One Boomer At Large

About Me
 


y name is Rick Berger My name is <em>Rick Berger</em>Garrick Berger if you want to be formal, but unless you're government or you're going to hire me, Rick is fine.

I was born in 1950, smack in the middle of the century, and arguably in the first third of the Boomer generation.

I didn't really think much about that fact — of being in the boomer generation. Like most of my peers, I was just trying to figure out my place in the world.

A quick synopsis of the result of that process follows:

Education

Colorado Mesa University, BS Geology

Health

Still walking on my own two feet and still forming complete sentences. Mostly.

Marital Status

Married twice:

  • First: six years, four children
  • Second: 30+ years, no children
Religious

Former member of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon). While no longer a member, I do respect those who have continued in their belief and bear no animosity to them or the organization.

Currently follow no religous belief or doctrine.

Professional

Software application developer for 30+ years, the last as an independent consultant/contractor. Clients included major organizations such as Ciba-Geigy, NASA, Pfizer, Exxon-Mobile, Schlumberger Geotechnical Services, and Dassault Aerospace.

Interests/Activities
  • Music (classical, pop, some jazz, bluegrass, ballet, opera)
    • Played trumpet, guitar, piano over the years with varying degrees of competence.
    • Sang with La Jolla Symphony Chorus for several years (Bass/Baritone).
  • Other: Photography, cooking, computing technology/devices including soroban (japanese abacus) and slide rules, hiking, international/domestic travel, film/film history and technology, cycling, motorcycle touring, reading, writing, philosophical musings (but not formal to the degree of minutial rhetorical contortions)...
Ho-Hum

Spectator sports, with the following exceptions:

  • I will watch tennis because I used to play.
  • I have to admit, after having seen a few soccer matches overseas, I'm gaining more of an appreciation of American football. Not rabid: no team affiliations or star player following or anything like that. But, I'll watch if it's on.
Bleah!!

Country music

There's a longer version, of course, but I'll reserve that for another space.

I was born in upstate New York, where the lake effect winter storms are the stuff of legends. I have dim memories of Mom bundling me up and shoving me out the door to 'play' in five and six foot snow drifts. More often than not I'd return home with freezing fingers and toes.

Mom had divorced my father early — she divorced the fathers of my other two brothers in quick succession through the years. Although she was practically famous for making bad life decisions, one decision for which I will always sing her praises, was to leave New York and head west. She packed me, my next brother (the other hadn't been conceived or conceived of yet) into a 1956 Pontiac Chieftain and hit the road.

I remember watching the landscape change, wide-eyed at the rugged terrain unfolding as we progressed westward. We wound up in Southern Utah — land of red-rocked canyons and mountain forests. Through the companionship of a family to whom we would be close, I learned how to hike and camp in this wonderful landscape, getting a wondrous and abiding love of the area that stays with me, today.

School was a drudge.

To me, the public school system was a gulag to which I was sentenced six hours a day which I had to endure. This I did by ignoring whatever was going on in the front of the classroom and piquing my desire to learn by reading encyclopedia volumes in the back of the room.

The fact that Mom uprooted us every three to six months — either in search of a utopia that never materialized, or to escape a relationship of some sort that had gone bad — didn't help my public school pursuits. Nor my social skills. I lurched through my junior high and high school years awkwardly, with a miserable academic record to show for it.

The only exception was band — the only subject in which I got straight 'A's. Everything else was pretty dismal.

I should also point out that during my youth through my early teens, we were desparately poor. Mom worked as a cocktail waitress most of the time, and lived mainly on tips. She was determined to hold me and my two brothers together as a family, but it was hard on her meager income. She was also insanely attractive, which meant for most evenings we were on our own as she went from one romantic encounter to the next.

But, when I was fourteen, she'd had it. She packed my brothers and I up to our respective fathers and went her own way, eventually winding up in Honolulu as a bartender.

Living with my father was a trial in itself. A locksmith by trade, he had a dourly practical view of the world. Where Mom encouraged my curiosity and dreams, my father squashed them to suit his controlling ends.

Another gulag to be endured — a different kind, to be sure, but a gulag nonetheless

I left when I was seventeen to make my own way into the world, leaving behind gulags forever.

Fast forward to my late twenties. I had tried various means of making a living, but always reverted to the trade my father had taught me: locksmithing. I was pretty good at it, too.

But, by now, I was looking at my growing family and thought to myself, "Self, you have to do better than this."

And that's when I went down to the local college — that had just transitioned from a two year to four year institution and signed up. Geology was the major of interest.

One Boomer At Large
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