I was born a decade too late for the Roaring '20s, a time in the last century (Good Grief! I never thought that the century I was born in would be called "The Last Century".) affected almost every decade that follow it. That era was a turning point in style, attitude, social mores, and technology -- and, of course, all of it was documented and preserved on a piece of celluloid called "film" and shown at will on a "silver screen", a modern day phenomenon known as "the movies". We can see it, hear it and almost taste it.

I wasn't there to "see in" the beginning of it all. Although I was already born, I was too young to notice the "Depression 30's" when, besides worldwide hunger and the greatest depression in man's recent history, high fashion, movies and music permeated the culture to appease its agony. The only way I could enjoy either, a time I couldn't be part of and yet in my own time was looking back on, was by listening to elders recount it and going to the movies to see it re-enacted.

My heyday began in the "Wartime '40s", the late 40's to be exact, at a place they called "the homefront" in a time where we were deprived but through it we survived. There was joy then in being sixteen, of course, but that's a given to every one of us who is at one time sixteen.

Then, on into the "Hazy'50s" - boring! There was a style about that decade, no doubt about it, but it was a flat style, as flat as our president was -- Eisenhower -- Ho Hum. The most tragic occurrences of that decade were the Korean War (It was not even our war as you can tell by its name) and the then Vice President's speech defending his dog, Checkers.

The "Me '60s" was a decade that broke new ground, but not with the spirit, so they tell me, that burst loose in the '20s. Somehow, short skirts, brassy music, rhinestones, a flask in the back pocket, torn jeans, tattoos, hiding in dark corners under a cloud of forbidden smoke and declaring independent thought and rights of freedom from anything - anything at all - including sex.

The "Disco '70s" gave way to very independent thought: Everyone wore polyester (Ugh!), the males wearing tailored clothes tighter than their skins, the females, jeans as tight by day and imitated fashions of the 30's. Those uniforms lasted until Madonna exercised her right to independent thought and the wannabe Madonnas came out to play.

The "Thriftshop 80's" began and if something were bought in a thrift shop, it went with anything else bought in a thrift shop. Designers set style according to what the customers were wearing but not buying from them. So, torn jeans, faded and frayed around the edges could be bought "brand new" in the finest shops. Anything goes, but the only independent thinker that decade was Madonna, who brought Porn into the mainstream, and Bill Gates, who brought the Personal Computer into almost every home.

But mostly for me the '80s and '90s went by in a blur and the first decade of this century is on its way. My driver's license keeps expiring - was it really four years ago I had that picture taken? Those born in these latter decades of my life will never know a day with-out cellphones, digital everything, technology far beyond our ability to comprehend and not an inkling of what 45 RPM and 33RPM records or even an 8-track is.