By the time of my birth, the twenties had almost ceased their roaring. The great crash would hit the next year, 1929, when I was only one year old.

Of course, I can remember neither era, times that provided some of the most dramatic changes in our nation’s history.

But on Monday, September 29th, I felt something like what Americans must have felt when the Great Depression began. Bankers and stock brokers were not jumping out of Wall Street windows, but a strange unfamiliar tension had gripped the nation.

My drive home from New York City that day proved uniquely short. The distance was the same as usual. But, the miles seemed to pile up fast as my wife and I listened excitedly to NPR reports on the fast-breaking fiscal crisis that held Washington and New York in its grip.

This car-radio-induced excitement made me remember a similar experience that took place in 1971. On that occasion, a friend and I were driving through the badlands of South Dakota on as trip to the West Coast when we heard an announcement that held us fixed in astonishment.

Alexander Butterfield was revealing his role in making tapes of President Nixon’s conversations in the White House. These tapes would serve as smoking-gun evidence that would eventually lead to Nixon’s threatened impeachment and resignation.

Almost 40 years later, I found myself hanging on the words that emerged from the radio in a 2009-model Toyota Corolla. Would the Bush administration’s Wall Street bail out bill pass or not?

The legislation stirred mixed feelings in me, as it seemed to have done with many, if not most, members of Congress. I did not know whether to root for its passage or its defeat.

The newly-coined moniker by some opponents of the bill ─ “No banker left behind” ─struck me as apt. So did the formulation “privatized profit, socialized loss.” Seven hundred billion dollars of bail-out money, from us all, impressed me as rather a large sum, to say the least.

However, financial stability for the whole nation seemed at stake. I credited the assurances of some leaders, such as Barney Frank, who warned against looking for legislative perfection at a time of such pressing crisis.

As of this writing, prospects for reconsideration remain unclear. Perhaps enough Democrats and Republicans will repent their actions and choose to vote for the bill, this time around.

In matters of high finance, I plead innocence. Like most of my fellow Americans, I do not know the difference between a mortgage-backed security and a hacksaw.

Nor do I have any clear understanding of the way markets work. The machinations of the world-wide fiscal system lies far beyond my reach.

Maybe courses in economics in high school and college would have helped. Certainly my studies in Latin and Greek did not, though I continue to value those subjects for themselves.

I do know enough about finance, however, to find the policies of the Bush administration at serious fault. Dogmatic belief that regulations are bad and the less government the better has proven disastrous for the financial markets.

My heart goes out to people who feel anxiety about the financial survival of themselves and their families. For those who have retired expecting to have money enough for secure living but who now face shortages, I feel special sympathy.

If there is any moral in the events of this fall for people in the later stages of life, I would find it in surprise and wonder. If you live long enough and maintain an open heart and mind, you will see things that you never expected to see.

I never anticipated seeing the Dow Jones average fall 700 points in a single day’s trading. This average, mysterious in all of its workings, exceeded its greatest decline by ? points.

Nor did I expect to see banks, a giant insurance company, and stock brokerages fail so dramatically. These events happened to seemingly stable institutions.

Such events remind us of the transient character of things human. They go along for years, seemingly immune from major change, then all of a sudden, they fall.

I think of my friends who have passed on from this world. They are missing things of interest to me. I often fantasize about what they would think of events that have surprised those of us who have lived to see them.

My friends ─ two Bobs, David, and Frank come to mind ─ what would they have made of these great happenings? Are they blessed not to have gone through them?

We all have a stake in the well being of our financial system. Ignorance, even though understandable, cannot exempt us from political action. And we can hope for educators to teach their students about how the markets work.