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

Lets put it in perspective:

Perspective is a wonderful gift. It usually comes from experience. Life is hard.

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? When you were a kid in 1985 and didn’t think your 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was.

Yet they survived through everything listed above. Perspective is an amazing art. Refined and enlightening as time goes on. Let’s try and keep things in perspective.

Your parents and/or grandparents were called to endure all of the above – you are called to stay home and sit on the couch.

Remember that God is sovereign, help each other, and we will get through this.

Why guess, just ask Ingwe.

Good post

They were some damn tough folks. Literally lived from the horse and buggy era through the space age.
And you RARELY ever heard one of them complain about “how hard” life was.

Hot Rod Magazine interviewed a 105 year old woman they found renewing her license at the DMV a few years ago. She bought her first brand new car in 1932, A '32 Ford with a V8 of course. Got married in 1933. Husband retired in..............................................1964 YES RETIRED IN 1964. They traveled the country until his death in the 1980's. I think he'd been dead 30 years when they interviewed her haha. Old gal lived through a lot for sure.

My grandfather was born in 1900. Jumped out of the school window in 2nd grade; never went back. Left home at 14. Tried to get into WWI but it ended a day before his 18th birthday. Lost a young sister to the 1918 flu.

Raced motorcycles with Lindbergh in the early '20s. Invented some gasket that wouldn't burn during the refining process for Harry Sinclair of Sinclair Oil. Sinclair offered him a job for life; he passed. Married right before the crash - worked throughout the Great Depression.

Road construction was his game. Bugs Moran and one of his henchmen pinned him behind his own front door for not doing a union road job. Grandma put an end to that with a double barrel leveled at Bugs guts. No issues after that.

Lost a daughter in '31.

Wanted to join WWII since he just missed WWI - he simply wanted to serve his country. He was 42 with a wife and 4 kids. Really wanted to be a SeaBee. Navy said no dice, you have to stay on the homefront and make sure roads are cleared and maintained during the northern Minnesota winters.

My mom moved 37 times with the family to different road jobs. Worked that heavy equipment road construction business until he was 68 when he turned it over to his son.

Lost another daughter in '77. Lost that son in '88.

Cancer took his colon in '63 and his ear in '86.

Summered up north and wintered in AZ.

Shot his last deer at 91. Died at 92. Never learned to read or write.

A life damn well lived.

Mine also was born in 1900.

I probably wouldn't have lived more than a couple hours. So much for "the good old days."

My grandmother was born in 1900 in Germany and she recalled having an uncle that took her hunting as a kid, before WW1, and that he used to reload his own ammo. Came to Australia from East Germany in the 1950s, before the wall went up - still had to sneak out to Berlin to escape.

She wasn't a strong denialist but never really believed the holocaust happened.

She lived to 92.

My Grandpop was born in 1900 as well. Missed serving in WW I, served in the National Guard between the wars. Lost a son in WW II. Passed in 1991.
Finest human being I have ever known, and a very positive influence in my life.

That was mine as well 1901-1998

Would not waste a dime, would not throw anything away........

Slung a cow from the barn rafters, fed and watered till her broken hip healed......... cows were valuable, she threw a calf every year for the next 20...............

Excellent post... All 4 of my grandparents were born from 1893-1903. That was a different generation for sure. They sure as hell didn't depend on the government for as much as many folks do today. That generation was also pretty much the parents of the Greatest Generation.

Mom's Dad was born in 1902. He missed WWI-- was in training camp when it ended.

He grew up in Brecksville, Ohio. It was an idyllic farming community at the time, now it's a bedroom community with a lot of lawyers and stock brokers from Cleveland.

A couple of things to add:

Contagion was a big thing. He remembered "black typhoid" and tuberculosis. In one instance, the sheriff carted a whole family off to a pest house and set the family's house on fire.

Just about anything you caught back then was deadly. He got appendicitis the summer he was 12. They gave him mercury, thinking it was a simple blockage. When that didn't work, the doctor operated on him on the dining room table. The appendix burst in the doc's hand. He spent the summer balled up over a pillow in a hammock in the yard.

Dad's Dad was conscripted for WWI and spent most of the war being shuttled up to the front and promptly sent back. His head was too big for a gas mask. The Germans finally put him on furlough towards the end of the war. He got home just in time to find his mother dead. We're not sure if she starved or caught the Spanish Flu. Both were fairly common at that point. We also don't know why it was him and not his father that found her. They were all living together; it must have been a bad scene there in Marburg in 1918.

Grandpa lived through the panic after the war. His best friend, a butcher he met in Cincinnati, used to tell a story about getting $20 American sent to him from the States. He took the best coach on the best train to Hamburg and got the best room in the best hotel. He had the most expensive meal at the most expensive restaurant, had the best whore, and ordered a box of the best cigars-- he came home with over $10 American in his pocket.

Grandpa's older brother told a painter from Austria to STFU. One thing led to another and Unc had to go hide in the Black Forest for 10 years. Grandpa saw what was going on and left for the States. We all know how that turned out.

Grandpa mailed bacon fat back to Germany for years to the kin that stayed in Marburg. It took the onset of WWII to stop it. Bacon fat was embargoed as a strategic material.

I used to know a woman that grew up outside Dayton. Her father used to collaborate with the Wrights and Curtiss on engines. She saw the first flights at Dayton and eventually got to go up.

My Grandfather was also born in 1900. The story that always heard was he went to enlist in WWI. Took his physical one day and they were to be sworn in the next day During the night a telegram came in saying that the armistice had been signed and to send all recruits home. He has been gone about 40 years now. I miss him.

Good post. I'd never thought about it, my Dad and uncles were born between 1898 and 1906. In retrospect, calm, intelligent reasonable men with a tremendous sense of duty and honor to family and their country. Probably drummed into them by their immigrant father who thought he had gone to heaven when he landed in NW Minnesota grain country in 1880. Makes me wonder how hard life was on a mountain side farm in Norway.

My Granddad on my dad's side was born in 1899. He came down with polio at the age of 14 or 15 which left him with crippled legs the rest of his life. He was able to get around with the use of a cane. He was sent away to St. Louis for treatment and spent a year or more there away from his family. I have a bunch of the letters that were written to him by his mother, father, brother, sister and other family members and also friends/classmates. The letters are very insightful as to the lives they lead back then. Some from his buddies are quite entertaining as they talk about girls and such.
Unfortunately, he developed dementia or alzheimer's when I was young, so I didn't have the opportunity to have any real meaningful conversations with him.

My other Granddad was born in 1902. The depression caused him to ride the rails looking for work. One story that was told told about him, he was in or on top of a box car when he was confronted by a train employee. The employee was going to throw him off. Granddad at that time was a good size man of 6 ft and 200 lbs. He told the man that "If I go, you are going with me". The man stopped, looked him over and turned and left. He died of cancer just before I was born. I would have loved to have been able to talk to him. I do have a rifle that was his, a Remington Model 16 Autoloader that was made between 1914 and 1928.

Thank you Rock, you always post good thoughts.

My Grandpa was born in 1898 in Norway and came to the US through Ellis Island as a kid in 1902. He served in WWI, and after the war moved to Larsmont MN and started commercial fishing on Lake Superior. He died in 1988 and I sure wish I'd of paid better attention to what he said and did. I miss him terribly.

Therein lay the crux of the matter. Not oft mentioned, but very true.

Grandmother was born in Texas 1890, as a young girl her family went to New Mexico by wagon train where my Great Grandfather homesteaded,

She lived to see man land on the moon

Her husband my Grandfather died in the early 1930's leaving her with 3 boys to raise on her own.

All 3 boys served in WWII, two were wounded which probably contributed to early deaths.

One of my great uncles died of the Spanish flu