In My Prime

My names (past and present) tell an American story. My grandfather Fred and my father, Paul. For most of my life, I thought of myself simply as an American, as if I had sprung from Uncle Sam’s head reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and waving a little American flag, like the ones they hand out at the Dunwoody July Fourth parade. I knew that my people, like most everybody’s people, had come from somewhere else. Heck, that’s why we ate sauerkraut and blood sausage when my mater

A few years ago, I made a discovery about my identity. I learned that, even though I was born in the 1950’s, I am not a Baby Boomer. I’m a member of a “micro-generation” called Generation Jones. It’s hard to explain how good that information made me feel, as if my place in the world was just a little better defined. Generation Jones is made up of people born roughly between 1954 and 1965. (I was born in 1959.) While we are technically part of the Baby Boom generation, many o