Nostalgia Nite in the DU Lounge.

Ah memories.

My great aunt Lucia had us all beat.
She was born in 1890.
Made it to her 90s and never lost a step mentally.

She told me...
"I saw the first airplane fly, and the first automobile in our town."
The first 'motion pictures' and the first 'talkies' and the first 'Technicolor'.
The first radio.
And, of course, television.
'We didn't think it would catch on.'

The first 'WORLD' war, which we called either the '14-'18 war, or the 'War in Europe', or the 'War to End All War', ot the 'War to Save Democracy'.

The 'Second World War'. After which the first became "The First'.
The Korean War, which wasn't 'really' a war but called a 'police action' by the politicians.

Sputnik.
And our first feeble attempts at space travel.

OK, I'm tired of remembering and writing.
What are your ancestor's memories.

was born about that time.

he came to south texas in a covered wagon. his older brother drove the first wagon, he drove the second. my great-grandmother was with them & there were three other children, including one baby on that trip. my great-grandfather, who sold mccormick farming implements, had to travel with the equipment by train.

a drought in south texas was so bad once, he & his brother had to burn the needles off of cactus so that the cattle would have something to eat. he would later tell my father (his son-in-law) that it was "dryer than a popcorn fart" and that it was so dry he "had to prime his pr*ck to piss." my mom said he would never say such things, but her brother said "oh yes, he did."

he was drafted into the navy in 1917, & went to france by ship. while still at sea, he wrote his parents, describing some of his fellow sailors as looking like "the last rose of summer." although it was his first time on board a ship, he didn't get seasick (this "talent" has been passed down to my brother & me).

he kept his family in food & shelter during the depression by being an independent trucker & quite possibly bootlegging (this cannot be proved, but since my mom's family always had some money, who knows?). he was quite popular with all the waitresses at the places he stopped at on his hauls, according to my mom who sometimes travelled with him.

he witnessed the advent of the telephone, radio, movies, & television (he fought off my mom's pleas to get a TV in the 50's, but eventually, he got one).

after the war, he & his brother travelled to canada in a model t. he later flew by jet to hawaii. he saw the first shots into space & had he lived 2 more years, he would have seen man walk on the moon. :cry:

dg

grandfather did. He did that because of a job he had when he was young.

Hints: 1) Seasonal job. 2) New England. 3) They don't do it anymore.

Think about those clues, and money in a shirt pocket instead of a pants pocket.

No google. Be honest. I bet you guys are smart enough to figure it out honestly.

Redstone

:shrug:

Redstone

gotta be

Keep trying.

On edit: Besides, people still dig clams. Nobody does the job I'm talking about anymore.

Redstone

It's so sad that tradition is gone now. It was an honorable profession.

on my mother's side.

Redstone

jobs that involve the necessity of keeping one's money in one's shirt (though I'd guess water is involved somehow).

Redstone

He worked the log drives on the Connecticut River.

The drovers would frequently take a partial dunking when they were working a jam or hopping from one log to another, or just wading into or out of the river.

Paper money had a better chance of staying dry in a shirt pocket. (And the flannel or wool shirts had pockets that buttoned.)

(And I still remember how to use a peavey. When I was a kid, I could use one to roll a twelve-foot section of tree trunk across the field without breaking a sweat - as long as there were no stumps in the way, of course.)

Redstone

Legend has it that there's a locomotive and tracks on the bottom of Lake Winnipesaukee, NH as the result of an early spring thaw.

...that I started to write them down, they're so good!

My favorite is when she was a little girl, she had a brand-new lavender dress that she was very proud of. Her mother was driving the model T through downtown Fort Worth, after a rain shower. The passenger door on the car was always loose, so when her mother made the turn onto another street, my grandmother tumbled right out...and landed hands and knees in the mud, busy street traffic coming up quickly. Just as her mother came to a stop and got out of the car, my grandmother was picked up by the back of her lavender dress by a cowboy whose horse never broke his stride. He turned around, and handed my grandmother to her mother, then went on his way, never said a word. He just smiled the whole time.

Keep writing that stuff down.

Redstone

what a great image!

:D

1962.

As a young exile roaming Europe in the early part of the twentieth century, he ended up in Geneva, Switzerland, and since he spoke Russian, which all Latvians were required to learn, he started hanging out in cafes with exiles from czarist Russia.

Two of them were Vladimir Ulyanov and Lev Bronstein, better known to history as Lenin and Trotsky.

(He found their single-mindedness about remaking Russian society rather unnerving.)

My maternal grandmother was born in 1899. She remembered when Minneapolis had wooden sidewalks, as you see in TV Westerns.

As a German-American, she remembered the hysterical prejudice against Germans during World War I. Gangs of young proto-freepers would walk down the street in German neighborhoods, grabbing people they heard speaking German, and forcing them to kneel in the street and kiss the American flag.

Newly married to my grandfather in 1918, she was living in North Dakota when the great flu epidemic struck. My grandparents came out of it all right, but one of the young teachers at the school where my grandfather taught died, and an entire family was found dead on their farm.

Great stories Lydia!

YOU'RE the one who should be writing this family history! :-)

My grandfather was born in Lebanon in 1887. He was in the import business, and as a young man, he and his young bride left the Middle East and set sail for San Paulo, Brazil. They had three children (a boy and a set of girl twins), and since he was a good tradesman, they were able to afford a nanny. They hired an 18-year-old Italian girl in 1918 for the kids who all hovered around 8 years old at the time. Then my grandfather's first wife took off with another woman. So what's a busy man in trade to do with his kids' but marry the nanny and move to NYC? So he did, and their first child, my father, was born in the slums of Little Italy area of New York in 1922.

She was born around 1900 in what is now Slovakia (what it was then I don't really know). She immigrated to this country in 1921, she lost a brother to WWI and a sister to an unfortunate land mine incident. Also she didn't believe that man landed on the moon (I guess she saw quite a bit of change in her lifetime but that one went too far for her). It's a shame I didn't get to know her better, she died when I was 3 (1987), I would have really liked to have picked her brain a bit. I'd bet she was full of interesting stories.

My Great Grandmother was a chorus girl in London when she was young. Her family lived in rural Hereford County, and had never been to London. But Great Granny's parents saved-up the money to take a train to the "Big Smoke", and they left Hereford for the first time when in their 40s.

When they arrived at the theatre where GG danced, she and her friends took them on a tour. What fascinated them the most of anything were the natural gas lanterns inside the theatre (this was well before the invention of the lightbulb). The lighting was sconces which stuck ot from the walls, and were fuelled by invisible pipes behind the plaster. Preyy unremarkable for us, but mindblowing for GG's parents.

My GG, who was trying her best to fit-in among the city dancers was mortified when her dad turned to her, pointed to one of the lamps, and asked "'ere, Ethyl, 'ow them do that?!"

:rofl:

they were young boys then so the rebel cap scared them a little bit and then told them to git back home to their mams.

My grandfather (Alan) came to this country from Scotland around 1915. He wanted to be "all american" and was obsessed with baseball.

Many, many years later, after my grandfather was long dead, my dad brought an old scottish guy over to the house for Thanksgiving dinner. During dinner, my dad asked our guest "Gordy" if he had any stories of his dad.

Gordy told the story of my grandfather taking him to his first (and last!) baseball game, which he counted as "the longest day of his life". As I recall, it went something like this (you'll have to imagine the thick brogue):

"Nine fat men in bloomers waddled onto the field. I couldna tell what they were doing. A ball went up, a fat man ran. It went ON and ON. Everyone stood up at one point and I asked "It's over?"
"No", Alan said "It's the seventh inning stretch, you're supposed to stand up".
"Ten hours later, everyone stood up again, then sat down. Another 7th inning stretch? I asked".
"No", said Alan, "The game's over".
"Then why did we sit down again, I asked."
"Oh", said Alan "You're in luck Gordy, it's a DOUBLE-HEADER!"


:rofl:
I still crack up whenever I think about it. The old scottish guy had tears running down his cheeks as he recounted that day...

I couldna know why ye've niver told thae wee tale before. It's a good un! :rofl:

with Jesse James when he was on the run from robbing the bank in nearby Russellville KY. He DID rob the bank, I just don't know if the horse part is true. This was a brother of either my great grandmother or great grandmother who told this tale to my mom when she was a kid.

I suspect mom married my dad specifically because grandpa hated Americans (well, to be precise, all Americans except Hemingway and Steinbeck).

This could be a tall tale, but my cousin insisted it was true when I talked to him in November, and he said one or two other folks would back him up.

Back after WWI, my grandpa's family was living in the Beloit, WI/Rockford, IL area. Evidently, grandpa was doing some pool hustling to help pay the bills and such.

Supposedly he got into a fight with a guy about a shot or something, and gave the guy practically an improvised traceotomy with a pool cue. Terrified (he figured he killed the guy) that he was now a wanted man, he took it on the lam up to Canada. I'm figuring probably to Alberta, since he had an aunt and cousins who lived up there. And supposedly he joined the RCMP for a few years while he was there.

But then he got a letter that his mother (my great grandma Zora) was on her deathbed. So he decided to chance it and come back down. And while he was creeping carefully around town, he saw "the dead guy" walking around. He hadn't died after all!

Great grandma Zora died in January of 1918 from heart trouble at Beloit Hospital, but while he was at the hospital, he met a pretty candy striper who sent him a valentine, and they got married the next year.

Bingo! My dad's family.
fsc

Can you imagine the weight that was lifted off of him?

It's one of the few stories of naughtiness in our family. Everyone else were pretty much good solid, upright farming stock.

fsc

my ancestors owned part of Manhattan when it was New Amsterdam. He was there when the british came. Another ancestor was kicked off of Manhattan for running a bar; apparently she offended because of "drinking, dancing, and jumping" on sundays. Luckily, a month later the british came, and she moved right back :D