Up here, on the surface, Tom Junod’s book In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man is about his father, Big Lou Junod, a stylish, larger-than-life, Paul Bunyan figure who, in his son’s eyes, could whip any man and love every woman. It’s about the truth behind the façade, the old man’s philandering and vow-breaking, and what a boy raised by a false god can do with such a legacy.
But down below, in the depths, it’s about America, how the glamour of the 60s gave way to the 80s, the 90s, the aughts, and whatever this is. It’s about how jet travel, an above-the-clouds Valhalla for stewardess-chasing, scotch-drinking executives, became a flying bus filled with the sweatpants-wearing masses. It’s about how the past became the present and the swashbuckling men of yore turned into mortals.
