‘Luckiest generation’ a winner
Everybody has heard of the Greatest Generation, a name coined by Tom Brokaw, the television anchor and author, to describe the people who lived through the Great Depression, served in World War II and built the country we have now.
And everybody’s heard about the Baby Boomers, born after the Second World War, and now getting a little gray around the edges.
But what about the in-between generation? They were Depression babies, born in hard times, too young for World War II, mostly too old for Vietnam. They were teenagers in the ’50s and almost all the young men served in the military — in the Cold War, that “long twilight struggle,” John F. Kennedy called it.
Treasuring their era
It was a prosperous time, a different time.
“We were the luckiest generation, at least in our own minds,” said Denis Ragan, one of the organizers of an annual lunch every December for this group of San Francisco pals. It’s been the Luckiest Generation Gathering for a couple of years.
Ragan and his friends have a different twist: They grew up in San Francisco, which in their view made them doubly lucky. “We grew up in a very good time, and we treasure it,” Ragan said.
They gathered at the Italian Athletic Club in North Beach last week, to talk and tell old stories, smooth and polished from all the telling. It was like talking to your older brother, or your uncle.
Ragan is 81 himself, and the others looked to be in the same age range. The group was all male and all white. That was the San Francisco they remember.
Nearly all these sons of the city live somewhere else now — down the Peninsula, over in Marin, across the bay in Contra Costa County. “Nobody lives in the city anymore,” said Mike King, who went to St. Ignatius High School and moved away with the rest.
They still have an affection for San Francisco, but it wasn’t about the city of cable cars that climb halfway to the stars and all that tourist stuff. There wasn’t much talk about the arts, or music or San Francisco’s literary scene. They talked about young people’s San Francisco — the beach, dances, drinking beer.
Mostly they talked about high school. Every man’s name tag also included his high school. It was the way people measured social class.
One man remembered a speech by the legendary Polytechnic High School coach Milt Axt to his football team: “Gentlemen,” he said, “this is the most important day in your lives. We are about to play Lowell. Hit them hard and knock them down. But later, be nice. Later in life you may have to work for those Lowell guys.”
That was the old city — the children of the working class went to Poly, and Mission, and Balboa and Sacred Heart. The rich folks went to Lowell and St. Ignatius.
‘Dying mother’ song
There was a fierce loyalty, too. “Listen to this,” Ragan said. “It’s a song they sang at Poly years ago.”
“Don’t send my boy to Mission, the dying mother said.
“If you send him to Galileo, I’d rather see him dead.
“Send my boy to Poly, it’s better than Cogswell.
“But rather than at Lowell High, I’d see my boy in hell.”
This sounded kind of familiar, so I looked it up. It turns out the “dying mother” song was sung at Ohio State, Iowa State, Oklahoma and Georgia Tech, among other places. With different lyrics. “Don’t send my boy to Harvard” is one variation.
“I had no idea,” Ragan said later. Of course not. There was no Internet when they were in high school.
It was great to see these old guys. But I thought of the Veterans Day parade last month.
Six San Francisco public high schools sent units — junior ROTC drill teams, drum and bugle corps, handsome boys and pretty girls. But the modern face of San Francisco now reflects a kind of diversity that was missing at the lunch last week. The San Francisco high school kids in the parade were Latino, and Asian, and African American. Only a handful of the young men and women passing in review were white. The future didn’t look like the past.
“Sir!” the leader would say, throwing a snappy salute at the reviewing stand: “Galileo Junior ROTC detachment, Sir!”
“Carry on,’’ replied retired Col. John Farrell, the grand marshal.
Carry on. Let’s hope they do.