SOCIAL UPHEAVAL HAS FACTORED INTO ECONOMIC EXPANSION

One of his first memories is recorded in a scrapbook picture. The
boy, nearly 7, is barely tall enough for his chin to touch the bar.
He is drinking soda from a short beer glass. Father, drinking the
harder stuff, snapped the photo.

It was either the Devil Bar or the Stink Fish Bar. The Devil Bar, as
Bobby called it, had a large bronze bust of the devil at one end, its
eyes illuminated with dim red lights and head slowly swiveling. If
you stayed at the bar long enough, as Bobby and his father did, there
would be a recurring moment, about once an hour, when the devil
stared straight at them.

The Stink Fish Bar had smoked herring, one of the richer forms of bar
nourishment. Bobby loved shocking his mother with the scent on his
hands when his father finally dropped him off.

The year was 1947. America had emerged from Prohibition, the Great
Depression and World War II. It was beginning the biggest economic
expansion in its history, a technological revolution and a baby boom.
Bobby knew none of this from his perch on the barstool. But he and
his generation would be the beneficiaries.

For Bobby, real life began with the discovery of algebra. It was a
near-religious experience. The idea that relationships could be
symbolized and that mathematics was a language of symbols and
operators changed almost everything.

In one mystical moment, Bobby saw that all of life was symbolization,
all the way down.

A science fiction reader, he decided mankind would need more than a
barnstorming pilot for a trip to the moon. It also would require an
engineer. He would be both.

He learned to fly at 16, working a full day at the local airport for
each 30 minutes' flying time.

For a while, he thought he could kill three birds with one stone by
attending Annapolis, West Point or the new Air Force Academy. He
could do his service as a pilot and study engineering without having
to pay for college. He scratched that plan when he decided the
military academies weren't strong enough in math and engineering.

He would need to go to MIT. With the launch of Sputnik in 1957,
Bobby's plan and timing seemed perfect. A humiliated country called
for engineers. The space race was on! Aftershocks In 1940, when Bobby
was born, America had been nominally at peace. But it would soon be
at war, in one form or another, for nearly half a century. Bobby was
born as the Battle of Britain raged in Europe. The Japanese had
invaded China and sacked Nanking. The attack on Pearl Harbor and
America's entry into World War II were only a year away.

By the end, America's war dead numbered a blissfully small 400,000,
compared with the 50 million people killed worldwide in the struggle
against fascism. The aftershocks of World War II, by contrast, will
remain with us well into the current century, in the form of the baby
boom and America's failing system of retirement funding.

Mind-boggling technological advances were another byproduct. Ask most
Americans to name the biggest (and most frightening) advance to come
out of World War II, and you're likely to hear about the atomic bomb.
In fact, the war massively accelerated other developments. Managing
the flow of men and equipment on two vast fronts required new tools.
Operations research was one result, now often recognized as "supply
chain management."

Similarly, work on decoding encrypted messages by Claude Shannon,
Norbert Weiner and others led to modern information theory. Its
applications are now fundamental in telecommunications, networks,
linguistics and genetics. Communications issues also drove the
creation of the transistor by William Shockley in 1948, and that, in
turn, led to the creation of the first integrated circuit by Jack
Kilby at Dallas' Texas Instruments in 1958. (It is also credited to
William Noyce, working separately, at Fairchild Semiconductor.) By
the early 1970s, Intel had developed the integrated circuit into a
computer on a chip - the brains behind micro-computers,
high-definition televisions, robot vacuum cleaners and the Internet.
We take the ubiquity of these inventions for granted today. We
routinely underestimate the impact of their continuing development on
the future. Possible homicide In 1958, with this brave future ahead
of him, Bobby's life blew up. He had spent the summer between high
school and college driving to a mental hospital to see his mother.
After multiple suicide attempts, she had spent most of the year
"away." But as summer ended, she came home. Two days later, the phone
rang. A woman said Bobby's father was dead in Los Angeles, a possible
homicide. He had been found in the street with severe damage to his
skull. He had lived for a week in a coma. Bobby knew little about his
father, despite the bar time they'd shared and exchanges of letters
since. He knew his father was an alcoholic, that he had an ironic
sense of humor and that women seemed to like him a lot, lack of
employment notwithstanding.

One unsolicited letter had advised Bobby to appreciate the miracles
that women could perform, such as talk, listen to the radio and put
on makeup at the same time. It would be years before Bobby
understood. Bobby and his uncle were on a plane to Los Angeles the
next afternoon, thanks to the generosity of his stepfather, George.

Even today, Bobby can't tell you the hardest part of that trip. But
the L.A. morgue is a top contender. Just before entering, he realized
he didn't know which would be worse - being able to identify his
father or not being able to. His uncle identified the body.

Coping Skills

A few days later, Bobby, still 17, was in his first physics class at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He had returned from L.A. with a box of machinist tools, a hoard of
photos and a list of 21 women's names he had found among his father's
papers. His mother was No. 3; the woman who'd called was No. 21. His
careful plans no longer made sense. His mother, worried, sent him a
random supply of drugs - Miltown, Dexamil, Benzedrine. She even sent
a little Thorazine.

Faced with a probable genetic destiny of substance abuse, Bobby
decided to be scientific: He'd try them all. If any took, he'd know
his fate and get on with it. If substance abuse wasn't his fate,
well, he'd have to figure that out. On the road American society was
changing quickly.

When Bobby's mother, Joanne, was born in 1920, radios weren't widely
available. Airplanes were for thrill-seekers.

By her 40th birthday, in 1960, nearly every household had a
television set, and the next generation of thrill seekers was
planning rocket trips to the moon. Technology was also changing
social attitudes.

In the 1940s, families gathered in the living room to listen to the
radio, a floor model stuffed with vacuum tubes that amplified the
signal. The programs kids listened to were the ones Father wanted to
hear. Before the integrated circuit, in 1954, another product came
out of Texas Instruments that would change the world: the pocket
radio. Now kids could walk around and listen to what they wanted to
hear. Their new role models were rock 'n' roll stars and disc jockeys.

They read Jack Kerouac, watched Marlon Brando and imagined new social
structures.

Fortunately, sex, the early alternative to television, was becoming
much safer. Venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea,
scourges of the 19th and early 20th centuries, could be cured with a
few shots of Alexander Fleming's penicillin.

Infections plummeted in the 1930s, reflecting widespread improvements
in public health.

The change was the first pillar of a global sexual cornucopia. The
second pillar was the introduction, in 1960, of the first birth
control bill. The third was changing attitudes.

Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll - let the '60s begin.

IV-F: Aviator

In 1962, after four years of identity crisis and armed with a degree
from MIT, Bobby was sure of little.

He knew he was an unlikely candidate for the Supreme Court or the
Oval Office. And he was a dismal failure as a substance abuser. His
drug was lucidity. Genetic destiny, he would later learn, had gone
into remission for a generation.

Bobby believed that his paternal grandmother, widowed in Arizona, had
never accepted his mother or his birth.

The postcard he sent announcing his graduation was found on the floor
of her house, delivered after she had died of a stroke.

With no will and no other heirs, her estate went to Bobby by default.
It was a small fortune.

So Bobby declined a graduate fellowship and made a pact with a
friend. They would apply to the Sorbonne. If they got in, they would
live in Paris in the manner of Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

And what if they didn't get in? Well, they would join the Army. It
was 1962 - the Cuba missile crisis was about to become history, and
Vietnam was warming up. Fortunately, the Sorbonne sent letters of
acceptance. In 1963, Bobby returned to the States to enlist.

"Don't forget to tell them your mother attempted suicide seven
times!" she called out as he left for his physical. He did just that,
also including on the medical history form two known generations of
alcoholics and his program of drug experimentation.

The Army rejected him. When his new Selective Service card arrived,
it inexplicably listed a new classification: "IV-F: Aviator." For
years Bobby joked he would be called when there was a need for
kamikaze pilots. Ironically, thousands of Bobby's contemporaries
returned from Vietnam with the drug experience that probably kept him
from going. Bobby returned to Boston. He began working as an
assistant to a weapons consultant and wrote reports on communications
technologies, the market for mini-missile submarines, hand-held radar, etc.

Most of his classmates were involved in similar efforts. In the midst
of the Cold War, one even worried about a "peace scare."

America Invests

The GI Bill of Rights, better known as the Servicemen's Readjustment
Act of 1944, helped 2.4 million veterans attend colleges and
universities, provided school training for 3.5 million more and
supported on-the-job training for an additional 3.4 million in a
period of seven years. Although intended only to help returning
veterans find jobs and adjust to peacetime, it may have been the
largest single investment in "human capital" in history.

The GI Bill educated the generation of scientists, including Jack
Kilby, who helped send man to the moon and create the Internet and
the generation of lawyers who argued the civil rights cases of the
1960s. With the high-paying jobs they couldn't have imagined before
the war, the veterans bought homes in the suburbs, gave birth to a
baby boom and gave their children transistor radios for Christmas.

It was an amazing turnaround from 1940, when Bobby was born. Then,
people were suffering from the loss of their savings in the bank
failures of the Depression. Many had also lost their homes. Only 43.6
percent of households owned a home in 1940, down from 45.6 percent 20
years earlier. Today, by every measure, we are richer, more secure
and better educated than we were in 1940. Incredibly, though, few
Americans believe they are secure. Today, as during the Depression,
it is possible for the rich to become not rich or even poor.

It is possible for educated, middle-class people to become jobless
and poor - it just happens in different ways.

Movin' On Up

Bobby's life improved when he met his first wife.

Her parents lived in a Boston townhouse. Her father collected art.
Her sister had gone to Radcliffe. She could trace her family back to
a famous 1676 massacre in Framingham, Mass.

He never dared inquire about mental illness in her family. Besides,
love cures all. They were married in 1965. Their first son was born a
few years later, their second two years after that. For a few years,
everything was magnificent. Bobby bought a house across the street
from his in-laws, traded stocks while working on projects, bought a
summer cottage with his trading profits and landed a job at a
prestigious Cambridge consulting firm. He even bought an estate near
the cottage, borrowing against his stock holdings. He had figured out
that owning real estate was good, particularly when inflation was
greater than 3 percent. If the stock market went down, his equations
told him, rising real estate prices would probably compensate. Home
wealth The year 1940 had begun what may be the greatest
redistribution of wealth in history, some of it by intention, some by accident.

The shock of the Depression (and the fear of communists) had brought
the New Deal and the creation of safeguards that simply didn't exist
in 1920. Savings were insured. Home mortgages were lengthened to 30
years and insured by government. Down payments were reduced.

Working Americans soon learned that almost every dollar spent on a
home mortgage was magically transmuted into home equity. They took
money out of one pocket for a mortgage payment, but it magically
reappeared in another pocket as rising home value.

By 1960, nearly 62 percent of all households owned their homes. The
combination of inflation, regulated savings institutions and
homeownership had created a safe way to build wealth.

Crashes

There was one problem: The market crash of 1973-74. It was way beyond
anything Bobby had anticipated. It nearly put him down for the count.
A neighbor whose car collection had provided the yellow Rolls-Royce
for the film The Great Gatsby was foreclosed on. His cars were sold
at auction. Bobby realized that the only reason his bank didn't
liquidate his fallen stocks was that many others, including large
institutions, were in worse shape than he. The bank knew that if it
acted, it was all over. But the financial drama was overshadowed by a
personal event. Bobby's older son, nearly 6, disappeared one morning.
He and his wife searched the entire house. They finally found him
hiding in the basement. He told them creatures were visiting his room
and telling him he was not going to be able to grow up.

That may have been his son's first psychotic episode. Bobby and his
wife got the boy into therapy and special-needs programs. Meanwhile,
after Bobby's mother died, his stepfather asked him to join the board
of directors of his publicly traded company, a $50 million collection
of metal, plastic and rubber factories.

Ever the deal maker, George had arranged a public offering for a
small plastics company and had walked away with a major stake, the
chairmanship and control of the proxy machinery.

"If you want to be in the race, you have to have a horse," George
said. Unfortunately, George was better at borrowing money than at
management. At the first board meeting, Bobby had to vote to close a
rubber factory in Ohio. The write-down put the company in violation
of its bank agreements. The directors anted up $250,000 in new equity.

Some of the money came from Bobby, who was realizing that being a
corporate director might not be a walk in the park.

A year later, the rubber factories were still in the red. The company
needed capital again. Although the factories were in New York, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Georgia, the financing came from Dallas - in the
form of a $500,000 private placement.

Less than 60 days later, the company announced a $1.3 million
inventory adjustment. In short order, the Dallas investors sued for
rescission, the auditors gave a qualified opinion, and the stock was
delisted from the Nasdaq. His stepfather might go to jail.

In spite of all that, George failed to act. The directors were frozen
with indecision. Bobby wrote a letter to the board with an analysis
of each division and its capital productivity, or lack of same. The
letter enraged his stepfather. They agreed to meet at Rockefeller
Center, in the corporate attorney's law library. Bobby arrived first.
He sat close to the door, in case things got violent.

High Noon

His stepfather arrived and sat on the opposite side of the table.
"You can't write letters like that," he said. "I don't know whether I
have five sons or six."

"I don't feel sorry for you. You're the only father I've got," Bobby
answered. The two men argued for nearly an hour and a half. George
was cornered. But in the end, he realized he had put himself there.
Bobby hadn't. As they went downstairs, Bobby worried that his
stepfather would never talk to him again. He was wrong.

"They do really nice sandwiches down here," George said. "Shall we
break bread?" When they left, Bobby had a better idea of what
fatherhood was about. At times it could be awkward and silent. But it
was stunningly constant. Three months later, Bobby's hopes of seeing
his stepfather retire quietly were dashed. George had borrowed from
the company without the directors' knowledge and had loans against
his stock. He was removed as an officer and director. At an airport
departure gate, a tear rolled down George's face. He put his hand on Bobby's.

"That was some sandwich we had, wasn't it?" Bobby was left with the
task of explaining to his brothers what had happened. It would have
been awkward under any circumstance, but George had announced his
intention to leave at least $1 million to each of his boys. It wasn't
going to happen.

Go West

Two years later, in 1985, a career opportunity brought Bobby to
Dallas. He left his family behind while he settled in to his new job
and scouted the best school arrangements.

But the full move never happened. Two months later, his wife was
clinically depressed. At the end of six months, she filed for
divorce. Two months after that, she was in a mental hospital.

Bobby offered to pre-sign a completed divorce agreement that would
assure long-term alimony and split the marital estate. He offered it
in the hope of bringing his wife to Texas and dealing with the issues
as a couple. He knew that she feared - as any woman would - a Texas
divorce. She never moved to Texas. The divorce was complete in late
1990, the process having lasted longer than some marriages.

Bobby had to learn to date again. He wanted to avoid a replay of the
venereal circus of Harvard Square, so it wasn't easy. Relationships
at 50 are a lot more difficult than at 25, Bobby realized. "It's the
hormone-to-identity ratio," the algebra lover liked to say. "When
you're 20, it's nearly infinite. Who you are hardly matters. What
matters is finding a plausible excuse to get naked. But at 50, the
hormone-to-identity ratio is less than 1. You're actual people."

Aging Well

In January 1940, the year Bobby was born, a woman named Ida May
Fuller received the first Social Security retirement check. It was
for $22.54. The check launched the receiving end of a desperately
needed retirement system. Without it, the combination of Depression
losses and vast improvements in public health and life expectancies
would have littered the country with indigent people who could no
longer work. Other social supports were created as unintended
consequences of World War II. Competing for a limited number of
workers but constrained by wage controls, wartime employers had
increased benefits. Pension plans and health insurance, rarities in
the 1930s, became common by the late '40s. The life expectancy of a
newborn male in 1940 was only 60.8 years. That's less than the 65
years required to qualify for Social Security at the time. This meant
that more than half of all newborns were not expected to live long
enough to collect their first Social Security check. Men who survived
to 65 could expect to live another 12.7 years. Today a newborn male
has a life expectancy of 74.1 years at birth, and a 65-year-old man
can expect to live an additional 16.3 years. These are enormous,
wonderful changes.

But they aren't free. If people live longer in retirement, they will
all need more money.

The money comes from higher employment taxes. In 1940, the combined
employer/employee payroll tax was 2 percent of earnings up to $3,000
a year. That's a maximum of $60 a year, of which $30 came from the
employee. Today the tax, including 2.9 percent for Medicare, is 15.3
percent of earnings up to $90,000. That's a total of $13,770.

It's not enough because our life expectancy continues to lengthen.
The realities endanger the support system that was forged in the
Depression and World War II.

Second chances Longer life expectancies also mean second chances.

Two friends of Bobby's had been talking for years about a woman they
knew. "You'd love her," they'd said, "but she's married."

Finally, when her marriage ended, the two were introduced.
Relationships may be difficult at 50, but that's not the same as
impossible. The couple married in 1995.

To their daily amazement, they have lived Happily Ever After. Both
thank God for the miracle of maturity, for finding enough patience to
experience true and gentle love.

They have also learned that two earning adults can do amazing things,
including create economic security in only a decade, without the
benefit of a public offering.

They did this in spite of continued pummeling from life events. Much
of that pummeling has been natural - the deaths of her parents,
Bobby's stepfather and a stepbrother. These events have been balanced
by the marriage of two children and the birth of five remarkable
grandchildren. The hardest punch was learning that the substance
abuse remission was only for one generation. It returned for Bobby's
older son. Despite seeing several friends die from drug overdoses,
the son pursued life as a drug omnivore. It would be nice to believe
this is rare, but it is not. Among those diagnosed with serious
mental illnesses, fully 80 percent "self-medicate." They take
whatever comes along because many believe, as Bobby's son did, that
they have a special capacity.

His older son died of an overdose of morphine pills on Christmas Day
1998. He was 30. In the ring Now "getting in the ring," as Bobby puts
it, is harder some days than others. Neither our hearts nor our minds
are prepared to survive our children. Quite simply, they would rather not.

Bobby thinks of his grandfather Charlie often. He remembers being
ashamed of him for being drunk and falling down.

Then he recalls a day when he saw Charlie differently. He was proud
at how many times his grandfather got up.

He feels blessed by the kindness of memory. He knows that everyone -
his grandfather, his father, his mother, his stepfather, his son -
did the best they could. They didn't get to choose their weaknesses.
They didn't get to select their fears or pick their battles.

They led turbulent and faulted lives in America, where it is said
that some of the streets are paved in gold - but the real treasure is
freedom. Scott Burns is the pen name of Robert Milton Burns Jr., who
was known to his mother as Bobby.
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About This Series

American Generations tells the story of four family members in an
ever-changing America.

They are real people with real struggles, joys and tragedies. Their
stories illustrate the hastening changes in American life in the 85
years since 1920, amid our unwavering quest for personal security.

SEPT. 18: Joanne's Story, Lost Child to American Princess Born in
1920 - World War I is over. Women get the vote. Automobiles have
become affordable. The nation is poised for amazing improvements in
public health and life expectancies. But the Depression is just ahead.

TODAY: Bobby Stays in the Ring Born in 1940 - World War II is
starting, and companies compete to offer better pensions and health
benefits. Social Security pays its first check. After the war, the GI
Bill ushers in an age of unprecedented prosperity and a baby boom.
Fueled by rock 'n' roll played on transistor radios, social attitudes
begin to change.

OCT. 2: Steve Reaches for the Sky Born in 1963 - The Vietnam War, the
Cold War, the Generation Gap, protests, a stagnating economy, high
divorce rates and a growing media culture contribute to the Great
Negativity. Yet we are wealthier than we've ever been and stand on
the verge of decades of peace.

OCT. 9: Shelby's World Born in 1997 - America is even wealthier and
more powerful, but a threat of global terrorism is emerging.
Meanwhile, the country has largely worked through its social
upheavals. But seniors' health and retirement benefits threaten to
bankrupt the country.

Online The full series will be available at www.scottburns.com,
complete with links to more data and history about American life,
culture and the economy since 1920.