McCOMB - I had another birthday last week, duly noted by family, a few friends who keep up with such dates, the McComb Rotary Club bulletin and my Sunday School teacher.
I appreciated all the salutations. But I'm getting to the age where I'd just as soon ignore birthdays, not yet having reached that mentality of some senior citizens who, when asked their age, announce it for their next birthday, which may be as much as 111/2 months away.
Right now I'm happy to say I'm still in my sixties, at least for most of another year, and that isn't nearly as old as I thought it would be three or four decades ago.
In fact, I took some comfort last week, during the memorial events for former President Ronald Reagan, in being reminded that I am still as young as he was when he was elected to his first term as president of the United States.
And I'm still more than a decade younger than former President George H.W. Bush, Reagan's vice president, who observed his birthday a few days after I did by parachuting out of an airplane at age 80.
Yes, I know I don't have as much hair as either of those two, and I haven't switched to the Republican Party. I'm not planning on any skydiving ventures.
But I can still appreciate Reagan and former President Bush, especially how active they stayed past retirement age.
No question Reagan was an inspirational, charismatic and effective leader and a tremendously popular man even after being out of office for more than 15 years, as we were reminded every day last week by constant television coverage of his memorial services.
Some of those heaping accolades on the former president pointed out he was the first one they voted for. One column I recall reading was by a talented young editor who couldn't personally remember a president before Jimmy Carter, Reagan's immediate predecessor.
I, of course, can remember far before that - back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, in fact.
No, I wasn't old enough to vote for Roosevelt, or Truman for that matter.
I wasn't even old enough to be interested in politics during the Roosevelt era, but I remember when he died. And I recall he was held in high esteem by the adults in my family who had struggled during the Great Depression and were helping win World War II.
Reagan, it has been noted, was a Democrat during the Roosevelt era and was one of his admirers.
Roosevelt and Reagan, although their economic philosophies were poles apart when they served their respective terms as president, were similar in many ways.
Both were tremendously charismatic and carried Mississippi without any problem each time they ran.
Both inspired optimism, bringing the country out of a spirit of malaise, restoring the typical American "can do" attitude.
Both changed the direction of the country.
Roosevelt, with his New Deal and other government assistance programs, led the nation out of the Depression and launched the country into an era of economic liberalism.
Those of us past 65, many of whom now consider themselves conservative Republicans, still enjoy the benefits of such things as Social Security and rural electricity, spawned during the Roosevelt era.
Roosevelt's theory, and that of many of the nation's leaders who followed him - perhaps most notably Lyndon Johnson - was that government should be proactive in assisting citizens, especially those least able to assist themselves.
Reagan, long before he became president, came to believe that government was getting too big, too intrusive in the lives of its citizens. Cut taxes, starve the government beast, let capitalism work and the benefits would trickle down to everyone was his theory.
Often his administration's actions didn't back up his rhetoric, but there is no question the country changed directions under Reagan's leadership.
It has been observed that political trends swing left and right like a pendulum. Most of the time the pendulum is somewhere in the middle, left or right of the center, but seldom on either extreme. It could be said of both Roosevelt and Reagan that they started the pendulum moving in another direction.
