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April 05, 2013 at 08:00 AM
Legend has it the first baby boomer entered the world at exactly midnight on Jan. 1, 1946 Eastern Standard Time. So ready to get going on his life’s journey, he didn’t even wait for the shiny ball to touch down in Times Square.
He came out red-faced and wailing, some say admonishing the doctor for not bringing him into the world any faster than he did.
He grew up not needing a weatherman to tell him which way the wind was blowing.
Twinkies were his favorite snack and he ate them with a glass of milk while watching “Howdy Doody.”
He drew stick figures and images of fighter planes in those early years but later lost interest and, as an adult, seemed confused yet sentimental when shown pictures of the drawings.
In 1953 he sneaked in through the back door of the Ritz Theatre to get a sneak peek of Marlon Brando’s motorcycle movie “The Wild One.”
One of the townspeople asked Brando’s character, “Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” Smacking a piece of chewing gum, Brando responded with the iconic line: “Whaddya got?”
The next year in an unrelated event, the boomer’s daddy, still shell-shocked from WW II and living in fear over the persistent Cold War, had a bomb shelter built in the family’s backyard.
The family underwent mock training drills and the boomer snuck Twinkies and boxes of Barnum’s Animal Crackers into the dark shelter that always felt a little colder than the outside air.
The “Elvis cut”
In 1958, when Elvis Presley joined the military and was given an Army haircut, the boomer took $1.25 from his mother’s change purse without asking and told the local barber to give him the “Elvis cut.”
