We were new to New Jersey and new to our church there when the
church announced a men’s only corned beef and cabbage dinner to
celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Well, okay. I took my son Bud, then
six, and we went.
As we entered the parish hall, I stopped by the kitchen. One of
the men I had come to know a bit forked out a giant, graying,
steaming hunk of corned beef from a pot of boiling water and
nibbled at the edge of it with obvious satisfaction. In other giant
pots heads of cabbage boiled — just boiled, wafting that ineffably
rotten aroma.
Dinner was served. Hunks of water boiled cabbage and corned
beef, slices of Wonder Bread, and plain yellow hot dog mustard. The
men barked and gruffed at each other around the tables.
I had never eaten worse food in my life, and I didn’t eat much
of it. I don’t think Bud touched it.
That night I was sick to my toenails.
OUR OLD CHURCH IN CHARLESTOWN (MASS.) WOULD NEVER have countenanced
such a travesty. For one thing, the men could all cook. We would
have had wonderful food: Homemade olive dishes, homemade hummus,
fresh salads and pastas, you name it. For another, we would never
have held any sort of celebration without the women — it wouldn’t
have been any fun.
The locals called us Yuppies, though that acronym was long out
of date, and, at least for some of us, the “Y” did not apply. My
wife and I and a small core of friends found that church in
shambles, about to be closed by the diocese — either that, or
designated a “mission,” which would have amounted to the same
thing.
Our number included musicians, writers, investment types,
doctors, consultants, and the like. We suffered the scorn and
opprobrium of the old residents of that tiny Boston neighborhood,
who call themselves “Townies,” and who looked to us as the
despoilers of their traditional way of life — typical
gentrification scenario.
We pulled together and revived the church, and we had a
wonderful time doing it. We established ourselves in our
professions, we had children, we rejoiced, we listened to and
performed ancient music, we talked, we created. We did it following
the modern model of the young urban professional, from which the
acronym “YUP,” or “Yuppie” was derived: women had careers, men
helped with the home, men and women alike tore down and remodeled
rooms and sometimes whole houses, men and women pitched in together
to raise children..
AS A CLASS, WE TOOK — AND STILL TAKE — A BAD RAP. It derives from
some of the same characteristics we share with 1960s leftists. We
are supposedly self-absorbed, vain, selfish, excessively satisfied
with ourselves, and too worried about self-esteem. Lots of “self”
there, obviously, and some of the rap may be justified.
Nearly 30 years ago, I wrote that “rock and roll has a severe
case of middle-aged spread.” As with rock, so with the Yuppie. It
was a cohort that fit its time. We took hold of the Reagan
prosperity of the 1980s with one hand, grabbed the technological
revolution with the other, and cruised into the dot-com
nineties.
The prosperity still surges, the technology burgeons, but, like
the golden age of rock and roll, the age of the Yuppie has passed,
spread out, turned into a dozen other tributaries. Is there such a
single signifier for present-day young adults?
I won’t pass any judgments, because I don’t know. For our part,
we courted, got married, learned to make a living, and had
children. We are mostly still here, doing the same thing. Not bad,
my friends, not bad.
