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Driving across northern Ohio the other day, my wife and I broke for breakfast and the Bob Evans hostess seated us right outside the toilets, which may account for my aggressive meditation on the framed photos on the walls. This was the rust belt, and the pictures recalled a time when the rust was steel and life was good. One offered a view of the 1946 Soap Box Derby finals, three little race cars tearing down a long Akron hill before tens of thousands of spectators. Another was labeled
Here was a cluster of dapper young men in suits and ties standing on a baseball field, no doubt the one where they’d prevailed. A grandstand rose in tiers behind them. One youth had been instructed to shake the hand of an older fellow in a baseball uniform, a big C on his jersey. Who was he? I put the kids at about 17 to 20 years of age. Nine years later they’d still be in their 20s, plenty young enough to be drafted after Pearl Harbor. A few would survive first the Depression and then World War II and afterward the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, and finally these stragglers would be anointed the “greatest generation,” with all the privileges and consolations that pertain thereto.
