“It’s a mess out there now. Hard to discern between what’s a real threat and what is just simple panic and hysteria. For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900.
“On your 14th birthday, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday. 22 million people perish in that war. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.
“On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy.
’When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet. And don’t try to catch your breath. On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war.
″ Smallpox was epidemic until you were in your 40′s, as it killed 300 million people during your lifetime.
“At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish. From your birth, until you are 55 you dealt with the fear of Polio epidemics each summer. You experience friends and family contracting polio and being paralyzed and/or die.
“At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict. During the Cold War, you lived each day with the fear of nuclear annihilation. On your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, almost ended. When you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.
“Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How did they endure all of that? If you were a kid in 1985 you may have thought your 85-year-old grandparent did not understand how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was. Yet they survived everything listed above. Perspective is an amazing and valuable gift. Refined and enlightening as time goes on. Let us try to keep things in perspective. Your parents and/or grandparents were called upon to endure all of the above – today we are being called upon to stay home and sit on the couch.”
Author unknown
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My Gramps was born in 1915. Passed in his sleep at 80, still believing the Dems were for the working man. Me, I was barely 30 and still a dumb ass. If he was still around there would be lots to talk about.
I miss him.
The wife … well, her parents ran away from Mao’s Cultural Revolution back in the ’60’s. Even after all that she seems convinced that would never happen here. Me, I’m not so sure and in my case, it’s a brand new easy chair.
Damned comfortable, but I have a hunch that’s only temporary.
You forgot the dustbowl.
Dad was born in 1903 and Mom in 1911.
Mom lived to see two milleniels, two centuries, two haley’s commets, two world wars, two husbands, a depression, and raised 7 kids to maturity, no mean feat back then.
I forgot to mention. She did all that without ever once pulling the tag off of a Pillow or Mattress.
and you were #8?
I thought of my father-in-law, while reading this. He told of getting an orange and a piece of hard candy for Christmas and how it made them so happy.
Perspective leads to gratitude.
My Dad was born in early 1914, so he saw all of this. He was the youngest of 6, so his four brothers and one sister endured most of this. Needless to say, their sense of responsibility was quite different than what we see today.
I knew about all this stuff, just never put it all together like that, yet, I only remember my grandpa talking of the good old days. Amazing. Thanks for the perspective. I will appreciate him even more.
The Greatest Generation really was great; the others since-not so much.
Two of my uncles fought in WW1 in France…I still have postcards sent to my grandma from them postmarked -Somewhere in France…and their booklet of French language translations given to each soldier…..
Grandfathers both born in 1867, one in what would be Croatia, one in Slovakia…..we had an outhouse when they were landing on the moon but never knew we were poor….we had family, God, guns and the woods….and a nice field for a garden, and a belief in the American dream….
My dad a coal miner would roll over in his grave at the Dims and the USA today….
My father is still alive and well at 92. Born in 1927. He just shakes his head and says most folk today are buttass stupid and ignorant. He’s a WWII veteran, missed Nam and Korea because he got stationed elsewheres. He volunteered for Nam and they sent him to Germany, he took care of the Vietnam wounded sent to Germany since he was an OR tech/nurse along with being tied to the seventh evac hospitals.
I will NEVER let him end up in a nursing home, especially when you see the shit happening in them these days!
+1000
This story leaves out the part where after surviving all those difficulties grandpa gets smothered to death in his bed at the nursing home by the minimum wage immigrant worker from Haiti.
All of my grandparents were born between 1898 and 1902. They sure did survive a lot of shit. I wonder what they would think of Whitmer, Pritzker, or Cuomo?
“Your parents and/or grandparents were called upon to endure all of the above – today we are being called upon to stay home and sit on the couch.”
Yes, and instead of meeting challenges with grit and smarts, we sit and bemoan our fate as we become fatter, weaker, and dumber along with losing our liberties.
Great perspective. My paternal grandparents immigrated at the turn of the 20th century. He worked in a railroad machine shop on a turret lathe that tore the arm off the man who operated it previously. She worked at a seamstress sweatshop in NYC. Her foreman insulted her heritage (Italian) so she punched her in the face. She was fired. Weeks later it burned down killing over a hundred poor Irish and Italian immigrant girls. It was the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. They barely survived the depression only to have 3 of their sons fight in WW2. They didn’t hear my oldest uncle’s voice from 1942 until 1945.
If they could see what ‘men’ are like today they’d bury their faces in their hands and weep.
My Grandfather was born in 1903 on the steppes of Russia just west of the Volga River. In 1906 my Great Grandfather moved the family to Colorado. My Great Grandfather was a blacksmith as well as a farmer. My ancestors farmed sugar beets near Greeley and then Brighton, Colorado until 1939 when two succeeding years of bad crops forced them to move to Denver. My Grandfather, raised 7 kids on 40 acres of beets and then as a mechanic in Denver. Lost a brother who served in WWI and had been exposed to Mustard Gas and succumbed to the damage several years after the war. He sent 3 sons and several nephews to fight in WWII, one of the nephews was killed in Italy in 1944. Sent 1 son to Korea and 2 Grandsons to Vietnam. I think this generation who raised the children that fought WWII was in my mind truly “The Greatest Generation”.
My maternal Grandmother had parents that come from Frank Russia. Lots of Volga Deutsch settled mid America. Have a picture of my Grandmother taken in front of sod hut on the Wisconsin prairie at turn of 20th century. Paternal Grandfather was a regular kraut that jumped merchant ship to avoid going home just before WWI (Family lie was that he was put ashore with malaria).
Great-Grandma was born in Holland and emigrated to Utah territory. She cast votes in both the territory and the state ~35 years before women got the vote in the USA.
Grandma was born in 1915 and spit and smoked tobacco. She foretold bogus impeachment (2019) and national emergency (2020). . . in August of 1981.
Now, that’s what I call perspective.
My paternal grandpa was born somewhere in Oklahoma in 1878. He was the youngest in the family which had immigrated from Sweden. He worked as boilermaster in a factory in the river bottoms of Kansas City,Kansas and in his final years ran a tool repair shop out of his basement garage. He died at age 93 just after the moon landing.
My grandma, 15 years younger than he, always refused to tell us where she was born, other than to say that she was from Texas and that’s all that mattered. She worked all her life as a skilled seamstress in a coffin factory in KC, Missouri, and never retired until a year or so before her death at age 83. I still miss her especially.
Both my father and mother were WW2 Marine Corps veterans. My mom pulled my father from a bar room brawl near the Marine Air Base in El Toro, California where they were both stationed shortly after the Japanese surrender. Three months later, after her boss, the base chaplain conducted their marriage ceremony, they moved cross country to the midwest and began working their way together through college and law school at Kansas University. He worked nights in the railroad yards as a switchman, and she maintained their 3 story house on the university campus, renting rooms to fellow students and caring for five or six various German Shepherd dogs for a local veterinarian. She also birthed my two sisters and me during this time.
They practiced law together in their own firm for 45 years. After my father’s death in 2008, my mom continued handling cases and representing clients in court until age 95. She passed away in 2018 at age 97 and is buried next to my father in a hillside in the Ft Leavenworth National Cemetery overlooking the Missouri River.
I knew only one set of my grandparents. I heard stories of their struggles from my mom but they never complained about anything.