I cover a lot of cool stories here at the Clarkston News, but the most interesting are about those who have been around a while, who remember the history of Clarkston.
Hilda Lowrie, featured on page 18, certainly qualifies.
She will soon celebrate her 100th birthday with her family. She shared with me many memories of growing up in the Clarkston area, going to high school up on the hill off Clarkston Road, walking down to Main Street for a soda.
She talked about how airplanes were the new, barely fathomable technology for her parents in the early 1920s.
For Hilda, it’s smart phones and self-driving cars.
For me and my generation, probably more new technology and ideas. Implants would do it.
“I just don’t get those kids and their danged cybernetics,” I’ll probably say in a few decades if I’m still around.
I’m also hitting a milestone in the upcoming year, my 50th birthday, and I find I can relate a bit to the generation gap.
I find things are starting to repeat more long term, not just week to week and year to year, but half century to half century.
As a kid, I remember the run up to the Bicentennial in 1976. To me, it was a big word people were always talking about. I remember the special quarters they made to commemorate the event. I was impressed because I didn’t think you were allowed to do that.
Now planning has started for the nation’s 250th anniversary, a cool quarter millennium.
An even bigger word for that, sestercentennial or semiquincentennial, near as I can figure.
We’re still using quarters for commemorations, which I probably would have been surprised about in 1976.
When asked, Hilda had great advice for all of us youngsters, “be strong and face what you have to.”
She is a powerful example of that. She lost her parents, husband, and daughter, all much too early, extraordinarily painful blows, but remains so chipper I had to ask her to repeat herself when she first mentioned them because I thought I had misheard. If I can be half that strong I should do OK.