In the year in which I was born the birth rate has bottomed out. This was the year that the least amount of babies were born since the Great Depression. Perhaps that’s why I’m so solidly a member of generation X because in there just aren’t as many people my age when compared to people of other ages.

Perhaps some of this had to do with the political climate of the day. As I was born during the Ford administration I’ve always found that fact to be interesting as Gerald Ford was the only man to ever serve as president who was not elected to the position. Maybe that’s why there was so much turmoil in the world back then. 1975 marked the fall of Saigon, a while after US operations ended in Vietnam. My father was a veteran of that war and from what I’ve read about the subject, it was brutal and there will never be another one like it as technology has changed and it seems like countries, the US in particular, doesn’t send mass amounts of ground forces anymore.

So that’s what I know about the year I was born, that and the economy stunk but that’s nothing new, stagflation, problems with auto manufacturing, new fuel economy standards were beginning to be implemented. Maybe I should be thankful that I was too young to remember it, as it didn’t seem all that great. The time I grew up, throughout the 1980’s were a lot better.