Hello 60

When I got started in journalism in the mid-1960s, we marked the end of every story we wrote by typing -30- at the bottom of the page.
The explanation, as I learned it, is that the -30- mark was meant to tell the typesetter, i.e. Linotype or Intertype operator, that there was no more to the story. Presumably, journalists originally wrote “no more,” which got shortened to “no” and finally the cursive “n” got turned on its side to make a “3” and the “o” mutated into a zero.
At any rate, I was taught in college to end my stories with -30- and that was the practice at the small town daily where I got my start and later at the state’s largest evening daily where I spent most of my career.
But sometime in the 1970s, when we traded our typewriters for the first of the big clunky primitive computer terminals, we stopped using the -30- mark. Why? Probably because we’d become the typesetters as well as the writers, so there was no need to tell ourselves where the story ended.
So the -30- mark went away, appearing only in the occasional press release sent in by some hot-type-trained newspaperman who had sold out and taken a public relations job and still used the -30- mark out of habit.
Today I am twice 30. Does that mean “no more” is doubly true?
I remember in 1975 when I marked my first 30 years on the planet with a sense of doom and foreboding. I was pretty sure that my best years were behind me and the future held little but hard work and gradual decline.
Hah.
Turns out my 30s were filled with lots of personal growth, a bunch of dumb mistakes and plenty of adventure.
So I wasn’t all that concerned in July, 1985, when my personal odometer rolled over the 40-year mark. We had a big party, the original Live Aid broadcast was going on and somebody gave me a green t-shirt with a picture of a tree on it that said, “40 isn’t old… for a tree.”
Fifty was a little more sobering, especially when I got the invitation in the mail to join AARP back before its name got shortened to the acronym for the American Association of Retired People. I resisted for a few months, but finally decided that if some businesses wanted to give me a discount just for being 50, I’d be stupid not to take it.
So I decided to embrace maturity – not old age, but maturity.
I remember sitting in a Denny’s in Salina, Kans., one summer morning when I was 54 and starting the second day of my 14th annual Midlife Crisis Motorcycle Tour. I flipped the menu over to examine the Senior Citizen selections – reduced portions at reduced prices and decided a selection from that list suited my appetite. But the threshold for the Denny’s Senior Citizen menu was 55.
So for the first time since I was a 20-year-old in a liquor store, I lied about my age and wolfed down my breakfast in the sure knowledge that the manager would appear at any moment to “card” me.
All of this is to remind me that passing these 10-year milestones is like an athlete bursting through a paper banner – there’s the momentary shock of hitting the barrier, but you’re through it before you have time to think about it and you’re still moving and everything is the same as it was before except that the barrier is now behind you.
So it is with turning 60. Other than being an occasion for a bit of reflection, it’s no big deal. I’m still me and I’m still doing all of the stuff I love to do.
Now 70 is a different matter…