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By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 5: Racism, Same Riddle, nasty situations

World War I U.S. Army General Smedley Butler said, “There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. War is just a racket... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.”

After the Tet

By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 2: High school, race riots, separate drinking fountains, Vietnam War

In my high school sophomore year, my father moved us to Albany, Georgia. At the age of 15, I jumped from a northern climate to the hot, muggy temperatures of the Deep South. Additionally, from getting beat up by bullies back in Michigan, I joined a whole new pecking order of southern hicks who wanted to show me where I stood—at the bottom of their pecking order.

I promptly grabbed an 80-customer

By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 3: College years, Vietnam, racism, affirmative action, buddies dying, discovering the people leading the US Government thrive on corruption, Simon and Garfunkel, Beatles.

As to being a “Baby Boomer,” none of us realized that we constituted an 80 million person “wave” of kids from 1946 to 1964, who stepped off the farm, with all its hard work and long hours—and ran headlong into TV, muscle cars, women’s rights, civil rights for Blacks, Elvis Presley, the Vietnam War, the

By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 1: Becoming a baby boomer after World War II, the early years

On January 26, 1947, my mother gave birth to her first-born child. That 8-pound 12 ounce bouncing baby boy turned out to be yours truly. Since my father, a Reed City, Michigan boy, and U.S. Marine M/Sgt. Howard Wooldridge, returned from fighting in the Marshall Islands, my birth took place at the Great Lakes Naval Air Station, Illinois, just north of Chicago. 

Within weeks, we moved