Everything Old Is New Again

Earlier today, I was thinking about the fact that there are American kids fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and God only knows where else today, who hadn't even been born yet when I shipped out for Saudi Arabia in December 1990 (I arrived there about 15 minutes after midnight on January 1st, 1991). In fact, that's been the case since at least, what, 2008?

I was thinking about it because I just finished reading Douglas Brinkley's biography of Walter Cronkite, which had me thinking about events of my youth.

I barely remember the Vietnam War. In fact, my sole contemporaneous memory of that war is asking my mom at the grocery store if there was a war going on (right before leaving I had taken in an episode of Combat, I think). She said that yes there was, in a place called Vietnam. In that same conversation, I learned that the president was Richard Nixon and that the war had started under the last president, Lyndon Johnson. I'm guessing I was four, maybe five.

Nixon came back to haunt me a few years later when his resignation pre-empted Captain Kangaroo. Consequently, I didn't like Richard Nixon much. Whatever "Watergate" was, it couldn't possibly be as important as Captain Kangaroo.

I certainly remember Cronkite. He's the only news anchor I really do remember from my childhood. I remember John Chancellor and David Brinkley, but I don't remember watching them as nightly news anchors in my pre-teen years, just from their later stuff. Chet Huntley? Complete blank. Cronkite was the man, man.

So anyway, I was feeling pretty old. Then I dropped by Reason, as I do daily, and Jesse Walker made me feel young again: