missing, but the fact the Three Stooges had been interrupted by this thoughtless bugger.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only sevenyear-old who had never heard of Harold Holt and here he was ruining my Sunday afternoon TV watching.

All I could do was sit on the lounge wondering, “Well, when are we going back to the Three Stooges?”

I’ve never seen the end of that movie and since then the Three Stooges have gone missing too.

I remember when we were young we used to get together for the Sunday session and discuss what each of us got up to the night before or who was seeing who and whether they should be or what we were going to get up in the weekend to come.

These days we sit around sipping ale and discussing the latest ailment or ache and pain to befall us and what medication we’re on and whether we should be drinking beer while taking such pills.

It’s another world, one which we weren’t prepared for because when we were young none of us imagined we’d get this far.

However, the women folk reckon none of us act our age and we’re still known as Toowoomba’s oldest teens.

“Will you guys ever grow up?” has become their motto.

Well, why would you want to?

ALL I COULD DO WAS SIT ON THE LOUNGE WONDERING ‘WELL, WHEN ARE WE GOING BACK TO THE THREE STOOGES?’