The bright and colorful autumns in southern Wisconsin are like the dead of winter in St. Louis-cold and brutal. I was living in Monroe, Wisconsin, the undisputed cheese capital of the world. Monroe, home to Swiss Colony, is less than an hour south of the state capital, Madison, and twenty minutes north of Freeport, Illinois.

I manned an investment office on the town square in Monroe, hawking mutual funds and bonds to anyone who would listen. I often set out in my 1972 light green Cadillac Coupe de Ville, tooling from village to village in the heart of America's dairy capital, finding prospective buyers for my goods.

In early December, 1980, I left Monroe the week after Jim Dandy had shown up for a concert in an off-white shack which served as a pub on the southern edge of town. The bar was a block away from a micro-brewery, ran by someone with a Norwegian name. I was heading due east on Highway 11 towards Brodhead, a village of about a thousand Scandinavian souls.

Surely someone in Brodhead would open up an account with me and buy some bonds. Maybe a big-time dairy farmer or a retired couple. Back in 1980, there were still a lot of folks who remembered the Great Depression.

I talked to one elderly lady about government-backed bonds. "I remember the Great Depression like it was yesterday." Fear and recollection shone in her light blue eyes.

"I  hope our country never goes through that again. The banks closed and most everybody I knew lost their life's savings. They couldn't get their money out of the banks." Her voice faded and she looked at her living room wall as if the Ghost of the Great Depression shone on it.

The retired school teacher turned down my offer of high-interest (18%) government-backed bonds, which were redeemed fully in 1984 by the corporation behind it. One elderly person after another displayed the fear of the depression years in Monroe.

On my way to Brodhead the radio blared "Sweet Home Alabama" and the colorful trees had turned butt-naked. The only greenery in the gentle rolling hills of America's cheese-land were the fir and pine trees, copiously scattered from hilltop to bottom.

The sky was ice cold blue, the wind was cutting, and the frosty air had penetrated my black overcoat. It was December 9, Lynnard Skynyrd stopped howling about Neil Young and the radio announcer broke in.

"John Lennon, former Beatle and solo recording artist was shot by an assassin last night at  his home in New York. The name of his killer, who has been arrested, is unknown. Funeral arrangments are pending."

I was shocked. I had worshipped the Beatles since I was ten. I remembered the first Beatles tune I had ever heard: I Want to Hold your Hand.

I wasn't astounded when the Fab Four broke up in 1970, all that togetherness and stuff. Lennon had The Voice and was considered the intellectual and the leader of the group. His solo career, save for Imagine, was not exceptional.

I never did like Yoko Ono. She couldn't sing and I believe she had a big role in the break-up of the Fab Four. One conspiracy that went around after the Beatles disbanded was that they had recorded hundreds, even thousands, of songs, storing them in some secret location. The tapes would provide fresh Beat-les tunes for decades to come. Imagine that.

Give Peace a Chance. John's Vietnam Protests. His drug usage. His Deportation Thing.

All over by the violence of a pistol.

The 1960's were over. Former president Jimmy Carter had returned to Georgia to grow peanuts. Or something. Ronald Reagan, the reckless cowboy from Hell, was at the helms, leading America through an eight-year journey into the throes of conservatism.

Disco was in. Punk came and went. The baby-boomers had entered the real world and the generation behind them was sticking safety pins in their cheeks, bashing their skulls into one another. Politics was turning around. Music was changing radically. Comedy was making a big comeback on TV and in the club scene.

Some of us longed for our 1960's childhood, with Twist and Shout and Green Acres. But in the 1980's, taxes would be cut, de-regulation of some industries would take place, civil rights would take a back seat, and the Soviet Union would begin its long-awaited demise.

John Lennon, the wacky genius behind the Beatles, was dead. So was our childhood innocence and the insane 60's.

Welcome to the 1980's. It was the most fun I ever had in a single decade.