Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Which era in American history would you choose to live in?

We Germans have a saying:
Too soon old. Too late smart"

I strongly suspect that the vast majority of living in the old times was hardscrabble, boring repetition with little opportunity for recreation.

Everybody hears about the adventuresome aspects of the old days, but nobody bothers to mention the endless days spent behind a mule trying to keep yourself fed.

Until fairly recently, life for the common folk was a constant struggle for survival. Anybody who wants to live like they did back then can buy a secluded patch of land in Appalachia, a mule, a milk cow, build a log cabin and get after it.

Glad you found it interesting. My great aunt Elsie, the younger sister of Essie, came to help out when my mom died in 1968, and my youngest brother was 10. They both looked remarkably alike. I attended my Great Uncle Guy's funeral in Vici when I was just a youngster. Would have been 1958, as she mentions in the last paragraph.

Not everyone were farmers. There were a lot of adventurers. The American continent was a free land with a free people and many, many men lived that way.

Actually a lot of people today are going back to self reliance. Wise, but very different.

You didn't have to be a farmer to need to eat.

You'd have been swept up into Korea.

Life was hard, no doubt about it. Here is a great story on how Lewis was shot in the arse by his hunting partner because, well spectacles were in short supply in the wilderness.

https://www.lewis-clark.org/article/3011

Ya, life was more difficult. Life is more than avoiding risk. Any of us can die at any time for a whole host of modern reasons. Hell, degenerative diseases have sky rocketed in modern times. A whole host of aliments were much rarer then, like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Diabetes, no not very prevalent when one is working 14 hour days at hard physical labor trying to scrape together enough food to live through the winter.

Heart disease, remember "hardening of the arteries"? Otherwise hard working folks got lots of exercise and stayed lean, which promotes heart health.

Cancer: with an average life expectancy of about 45 years, most folks were dead before cancer showed up. And in many cases cancer went undetected. Folks just died and got buried.

While newborn and infant deaths do skew the stats a little. Still a 16 year old can expect to live almost twenty years longer today than in 1900.

For anyone who wishes to give up their air conditioned work space and trade it for a few days following a draft horse with a walking plow at 110 degrees, I can show them how to make that happen.

ZTDz, yes there was a reason that 13 year old ivirgin girls demanded exorbitant prices as brides. L

Cancer: with an average life expectancy of about 45 years, most folks were dead before cancer showed up. And in many cases cancer went undetected. Folks just died and got buried.

While newborn and infant deaths do skew the stats a little. Still a 16 year old can expect to live almost twenty years longer today than in 1900.

For anyone who wishes to give up their air conditioned work space and trade it for a few days following a draft horse with a walking plow at 110 degrees, I can show them how to make that happen.

ZTDz, yes there was a reason that 13 year old ivirgin girls demanded exorbitant prices as brides. L

Grocery stores have made America fat, diabetic and grossly prone to heart disease, and our endless free time has produced a nation hedonists. We are a miserable excuse of a country exactly because we have enormous luxury.

Right here, right now.

As Charles Dickens said, “ It was the worst of times, it was the best of times “.

This is going to get really interesting and I think pretty soon.


Jmo

If you made it past 12 years of age the chances were pretty good you’d live a while longer.

Eat up! 🤣🤣🤣