Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire suppose you were born in 1900...

My mother was born in '17 and is still here, doing well. She was too young to remember WWI and the Spanish flu but she well remembers all the rest. Her older brother caught the flu and survived a temp of 110. It did make him slow learning the rest of his life. Mom was sent to live with relatives until he recovered. They lost a farm in the depression. Gpa had a good harvest in the barn but couldn't sell it for cash. There was no cash to be had. For the lack of $200 cash to pay the mortgage, they lost it. The lack of cash in circulation about destroyed the country.
Dad was navy during WWII. Mom has lots of war stories to tell.

My grandmother on my mother's side was born in 1901. They bought the first bicycle in the county! She was promptly denied communion for riding it to town. What a hussy!

When I left to go to basic training in 1988 I had a long conversation with my great grandmother who had been born in 1886. Do the math, she was 102 when I left for basic. She told me about her life. She was born in MO and when she was a little girl the family went to the World's Fair in Chicago and she saw Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She told me about seeing her first car and airplane and when she first rode in a car. She told me about hearing a radio for the first time and seeing television for the first time. She told me about living through the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. She told me about watching the birth of Rock and Roll and the Civil Rights era. In one life time she saw the world go from buckboard wagons to the space shuttle. It was one of the best conversations I ever had. I wish I had asked her a lot more questions because she died before I finished basic training.

I've had similar talks with my 102 yo mother. One thing that always gets left out is prohibition and the famous criminals, Al Capone, Bonny & Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, and the rest. They were all active in the 20's and 30's. The hunts for them brought about major changes in our laws that people often overlook. The inability of lawmen to cross state or county lines brought about our hot pursuit laws that allow a cop to cross a line as long as he's hot after them. Then there's the way they degraded the 2d Amendment when they clamped down on machine guns, etc. The Treasury Dept established the Dept of Internal Revenue (the infamous revenoors that people hated so much) which became the ATF. The whole mess was all tied together as a result of prohibition.