It isn’t getting older that I mind. In fact, so far as I can see, it is preferable to getting younger. I used to walk these streets as a tortured soul, wondering whether the key to my future hunkered around the next corner. Now I walk downtown in a comfortable fog, thinking about whatever has lately captured my fancy. I’m not concerned about what I might become. I’m already here.

But the relative calm of middle age is only the eye of the storm. Going from older to senior, now that’s a little scary. For those of us who bought records even before the Beatles, that time is fast approaching. When the Rolling Stones stop touring, it’s pretty much a race to the bottom for us Baby Boomers.

I got another warning smack last week reading an article on nuclear power in Fortune magazine by editor at large David Whitford. I thought we killed that monster back in the 70s. There hasn’t been a new nuclear plant build in the USA in three decades. But the radiation monster was only sleeping. With global warming and terrorism as the new boogeymen, extermination via a nuclear winter seems less threatening to a power hungry new generation. And the most likely location for new nukes, Whitford concludes, is where the old nukes got built. That makes Seabrook 2.0 a fearsome possibility.

The problem for me is less the return of the nukes than the graying of the anti-nukers. Whitford interviewed Clamshell Alliance founder Harvey Wasserman who was among the Seabrook protesters back in the good old days. It was Wasserman’s quote that hit home. Speaking of planned efforts to protest the next wave of nuclear power plants, he said: "I intend to make it as difficult for them is possible. Those of us who can still walk will be back in droves.

When that quote ran on public radio, one young announcer added that many of the Clamshell protestors were now in their sixties, some even older. "No way!" laughed another radio host. "The old geeks are still on patrol."

It was under the cloud of that agist commentary that we went out for dinner that night. "I’m too tired to try something new," my wife said. "Let’s go someplace reliable."

But when we got downtown, it seemed like all the signs had changed. No more Jack Quigley’s. No more Emilio’s, A&D Barbacue, no Metro or Lindburgh’s Crossing or Blue Strawbery. No Bagelry, Harvey’s, Goldi’s, Foodies, Café Brioche, Szechuan Taste, 43 Degrees North (aka Cyber Café). Perhaps it is true. The march of time is about to stomp all over me.

"How about Rosa’s?" my wife suggested. "That’s been around forever."

"It won’t be the same," I whined. But it was. Rosa’s has carpeting now, and a hostess station and upstairs dining, but even on a Tuesday night the old booths were crammed with Portsmouth citizens. A young waitress showed us to a booth in what used to be the backroom bar. She wasn’t born when we anti-nukers danced to rowdy bands back here. I wasn’t born when Ralph Rosa opened his Italian eatery 80 years ago in 1927. He wasn’t born when the building went up in 1815. Suddenly I didn’t feel so old.

The Rosa salad, was exactly the same as when Ralph Rosa ran the place. Same mysterious watery mix that makes you want to drink that secret house dressing from the bottom of the bowl. Same thick spaghetti sauce, heavy on the paste, intoxicatingly tangy. Same perfect pasta, not drained dry like everywhere else, but with a watery base that keeps the spaghetti hotter longer, then mixes perfectly with the abundant sauce, so you can sop it all up with an extra order of hot bread.

"Still mad about the nuke thing?" my wife asked.

I wasn’t. We anti-nuke geeks are smarter than we used to be. We’ve got less energy, but more time to devote to protests. We stopped most of the radiation monsters thirty years ago. We can stop them again. Then those of us who can still walk – or roll – can gather as always at Rosa’s. Joe and Pamela Hunt, who have carried on the Rosa tradition since 1981, should get the keys to the city. Some places make it easier to stay forever young.

OURSIDE LINK: The Rosa Restaurant 

Copyright © 2007 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.