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As a kid I loved to read about the long hunters and the mountain men. I wanted to live in that era. I’m in my mid 40’s and old enough that I wouldn’t want to be transported back to that time to survive. I liked the Wild West but I think at that time post Civil War America was already straying from its foundation and again to rough for me to want to try to adapt to in my mid 40’s.

I think post WWII through to about the mid 1960’s would have been a nice time to have been in my hay day in America. I’m happy with my life and where it is at but strictly speaking from a best times in America standpoint there’s maybe been worse times (Great Depression) but no doubt a lot of better times.
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
Would have been cool to be born about 1730. Experience the French and Indian wars. Also, it would have been amazing to experience Kentucky before it got all full of Kentuckians. The tales say it was a hunters paradise before the Cumberland Gap stuff.
In the era where the media reports facts, the democrat party is no more, the prisons full of traitors and antifa and blm are footnotes in history as POS terrorists
Being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition would have been epic too!
1950-1965
1980-2000.
2016-2020.
It’s all Over now but the crying.

Like a buddy of mine used to always say.... “Don’t blame me, I voted for Wallace.
WWII. I've spent my whole life wishing I would've been around to take part in it
The one I’ve lived in.
Pull an abscessed tooth without novocaine before you long for the good old days.
Originally Posted by moosemike
WWII. I've spent my whole life wishing I would've been around to take part in it
Just curious. Why?
I think it would have been cool as hell to have lived when my great grandmother did. She was born in 1889 and died in 1992. From horse and buggy to the space age. She saw one hell of a lot in her life and from the stories she told, had a hell of a good time.
50's through to 2000, the golden age in the west, be it USA or Australia, downward drift after that.
The old days were kinda rough

Originally Posted by Hastings
Originally Posted by moosemike
WWII. I've spent my whole life wishing I would've been around to take part in it
Just curious. Why?


Might be because of my Grandfather. I don't know. It's just been my lifes fascination
I'm fine with the one coming up, I wish I was in better shape, and 15 years younger though. Ahh, better late than never though, I guess...
Now....We actually may have a chance to make an indelible mark on American history. A re-dedication to our Constitutional principles, a serious and traumatic blow to endemic corruption and a lawful rebellion to regain control of our government. We no longer enjoy “domestic tranquility” our “Union” is imperfect, our government is destructive of these ends....


“That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness“ Declaration of Independence.
Originally Posted by Bristoe
Pull an abscessed tooth without novocaine before you long for the good old days.

Agreed. And is a primary reason along with refrigeration and antibiotics that I wouldn’t at this stage in life wish to go to far back in history. As a teenager or early 20’s something and feeling bulletproof. Exploring the Smokey Mountains or Rocky Mountains mostly wild and never before seen by a white man sounded like a good and free time to have lived.

Dido for the Wild West and having a half drunk Doc Holiday trying to pull it.
I like to be comfortable, for sure. But there's more to life than just comfort. Advancements, toys, and gizmos. There's a quality of society and the world around you that some of us think is more important.

I'd like to go back to almost any time before now... with the exception of maybe about 1914 through 1945 or so.

My own period of interest is mid to late 18th century, and the Revolutionary War period.
Post civil war , hate Yankees , so self exploitation
Pre Civil War South if you had some money seems like it would have been a great era.
Originally Posted by moosemike
WWII. I've spent my whole life wishing I would've been around to take part in it

I think that and having survived it to be able to prosper after as the nation did as a whole would have been a sweet spot in American history. My grandmother’s first boyfriend was called to fight in WWII they engaged right before he left with plans to marry as soon as he got back. He was killed in 1943 and my grandmother eventually married my grandpa in 1947. So but through a quirk of fate and history I wouldn’t be here.
This time right here and now. I just hope we deal well with the time given us. It's been said America won't be defeated from without, but from within. I hope WE can turn the current onslaught of the latest flavor of marxism within our borders and leave a better world for our decedents.
The current one shifted back a couple of decades.

Wouldn't mind having been born about 1930. As a young kid you wouldn't know or care much about the Depression since you wouldn't have any prosperous time to compare it to. Too young for WWII except to help out on the Home Front with your Boy Scout troop. Enter the work force around 1950-1952 and get a good life long job with the aerospace or automobile industry or if you're really forward thinking - and I would be - become one of those new fangled "computer programmers" working for IBM. Maybe get to work for NASA during the 60's and 70's.

Live your adulthood in the height of the American Empire and hopefully have died in my sleep at age 88 or 89 during the Trump administration.

There'd be economic ups and downs and social changes over the years but overall a good time to have lived.



Plus I'd know to bet everything on the Jets in the 1969 Super Bowl, Secretariat in 1973 and buy all the silver I could find for $8-10/ounce in 1979. Put all of those proceeds into the Microsoft IPO in 1986 and it's all hookers and cocaine after that... wink
Right now. Life wasn't worth living until we got the 6.5 Creedmoor.
Originally Posted by 19352012
Right now. Life wasn't worth living until we got the 6.5 Creedmoor.
More importantly I wouldn't have wanted to be stuck with nothing but muzzleloaders. Life wasn't worth living without breech loading repeaters.
TheLastLemming76: For the Mule Deer Hunting I would loved to have been a Hunter in the 1940's and early 1950's.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy
Jim
That mirrors my grandparents lives. Both of my grandpas just missed WWII. One hired in to General Motors after the war and the other to Dow Chemical. Both left small scale farms for an easier life in small suburbs. One from the thumb of Michigan and he never looked back and the other from up North in Alpena that missed rule living and eventually retired back up North. I spent a lot of time as a kid fishing, learning to hunt, roaming the woods, and burning through bricks of .22 ammo up North. Both were great men and lived great lives.
Same question across most of the 1st world and what gets a lot of votes is the 1950's-1990's. ww2 done, depression recovered, anti-biotics and decent medicine and surgery, equal rights, any man can afford an education or become president, job promotion by merit, a single income buys a house and supports the family, less than half the current incarceration rate, always some new discovery happening, we really believed we'd be living on jupiters moons by the year 2000, and it wasnt crazy thinking, we went from steampower to space flight in just a few decades after all, back then science meant BIG changes, not just different sized cellphones each year and Musk unveiling bullet proof toasters.
Originally Posted by VarmintGuy
TheLastLemming76: For the Mule Deer Hunting I would loved to have been a Hunter in the 1940's and early 1950's.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy


I remember reading about the Mule Deer hunting in the 80’s and how the deer weren’t as naive as they once was. That would have been a great time too. I was always fascinated by the West and still love it. Even the rolling prairie and foothills are beautiful. If not for a girlfriend or two in my early 20’s and having no connections I would have relocated out there. I wouldn’t trade my life now for the world but the western states are special. Both from a cultural standpoint and resources one. I have vivid memories of reading old G&A mags and dreaming about what we’re exotic calibers to a Michigan kid. The .264 Win Mag, 25-06, 257 Roberts and Weatherby ect.
Originally Posted by Bristoe
Pull an abscessed tooth without novocaine before you long for the good old days.


Yep.

I yearn to have ridden a horse into any one of many, many Idaho mountain meadows and observe a herd of cattle peacefully grazing there before any fences broke the scene, and well before hundreds or thousands of homes infested the areas.

But honestly, I never could have lived to see such things. I would have been dead at least three different times before I hit 20 years of age had I been born a couple or three decades earlier.
Heart issues at birth
Staff infection in my ears at six years
Appendicitis in my teens

Yes, all things considered, it is a good time to be alive.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by Bristoe
Pull an abscessed tooth without novocaine before you long for the good old days.


Yep.

I yearn to have ridden a horse into any one of many, many Idaho mountain meadows and observe a herd of cattle peacefully grazing there before any fences broke the scene, and well before hundreds or thousands of homes infested the areas.

But honestly, I never could have lived to see such things. I would have been dead at least three different times before I hit 20 years of age had I been born a couple or three decades earlier.
Heart issues at birth
Staff infection in my ears at six years
Appendicitis in my teens

Yes, all things considered, it is a good time to be alive.


Same. A nasty ear infection as a young kid and a bad reaction to the chicken pox would have done me in before 20.
Originally Posted by VarmintGuy
TheLastLemming76: For the Mule Deer Hunting I would loved to have been a Hunter in the 1940's and early 1950's.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy


Montana must have been different than Idaho. The depression left big game nearly extinct in Idaho. Dad and Uncles tell me that mule deer were just starting to recover in the early 50s. In this area we had generous seasons and two deer limits of either sex during the 60s.

My family ran cattle on USFS lands west of Cascade Id. They were in a great position to be aware of game populations. They first saw elk again in that area during the 60s. By the 90s elk population was booming in Idaho. Then the idiot leftists released the Canadian Grey Wolves into our herds.
Originally Posted by OldHat
Being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition would have been epic too!


Nah, I am not that fond of dog meat, gonorrhea, or syphilis.
From what I read and that’s all it is second hand reading many years ago but the mule deer population sprung back after the depression and it was a hay day for deer hunting for a decade or two. I’d imagine the popularization of modern cartridges, bolt guns, and optics played a role two.
Pretty much any time besides today.
Originally Posted by TheLastLemming76
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by Bristoe
Pull an abscessed tooth without novocaine before you long for the good old days.

Yep.
I yearn to have ridden a horse into any one of many, many Idaho mountain meadows and observe a herd of cattle peacefully grazing there before any fences broke the scene, and well before hundreds or thousands of homes infested the areas.
But honestly, I never could have lived to see such things. I would have been dead at least three different times before I hit 20 years of age had I been born a couple or three decades earlier.
Heart issues at birth
Staff infection in my ears at six years
Appendicitis in my teens
Yes, all things considered, it is a good time to be alive.

Same. A nasty ear infection as a young kid and a bad reaction to the chicken pox would have done me in before 20.
Pneumonia before antibiotics would have killed me be fore I was 6, and appendicitis at age 13. I bet over half of us would not have made it to age 20. As I made my rounds I walked through many old rural graveyards. They had lots of kids buried in them. Probably were a lot more there without markers. There were a lot more people living out in those pine woods than there are now. A lot of fairly young women are represented in those graveyards also. Life was hard and money was almost non existent. Our family traded hogs for town goods, traded labor for sawed lumber, ground corn on halves, the only money they could earn was with the little cotton they could raise. But they understood the children needed to go to school and a lot of families scraping by in the late 1800s and early 1900s didn't.
I never thought about it, I guess I took it for granted but there’s nothing that would’ve killed me in my youth either 40 years ago or 140 years ago. I’ve been healthy as a horse.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by OldHat
Being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition would have been epic too!
Nah, I am not that fond of dog meat, gonorrhea, or syphilis.
Not to mention constant rain in Oregon once they got there. By all accounts the boys were eaten up with syphilis. I wonder if they brought it with them or got it from the Indian maidens.
Originally Posted by Hastings
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by OldHat
Being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition would have been epic too!
Nah, I am not that fond of dog meat, gonorrhea, or syphilis.
Not to mention constant rain in Oregon once they got there. By all accounts the boys were eaten up with syphilis. I wonder if they brought it with them or got it from the Indian maidens.

First winter was a fuuckfest.
Folks have already beat me to the punchline. I too would have been dead before the age of 4 without modern antibiotics. My mother and father would have both died as well.

Grandpa survived a burst appendix at age 12. This was in Brecksville, Ohio before WWI. They cut him open on the dining room table. He spent the summer rolled up in a hammock unable to move.

All that aside, I think I'd like to see America in the early 1900's and perhaps a bit earlier-- just for a visit, mind you. I'd like to go to Brecksville and meet Elmer Ellsworth, my great-grandfather and have dinner at their table.

Other places and times?

I once had a dream of visiting a tavern and bumping into a young Benjamin Franklin. He could tell I wasn't playing straight with him when he asked where I was from. Without spilling everything, I got to tell him that he would succeed beyond his wildest imagination. I'd like to have that talk for real.

I'd like to visit my Grandfather as he was building his first million, perhaps as he was working on one of the home show houses he built inside Music Hall back in the 20's. They say he was a grand specimen. I only remember sitting on his belly shortly before he died when I was 3. They say he was a human mountain and a force of nature. I'd like to see it for real.

I'd like to see Cincinnati when it was still called Losantiville and it was just cabins in the woods with big oaks, beeches, and poplars all around.

Henry Miller Shreve built the first steamboat that went up the Mississippi all the way to Pittsburgh. He's one of my forebears. I hear he wasn't a pleasant man, but I would dearly love to shake his hand on the deck of the George Washington, going up the Mississippi and Ohio in 1817. I'd also certainly love to make the run from Louisville upriver and put in at Cincinnati for a few days.

I'd like to visit Great Grandpa Claude and go Muskie fishing with him on the Cuyahoga (before it burned) . He had an old door covered with heads. Some were big enough to fit your head in. I'd also like to spend some time bird hunting with him and Grandpa Whitey.

I'd like to be around for the VJ day celebration on Fountain Square.

I'd like to see a few Red's games during Frank Robinson's rookie year in '56.

I'd like to follow my Dad around Miami Beach, meeting up with Jackie Gleason for a drink or whoever.

I'd like to have been able to see Starfish Prime-- the biggest fireworks show ever.
Originally Posted by OldHat
Would have been cool to be born about 1730. Experience the French and Indian wars. Also, it would have been amazing to experience Kentucky before it got all full of Kentuckians. The tales say it was a hunters paradise before the Cumberland Gap stuff.


Unless you got captured and tortured to death by the Indians. Or got a toothache. Or appendicitis. Or...or...
I think it would have been ideal to have been born around 1930 resulting in being about 15 at the end of world war II. From there I would have been ahead of the population bubble of boomers and enjoy a life of buying cheap housing, real estate, and most types of investing, always being ahead of the wave of boomers needs driving prices up.

I would have been old enough to have been an adult during the 50's and 60's to have enjoyed the golden era of western mule deer hunting, as well as the horse power race of OHV V-8 engine cars, and
fast and easy women from the era after the pill but before aids.

If a guy was born in 1930 and still alive today, he would be 90. Old enough to enjoy his grand children growing up and starting their older families before leaving behind the world and technology.

VarmitGuy, I lived the 50s and 60s hunting big mule deer and Elk in N.W. Colorado, I always wonder why hunters today call a Mule Deer, with a 30" spread a Monster or a Hog??

In the 50s & 60s our standard was 40" and above, my brother in law and me were talking about some of the bucks we killed back then a couple of day's ago, One buck we both shot at and I got was 43 1/2" inside spread with 11 points on 1 side and 13 points on the other side. He shot first and missed over his back I shot and dropped him, BIL e-mailed picture of the buck, he's still Pissed he missed and I didn't. Rio7
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by OldHat
Being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition would have been epic too!


Nah, I am not that fond of dog meat, gonorrhea, or syphilis.

They ate a lot more than dogs. The game was extremely plentiful, but the winter overs were hard.

200 years ago people weren't stupid. They knew sticking your pecker in the wrong place was not good. So not everyone had VD because not everyone had low character.

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.
Originally Posted by IndyCA35
Originally Posted by OldHat
Would have been cool to be born about 1730. Experience the French and Indian wars. Also, it would have been amazing to experience Kentucky before it got all full of Kentuckians. The tales say it was a hunters paradise before the Cumberland Gap stuff.


Unless you got captured and tortured to death by the Indians. Or got a toothache. Or appendicitis. Or...or...

Obviously a lot of people lived through those times so it was not as bad as made out.

There must of have been something special to plant roots in early Kentucky else they would not have flooded in.

I can tell not many people have read the INCREDIBLE hunting stories of the pre settlement Bluegrass state. Even the Indians traveled there for the spectacular hunting.
BTW - Danial Boone lived to be in his 80s. Still hunting in his old age. He left Kentucky because he valued the freedom of the unsettled country.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by VarmintGuy
TheLastLemming76: For the Mule Deer Hunting I would loved to have been a Hunter in the 1940's and early 1950's.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy


Montana must have been different than Idaho. The depression left big game nearly extinct in Idaho. Dad and Uncles tell me that mule deer were just starting to recover in the early 50s. In this area we had generous seasons and two deer limits of either sex during the 60s.

My family ran cattle on USFS lands west of Cascade Id. They were in a great position to be aware of game populations. They first saw elk again in that area during the 60s. By the 90s elk population was booming in Idaho. Then the idiot leftists released the Canadian Grey Wolves into our herds.

By the time the early 1990s arrived big game all across the US were decimated, except Alaska.

No game laws and unrestricted subsistence hunting with better rifles will do that.


Originally Posted by StrayDog
I think it would have been ideal to have been born around 1930 resulting in being about 15 at the end of world war II. From there I would have been ahead of the population bubble of boomers and enjoy a life of buying cheap housing, real estate, and most types of investing, always being ahead of the wave of boomers needs driving prices up.

I would have been old enough to have been an adult during the 50's and 60's to have enjoyed the golden era of western mule deer hunting, as well as the horse power race of OHV V-8 engine cars, and
fast and easy women from the era after the pill but before aids.

If a guy was born in 1930 and still alive today, he would be 90. Old enough to enjoy his grand children growing up and starting their older families before leaving behind the world and technology.

+10 this these folks had common sense and all attended various schools of hardknocks. You didn't see young guys walking around with their ball cap backwards, pants halfway down their ass either. Mb
.
Right now. Even though the pioneer days and the World War II era seems fascinating to some, Like the song goes, you should of seen it in color. Might change your mind. Although it might be great to visit, wouldn't want to stay.
Originally Posted by Magnum_Bob
Originally Posted by StrayDog
I think it would have been ideal to have been born around 1930 resulting in being about 15 at the end of world war II. From there I would have been ahead of the population bubble of boomers and enjoy a life of buying cheap housing, real estate, and most types of investing, always being ahead of the wave of boomers needs driving prices up.

I would have been old enough to have been an adult during the 50's and 60's to have enjoyed the golden era of western mule deer hunting, as well as the horse power race of OHV V-8 engine cars, and
fast and easy women from the era after the pill but before aids.

If a guy was born in 1930 and still alive today, he would be 90. Old enough to enjoy his grand children growing up and starting their older families before leaving behind the world and technology.

+10 this these folks had common sense and all attended various schools of hardknocks. You didn't see young guys walking around with their ball cap backwards, pants halfway down their ass either. Mb
.


That may have been OK if you were in a a Star Trek frozen pod for the first 20 years. You might want to do some research on how hard it was to live through the depression, then WWII. The few years after WWII weren’t without their time of scarcity either.

When you consider how the depression had no silver lining, WWII was a life of rations and no luxuries, I would bet by the time you were 20, you would wish you were born then and not sooner.
I wouldn't necessarily want to have lived back 300 years ago but I would like to be teleported back to around that time just to spread the word that the country would be much better off in the long run if they would just pick their own cotton.
In the 1820s when my ancestors first came to tx, I would really like to have meet some of them.
In a time where there was justice.
Originally Posted by Blackheart
Originally Posted by 19352012
Right now. Life wasn't worth living until we got the 6.5 Creedmoor.
More importantly I wouldn't have wanted to be stuck with nothing but muzzleloaders. Life wasn't worth living without breech loading repeaters.


Amen. Screw muzzleloaders
Born just as the WW2 ended, and I have lived thru the best of times as a youth in my early teens. Hunted and fished myself to death starting at about 10. Can remember that first Daisy pump BB gun with that crooked stock....wore it out then on Christmas got a new one. Then at about 11 or 12 my cousin and hunting partner started to like the girls and every thing changed....had to do it all by myself for a couple years. That would put it at about 58 or 60....the best years of my life. Before the segregation set in, LBJ, space launch, '58-'60 cars, catching 8 lb bass off the bed, priming sand lugs, wood burning stoves, killing 8-10 hogs every winter, Mama giving me a bath outside in a tin tub that the sun had heated the water, helping her hang the clothes on the line, my first hamburger cooked over Daddy's home made charcoal pit, riding my first bicycle down a rain slick highway and going over the handle bars and busting my head open, getting on the school bus with my fingers taped up with black tape by Daddy because I would not quit biting the fingernails, playing "spin the bottle" at my first girlfriends house and got that first kiss. Made the high school basketball team 1st string and 4 years of being top scorer, lost the county championship on a last second shot that haunts me to this day. Oh, those were the days. Everything changed after high school and really started down hill since then....been some good times and good years but will always be the best of times when I was many years younger. Can't regain those years...just relieve the memories till I die.
Originally Posted by StrayDog
I think it would have been ideal to have been born around 1930 resulting in being about 15 at the end of world war II. From there I would have been ahead of the population bubble of boomers and enjoy a life of buying cheap housing, real estate, and most types of investing, always being ahead of the wave of boomers needs driving prices up.

I would have been old enough to have been an adult during the 50's and 60's to have enjoyed the golden era of western mule deer hunting, as well as the horse power race of OHV V-8 engine cars, and
fast and easy women from the era after the pill but before aids.

If a guy was born in 1930 and still alive today, he would be 90. Old enough to enjoy his grand children growing up and starting their older families before leaving behind the world and technology.

You'd have been swept up into Korea.
Federalist period

1795 up to about 1830-ish.
Perfect just now!
Back before they outsourced everything.

From about the 30's to the 90's.

When the rebuilders, machinists, smiths....both tin and black...repair men....back when they were working.

Tradesmen and women.
Anytime after antibiotics works for me.
20 years old in 1775 so I could be in the fight for Independence or the same age in 1941, same cause.
Originally Posted by moosemike
Originally Posted by Blackheart
Originally Posted by 19352012
Right now. Life wasn't worth living until we got the 6.5 Creedmoor.
More importantly I wouldn't have wanted to be stuck with nothing but muzzleloaders. Life wasn't worth living without breech loading repeaters.


Amen. Screw muzzleloaders



I'm inclined to agree. I'd have loved to hunt with Boone or Browning or one of those guys, but between the lousy flinters, the wolves and the Injuns, I'd prefer to stay home.

I've had one run-in in the woods with a guy who was threatening me with a firearm, and all I had was an unloaded front stuffer. That was enough.

I hunt where I am the apex predator and it feels good. I don't need bears, savages, wolves and large cats to feel I've been there.
not really interested in going back before running water and soap. I don't want to smell ass 24/7
Originally Posted by OldHat
BTW - Danial Boone lived to be in his 80s.


Yeah but the average life span was maybe 40.

Read some Civil War history, and notice how young the generals were. Robert E. Lee was considered an old man, in his 50s.
Originally Posted by KFWA
not really interested in going back before running water and soap. I don't want to smell ass 24/7
As a kid there were a lot of folks around here with outhouses and wells you had the old rope and pulley method or cisterns. I spent a good bit of time at my aunt's country store. One thing I've commented on is that there are not near as many bad smelling people now as there were then.
Originally Posted by IndyCA35
Originally Posted by OldHat
BTW - Danial Boone lived to be in his 80s.


Yeah but the average life span was maybe 40.

Read some Civil War history, and notice how young the generals were. Robert E. Lee was considered an old man, in his 50s.


One of my favorite Daniel Boone studies. When he made his epic journey up the Missouri in his later years.

[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc]
As much as I am frankly disgusted by what I see around me, and by most of the people currently populating the nation and the world, I see right now as my best opportunity to take this schitshow of a nation and begin to get it headed in a healthy direction. That hasn't been a likelihood for over 12 decades, and it isn't likely now, but it is more likely than it was. As the fist clenches, the sand escapes.
This is from my maternal Great Grandmother:

The Autobiography of Bertha Frances Boyd (1882-1964)
1958

Dear Children,
Here is my happy childhood days, from the time I was three years old, to the best of my memory, your daddy and I spent of our lives together; as my father moved on a farm just across the road from your daddy’s folk in Putnam County, Missouri, when I was three years old and your daddy was five years old. My father’s children were most all girls and his father’s children were most all boys. We children played together and when we were old enough to go to school, sometimes wading snow shoe-top deep, the boys going ahead and kicking the snow out and making a path for the girls to walk in. We played outdoor games at school, such as ball and dare base and other simple games. With such exercise we were strong and healthy and had a lot of fun.

We always walked to church which was 1½ miles; a little country church built on my grandfather’s place and when we were old enough to work in the field, we all worked together, sometimes for my father and sometimes for his father; just wherever there was work that needed to be done.

And when I was 16 years old and your daddy was 18, we decided to get married, not giving a thought to the fact that I could not boil water without scorching it and that he did not have a $20 bill to his name. We got married on the 17th day of April, 1899, went to his folks and lived with them the first summer. He farmed with his dad and I helped his mother with the housework, for she was sick all summer and on the 29th day of June, Lank and Alice, her twins was born. So, I really got a lesson on housework and taking care of babies that summer, which was a lot of help to me in later years.

So that fall we moved into a little house on his uncle’s place and were so happy to be out to ourselves. Although we had very little to keep house with, we did not complain, for we never thought we needed very much. We lived there that winter and in the middle of the winter, his grandfather died; so when spring came, we moved in with his grandmother, for in those days an old person never lived alone. We farmed her place one year, then she decided she wanted to live with her daughter, so she sold her farm and went to live with her daughter and moved to another house on the lowlands of the Sharitan River.

By this time, we had our first baby, a little girl. We named her Essie. We lived there one winter, then in the spring, we decided to go to Oklahoma Territory, thinking we could go to the new country and file on land and that someday we would have a home of our own.

[Linked Image]
My Grandmother, Essie Henderson
born 1900.
(photo circa 1950s, Drumright OK)

We had friends who had gone to Oklahoma and they wrote to us and told us some wonderful things about the new country which, of course, made us want to try our luck. My folks begged us not to go and said we would not stay, that we was just wasting our time and money. But we still wanted to try our luck, so we sold what little we had and on the 5th day of April, we boarded a train and started west for the Oklahoma Territory. We got to our destination on the 7th day of April. We got off the train at a little station called Tucker. It is now called Belva. It was a terrible looking place right in a canyon between two high hills, or rather bluffs. I never will forget what Noah said when he looked at those bluffs. He said “Well, I just have a notion to just Tucker right back.” But so many people told us when we left Missouri that we never would stay, that we would be glad to get back; but we did not want to be a piker and we did not want to hear them say “Oh, I told you so”, so we just made up our minds that we could stay and tough it out if our friends and other people could.

[Linked Image from i.ytimg.com]
Belva, OK

The Indians were still plentiful and the cowboy and his gun was a part of the law, but the cattlemen were moving out and turning the country over to the homesteaders pretty fast. Our friends met us at the train and brought us to their place, which was west of a place where there was a store and a post office, now called Lenors, in Dewey County, a few miles south and east of Vici. Our friends name was John Lawson, who lived in a sod house, the first sod house I ever seen.

[Linked Image from i.pinimg.com]
Sod house, Indian Territory, OK
(circa 1900)


Well, it rained a lot that spring and one day it would rain outside and the next day it would rain inside, for the house had a dirt roof. Well, we stayed there a few days, then we moved into a little dugout, just three miles south of Cestos. There was not any Cestos there then, for we were there before Cestos was there. Well, we lived in the little dugout that summer, battling the snakes and tarantulas and the centipedes, and also another roof that leaked so bad that there was only one dry place in the house when it rained and that was under the table, which was made of rough lumber from a sawmill a few miles away. I would put the baby (Essie) in a box and push her under the table to keep her dry, spread a tarp over the bed and well, you know the rest.

We lived in the dugout that summer and on the 27th day of October, our second baby was born, a little boy. We named him Guy. He was born in the dugout. Our bedstead was made of rough lumber, homemade, and our chairs were nail kegs. So then and there we decided that if we was ever going to get any land that we had better get busy, for all the best land was taken before we got out here or had a chance. So we knew a man that had a claim out in Woodward County, who said he was tired of Oklahoma and wanted to go back east. We asked him what he would take for his claim. He said $200. So we bought him out and we filed on the land. We felt that we were pretty well off now that we had 160 acres of land, even though it was covered with rocks. Never had no house at all, no fence, no well of water, in fact, no nothing, except a spring of jip water so bitter no one could drink it. Well, Noah and his dad went out to the claim, which was east of Woodward, close to the place where we got off the train, when we first landed in Oklahoma. And they built us a little house, just one room 12’X18′ feet in size, built it out of rough lumber from the sawmill, not very nice; but it was a mansion compared to the dugout that we had been living in, and we were oh, so proud of it, for most of our neighbors still lived in sod houses or dugouts. So, in the claim we planted our first crop, which was kafir corn. We had a team of small horses. Noah plowed the sod with a sod plow. The male board was bent rod. He used a gallon syrup bucket to plant the seed. He filled the bucket with kafir, had holes punched in the bucket and tied it on the back of his plow, and in every third furrow he plowed, he drug the bucket behind the plow and this planted the seed, and surely God was with us and helped us for we raised a fine crop of kafir, the best we ever raised, although times were hard for we had plenty of feed and nothing to feed nothing to feed it to. But luck came our way, for we had a neighbor that had cows and no feed, so he let us keep three of his cows and milk them that winter for their feed, So we had our first milk and butter that winter, and with two little children to feed it was a real treat.

But we still had to have bread, too, and a few other things. So, me and the two babies had to stay alone out on the claim, in that wild western country, for Noah to go and find work, in order that we might eat. And he had to go so far back into western Kansas to find any work at all, that he could not even come home on weekends. Our few neighbors lived in dugouts, off in canyons, and the wolves and the coyotes were so thick and so hungry that they just howled all night long, right close around the house, and many times I had such a creepy feeling, I was almost scared, and wondered what I would do if one of the children would get sick. But surely God was out there also, for not one of us got sick while he was gone. So we had bread and milk that winter. With lots of rabbit and quail meat, for there were lots of them, and we fared real well. The rabbit and quail were so thick they would come close around the house. If Noah was at home, he would kill them with the gun and when he was gone, I would sometimes catch them in traps. So, we fared pretty well that winter.

The next Spring we planted more kafir, and made a garden and put up a little fence so we could keep the milk cows, which meant so much to us. In August we had our third baby, a little boy. We named him Dave. He was born in the little shack on the claim, with a Mrs. Rodell as a midwife in attendance. A wonderful person she was, for with no money, a doctor was out of the question, but with God close by, we did not need a doctor. We just got along fine. We lived in the little shack 5 years before we could make a cistern, so we could have water at home; and that was a great treat, for we had hauled all of our water in barrels with wagon and team and hauled it 5 miles for 5 years. And many, many times I felt in my heart that it was just not worth it to endure all the hardships of a new country for 160 acres of land not too good and for the experience of a pioneer life, But after we were there 5 years, we got a deed to our land, which made us feel better, and after the Oklahoma Territory was admitted to the Union and became a state, we felt we were safer and that we had helped to conquer the wild west and that we had helped to make and to improve one of the greatest states in the Union, the great and wonderful Oklahoma.

Then in the year of 1906, on April 1st, we had our fourth child, a little girl. We named her Ocie, a precious little one that we only got to keep 8 months. When she was 7 months old, I took the children and went back to Missouri to visit my folks who I had not seen for 5 long years, and I was so homesick for them that Noah told me that we could not both go, but since his folks were out here where he could see them often, for me to take the children and go back and see my folks and he would stay home and work. I went but it was the saddest trip I ever made, for while I was there, my baby took sick and died. I had to put her away out there so far from home and he could not even come to us or be there for the funeral, for at that time we had no way of getting him a telegram, closer than Alva, which was about 50 miles, and only a wagon and team to make the trip. So, he just could not make the trip. You will never know how hard it was to take her out there well and hearty, then have to bury her out there and come back home without her. But we never know what we can stand until we are put to the test.

After coming back home, we lived through another 2 years of pioneer hardships on the claim, and in 1908, on the 29th of March, we had our fifth child, a little girl. We named her Elsie. We were as happy as most anyone could be in a new country, enduring life as most all pioneers could expect. But in 1909, we decided to try something else, so we traded the farm for some property, a dwelling house in Quinlan, and a meat market and ice business, which we thought we could handle without hiring any help, if I could help in the shop. So we moved to town with our children, which was a bad mistake, but we got along very nicely with our meat and ice until we began to sell on time. Well, it wasn’t long until we had more on the book than we had in the bank, so we had to give up the meat business.

Well, while we lived there in town, we had another baby. It was a girl. We named her Gladys. She was born August the 1st, 1910, and in 1912, a boy. We named him Otis. He was born August 2nd. So, by that time we had the Arkansas fever, so we sold our house and with two covered wagons and what we could haul of our belongings, we started for Arkansas. We journeyed along very nicely until we got to Marshall, Oklahoma, a few miles south of Enid, and that is as far as we got, for our oldest girl, Essie, fell out of the wagon and the wheel ran over her leg and broke one bone, so we had to stop there and it was several days before she was able to travel. So we found a few days work and by the time she was able to travel, we had decided to just stay there in Garfield County, Oklahoma, so we rented a farm and Noah and the boys cut wood and sold it to buy groceries that winter, for by that time the boys Guy and Dave were big enough to help. We soon got acquainted with some fine neighbors and enjoyed living there, and we soon picked up a start and got along very well financially. We stayed in Garfield County for 9 years. We changed farms once, moving from the farm over by Marshall to a farm over by Hayward, and in the year of 1915, October 25th, another baby girl. We named her Florence, another blessing in our home, for nothing can bring as much pleasure in a home as a baby’s smile. We loved our children and was willing to work hard for their support and that they might have the necessary things of life to make them comfortable. We lived there a few years; I think 9 years, had two more children were born to us while we lived on that place. A girl named Ruth and a boy. We named him Jasper for his father whose name was Jasper Noah.

We got along real well financially while we lived there, got a nice start of cattle, the Aberdeen Angus type. World War came on and prices went up on what the farmer had to sell. We got a good price for our hay; we had lots of hay to sell. We had to haul it 18 miles and sell it to the oilfield workers, for a new oilfield was opened up at Covington, 18 miles from our place, and at that time horses was used for all kinds of oilfield work, and it took a lot of hay to feed them. There was no trucks or cars in that dav and time as there is today, in 1958.

And in 1920, while we still lived near Hayward, a preacher came to our house. It was Brother Rollie Cunningham and brought to us the Word of the Lord. He was the first one to preach the faith to us, and we both knew he had the truth, that what he preached was Bible. And we accepted the faith and was baptized, Noah, myself, and Elsie, March the 20th, 1920. Elsie was just 12 years old at the time, but we only stayed there on that place one year after we were baptized, for there was no church there, so we could assemble.

Our first place we rented near Vici was 6 miles south of Vici. We rented it from Bro. Bob Davis and while we lived there we drove a team of horses 10 miles to church; rode in a spring wagon and we went most every Sunday, seldom ever missed church, but as time went on, we moved several times. One move was close to Lenora and while we lived there our last baby was born on March the 3rd, 1926, a little boy. We named him Kermit. We lived there on that place a few years and when Kermit was 10 years old, in 1936 we moved to Delta, Colorado, not being able to get a house when we first got there, we lived in the house with Joe and Gladys 8 months. They had gone out there a few years before we did, had got settled and was operating a restaurant.

We lived with them 8 months, then Noah got a job on a ranch up on a mountain range called Horsefly Range. He worked for an old man. His name was Archie Terrell. He was a bachelor so I went along and cooked for them and kept the house for my board and room. We worked up there all summer and up into the winter. Then Grandma Boyd took bad sick and they called us home. By that time the snow was 4 to 5 feet deep. We had to be brought out with; a team and sled and snow was half-side deep to the horses. I was so glad to get down off from that hill, I never did want to go back up there.

Then we got a job working for Grant McCracken, a man we knew in Oklahoma, before we went out there, so we worked for him one summer, then we rented a place in what was called Disappointment Valley, close to a little post office named Cedar, southeast of Norwood. We lived there two years, then decided we wanted to live closer to Delta and closer to the children. So we moved to a little farm southwest of Delta. This was on a mountainside, not far from a little town, Olathe, Colorado.

By that time Noah was failing in health and was not able to farm, so we got Guy to move in with us and take over the farm work and on this little ranch is where Noah passed away in the year of 1942, April 26, at the age of 62. I was glad we were living on the mountain where he spent his last days, for he loved the hills and the tall pine trees. He would often tell me how he loved the hills and would often go up on the mountainside and sit under a big pine tree for hours, just enjoying the scenery and meditation. I often hated to move so bad that I would try to talk him out of a move he had planned and would cry if I could not, (which of course, I couldn’t) so would start getting ready for the move. But after all, since he passed on and I am left alone to meditate and to think, I am glad now that I did give in to his wants and went along with him, for after all, he suffered hardships as well as I. Many times the roads were rough, the trials were hard, but we made our marriage last until parted by death.

I stayed on in Colorado for awhile, lived with Guy part of the time and Kermit part of the time. J. R. went to California to work in defense plant as we had entered into World War II and he knew he would have to go in to the army soon so went on in and got into defense work, though it might delay his going into the army some, which maybe it did. Those were hard and trying days with heartache and sorrow. I was in California part of the time and in Colorado part of the time. Kermit also had to go before the war was over, bit with the help and the mercies of God they were safely returned. Otis also had to go, but he never had to leave the states, and spent most of his time in a hospital in Arkansas, so we were glad he did not have to leave the states. Kermit and Clara were married April 26, 1945, while Kermit was still in the Navy. After J. R. came home from the Army, him and Edit was married August 20, 1947. They moved to California. This left me alone part of the time, and then Guy bought a place in Delta, Colorado. He built a house on it and I lived with him until October 29, 1948. When I was brought to Vici, Oklahoma, sick, I was took to Elsie’s and stayed all winter with her. Then in April, 1949, I moved to Vivi, rented a little house from Edison and Lois Turner, where I have lived alone for 8 years.

And many things have happened since that time; some good and some bad. Well, here it is 1958 and I am still in the little house and I just got home from California. I went out there to a funeral. Gladys’ man, Joe Jones, passed away with heart attack September the 29th, 1958. I stayed a few days and Guy was sick out here in Oklahoma, so I came on back home on his account, for he had lost his health four years ago and had been failing in health ever since. He went to the hospital November 9th, 1958, and I arrived home that same day.




really good read......thanks....bob
Originally Posted by AcesNeights
Now....We actually may have a chance to make an indelible mark on American history. A re-dedication to our Constitutional principles, a serious and traumatic blow to endemic corruption and a lawful rebellion to regain control of our government. We no longer enjoy “domestic tranquility” our “Union” is imperfect, our government is destructive of these ends....


“That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness“ Declaration of Independence.


I like how you think and I tend to agree. I do think it will get ugly, much uglier perhaps near term, but then better for the long run. Isn’t the first time this Country has faced massive adversity.
Originally Posted by Hastings
Originally Posted by KFWA
not really interested in going back before running water and soap. I don't want to smell ass 24/7
As a kid there were a lot of folks around here with outhouses and wells you had the old rope and pulley method or cisterns. I spent a good bit of time at my aunt's country store. One thing I've commented on is that there are not near as many bad smelling people now as there were then.


It wasn't so much the technology as the intention. I've gone 30 days without a shower or bath on some of my extended trips, but I washed every day and stayed fairly clean. The problem was that up until fairly recently folks thought that bathing was unhealthy. The days of the Saturday night bath (whether you needed it or not) must have been pretty rank.

One of my grandfather's stories from 1910-ish was how the Polish family up the road used to sew their kids into their longjohns at Christmas and not let them out until Spring.
Well as long as I could alter the space/time continuum, I would not go back, but I'd just stay right where I am----- but cause my body to go back to before I was injured and wounded, then fast forward just a few years more but in a 26 year old uninjured body. I'd keep my mind as it is now so what I have learned would be in me, but I'd have the abilities I did then.. This is the most important period of US history since the revolution and if I could be a 26-30 year old Recon Marine. I would do what I can to help others know and prepare for what is coming to this country in the very near future, and I'd have the ability to actually lead by example.

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

The older I get the more truth I see in that saying.
i wished somehow i could back to the time before the Civil War and still have the knowledge of today and explain we need to send all slaves back to their home country and that would be the fare honest thing to do for these poor people,its their right .
I've always found the period from 1898 to 1914 to be incredibly interesting worldwide, not just in the US. Technology, immigration, social and political changes, quite a lot going on. The modern world was emerging, and it could have gone in various directions, then WW1 came along and sent us on our path. Both my Grandfathers came to the US during this time, one in 1899 and one in 1911.
Originally Posted by BobMt


really good read......thanks....bob


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.
Originally Posted by Cretch
Right now. Even though the pioneer days and the World War II era seems fascinating to some, Like the song goes, you should of seen it in color. Might change your mind. Although it might be great to visit, wouldn't want to stay.



Just as an example, I spent a lot of time with my buddy who went through The Bulge. I'm probably one of the few people that has experienced second-hand PTSD. Some of John's stories were so vivid that I found myself getting triggered for a while, especially after talking about his time up on the Sigfried line. Walking through pine forests for a while was really hard for me. So was hiking in the rain.

The PTO was as bad or worse. I had a uncle-in-law that got caught below decks in a Kamikaze attack. Until he finally gave it up to Christ, they used to have to lock him in his bedroom when it got bad.That went on for over 30 years.

As to the Pioneers, I've recently had to put down my copy of Dark and Bloody River. I got to the massacre at Gnadenhutten and started asking myself why I was doing this to myself. The book is just one story after another of one side catching the other off guard and killing them in the most brutal fashions imaginable.


Even before the war, things weren't too cool. My Dad was over in 1938 with his family, visiting the relatives. The local gauleiter invited the family to a book burning. Dad had nightmares of it for years.
i was ok with this one up until 5 years or so ago


I’m pretty much in agreement with the OP! But, as I’m blind as a bat.....I wouldn’t have lasted long at the founding of our nation! memtb
Originally Posted by szihn
Well as long as I could alter the space/time continuum, I would not go back, but I'd just stay right where I am----- but cause my body to go back to before I was injured and wounded, then fast forward just a few years more but in a 26 year old uninjured body. I'd keep my mind as it is now so what I have learned would be in me, but I'd have the abilities I did then.. This is the most important period of US history since the revolution and if I could be a 26-30 year old Recon Marine. I would do what I can to help others know and prepare for what is coming to this country in the very near future, and I'd have the ability to actually lead by example.

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

The older I get the more truth I see in that saying.



You constantly amaze me with your ability to cleary say things that I’ve thought or said previously. You just nailed-it with this post! memtb
Early 1800s before civil war. Exploring the west.
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.
It’s virtually impossible to live like they did in the olden days. Non payment of property tax will find your garden, your mule, your milk cow and your log cabin being confiscated by the government.

Our place up north is a rare find considering that water, power, sewer are offered while NO property tax is levied and no building codes or permits are required. It’s one of the last places in this country where a man isn’t a slave to taxes and you can do what you want on your property.
Originally Posted by szihn

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

The American version is "To bad youth is wasted on the young".
Originally Posted by Bristoe
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.

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.
I was fortunate to be a kid through the 50's and early 60's in a state with good hunting and sparse population. I can't think of a better time or place, ever.
Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
Originally Posted by BobMt


really good read......thanks....bob


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.


That was a GREAT read! How tough and stoic they were and what faith! I read some parts to my wife but I especially pointed out that almost every hardship they endured was NOT met by doubting ones faith but rather it was survived by the blessings of the Almighty.

Thanks for sharing that OrangeOkie. You come from good, hardy stock Sir. 👍
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Bristoe
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.

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.
Land, cotton, tobacco speculation. Slave, cattle, horse, liquor, and merchandise smuggling!!! There are fortunes to be made I tell you!!

😉😉😉
Originally Posted by Bristoe
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Bristoe
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.

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.

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.
Originally Posted by moosemike
Originally Posted by StrayDog
I think it would have been ideal to have been born around 1930 resulting in being about 15 at the end of world war II. From there I would have been ahead of the population bubble of boomers and enjoy a life of buying cheap housing, real estate, and most types of investing, always being ahead of the wave of boomers needs driving prices up.

I would have been old enough to have been an adult during the 50's and 60's to have enjoyed the golden era of western mule deer hunting, as well as the horse power race of OHV V-8 engine cars, and
fast and easy women from the era after the pill but before aids.

If a guy was born in 1930 and still alive today, he would be 90. Old enough to enjoy his grand children growing up and starting their older families before leaving behind the world and technology.

You'd have been swept up into Korea.


If I was born in 1930 I would probably had a 100% chance of being drafted during the conflict, but during the cold war not all draftees were sent to the hot spots. There were duty stations such as Germany or Japan. But would surviving the Korea conflict era and being ahead of the wave of boomers, have more advantages than surviving the Vietnam era and being caught inside the boomer wave?
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by OldHat
Being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition would have been epic too!


Nah, I am not that fond of dog meat, gonorrhea, or syphilis.


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.

STDs, yes there was a reason that 13 year old virgin girls demanded exorbitant prices as brides.
I can't complain too much about my lot. The second half of the twentieth century was a pretty fine time to be alive. I really think, around the mid-sixties or so, we, as a society, made some wrong turns and today, we can't even see the right path; let alone walk it. GD
History is nearly always cherry picked and romanticized and hauling water gets old in a big hurry.
Flying for the American "Eagle" squadron during the Battle of Britain in 1940. I would love to just sit in a Supermarine Spitfire...just once.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter

Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by OldHat
Being part of the Lewis and Clark expedition would have been epic too!


Nah, I am not that fond of dog meat, gonorrhea, or syphilis.


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



Well they ate over 400 dogs on the Corps of Discovery! (But they didn’t eat Seaman!) 🤣

If you made it past 12 years of age the chances were pretty good you’d live a while longer. One thing a lot of folks forget is loss of teeth also had a bearing on diet. Especially in those elderly survivors. Oh yeah, bad tooth can kill you as dead as Julius Caesar from a myriad of complications.

Eat up! 🤣🤣🤣


Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter

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 rates are higher now not simply because of immunosenescence. Modern life has increased our exposure to mutagens.

Quality of life matters.

People had life choices they could make 200 years ago just as they do today.

Perversion?
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Bristoe
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Bristoe
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.

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.

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.

Yeah, and Canadians are in lockstep.
We were raised to stay tough and a soft environment makes soft people. A good life is a tougher one, imo. Geez, I would just like to go back to the 1960's.
We still herded bovine with the Equine. Now- it is a motorsport
Let us face it good folks we all have it pretty well.
Originally Posted by Old_Toot
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


I'm with Ol' Toot on this one. This time is important.
Originally Posted by kaywoodie


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

Eat up! 🤣🤣🤣


Very true. All you have to do is go walk around a few old cemeteries and pay attention to the dates on the head stones to see that child death played a huge part in lowering the average lifespan. You'll also see that those who made it to adulthood and managed to not get killed in a war tended to live to a ripe old age.
Originally Posted by Salty303
History is nearly always cherry picked and romanticized and hauling water gets old in a big hurry.

Did so, and walked 100 yds to the outhouse till I was 12. You are correct.

Dad was born in 1930. But would have been quite happy 100 years earlier.
Originally Posted by viking
In a time where there was justice.

Now that is a good one.

Justice has always been available to those who could afford it. It was beneficial to not stand out from the crowd. And to not step out of place.
Depending on your circumstances, any time, period or place could be a good time for you. Being born an Untouchable in India in our era, for instance, may not be so good...very bad in fact.
Like some others here I prob’ly woulda been dead age 2,?and certainly at age 12, of appendicitis back then. Colonials days, life expectancy was about 35, but life expectancy was the average age at death and when 1/3 to 1/2 was dead by age 12 that drove the average way down.

Teenage survival rate was high back then, TB started kicking in among those susceptible in their 20’s.

IRRC childbirth was a leading cause of death for women such that male average life expectancy was higher, but if a women made it past age 50 she would probably outlive men, much as older women still do today. Testosterone shortens life, then and now.

People didn’t get old faster back then, they died before they GOT old. But pretty much if you made it past age 12 you had about half as much chance of living to an old age as we do today.

And the familiar age-related ailments still killed old folks back then same as they do now, there was just less of ‘em is all.
Originally Posted by AcesNeights
Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
Originally Posted by BobMt


really good read......thanks....bob


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.


That was a GREAT read! How tough and stoic they were and what faith! I read some parts to my wife but I especially pointed out that almost every hardship they endured was NOT met by doubting ones faith but rather it was survived by the blessings of the Almighty.

Thanks for sharing that OrangeOkie. You come from good, hardy stock Sir. 👍


Yeah you noticed that too. Strong faith in Christ flowed down from my my Great grandma and grandpa Boyd, to my grandma and grandpa Henderson, then to my own mom and dad. The whole "Henderson clan" is church of Christ, over 300 aunts, uncles, cousins, children, grand children and great grand children. We all had great role models with our grandparents and parents. Essie and jack ended up with nine children (only one boy) My mom was the second born, but the first to go with breast cancer, age 46. We were truly blessed by the faith of our great grandparents and the hardships they endured, all the time giving thanks to God from whom all blessings flow. And the Democrats just can't figure that out.

[Linked Image]
Jack Henderson and Essie (Boyd) Henderson circa 1950s

[Linked Image]
Jack Henderson - U.S. Navy WW1

[Linked Image]
My mom and dad - Dick Robins and Madalyn (Henderson) Robins circa 1945

[Linked Image]
My mom and dad the day I was born 1952
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Bristoe
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.

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.

Adventurers had a VERY short life expectancy. Indians, wolves, hypothermia, frostbite, claimjumpers, trap robbers, infection, smallpox, influenza, tainted food, etc, etc.

Man is a predator, often the easiest prey is other humans. It is only through education that we curb that innate tendency.

A sprained ankle, or broken leg, or sick/injured pack animal, was a lethal calamity.

Romantic is not synonymous with wise.

I could have continued living on the 20 acres, I bought from my folks in 1983, with no plumbing in the house and an outhouse. The garden would feed a family of ten. There were fruit trees and berry vines of every persuasion with enough pasture to feed beef for several families.

Possibly romantic, but it was a lot smarter to keep a job, put a pump in the well, and showers and toilets in the house.
Every era has it good and not so good points, but I see it not so much in terms of hardships but as a tradeoff between fewer conveniences and security offset by greater freedom

Folks are always happy to get conveniences - indoor plumbing, washing machines and dryers, faster trains, planes, air conditioning; but those who lived without also lived without income tax, without having your every move tracked by cameras everywhere, being able to order firearms and have them delivered to your door plus a thousand other freedoms we've lost that someone in 1850 or 1910 or 1950 took for granted, just as we take flush toilets for granted. Add a much lower population meaning much more land to hunt, smaller towns, way fewer "No Trespassing" signs, no urban sprawl unless you wanted to live in a big city. 12 year old kids riding their bikes to the edge of town to go hunting with their .22 with no one giving them a second look.

In the 50's as a 6-8 year old kid I had to have some cavities filled - no novocaine, the dentist's assistant tickled me while he drilled into the nerve. Didn't help much as I recall. But that was over in 15 minutes, then the rest of the time I didn't worry about school shootings and rode my bike all over town with the only injunction being to be home in time for dinner. In 1970 riding my motorcycle through the middle of Ft. Lauderdale with a shotgun strapped to the back to go duck hunting, no one sicced the police on me. Watching All in the Family, Blazing Saddles and a hundred other shows and movies that would never be made today.

Trade-offs. Pick what's most important - convenience and security or freedom. I'd give up a bit more of the former in favor of the latter.



Just don't ask me what era of the Dark or Middle Ages I'd like to live in, that answer would be none of them... wink

Originally Posted by Birdwatcher
Like some others here I prob’ly woulda been dead age 2,?and certainly at age 12, of appendicitis back then. Colonials days, life expectancy was about 35, but life expectancy was the average age at death and when 1/3 to 1/2 was dead by age 12 that drove the average way down.

Teenage survival rate was high back then, TB started kicking in among those susceptible in their 20’s.

IRRC childbirth was the leading cause of death for women such that male average life expectancy was higher, but if a women made it past age 50 she would probably outlive men, much as older women still do today. Testosterone shortens life, then and now.

People didn’t get old faster back then, they died before they GOT old. But pretty much if you made it past age 12 you had about half as much chance of living to an old age as we do today.

And the familiar age-related ailments still killed old folks back then same as they do now, there was just less of ‘em is all.


"None of my ancestors ever had Alzheimer's!"

"None of your ancestors ever saw 65 years of age!"
This is a fascinating thread. Always thought I should've been born in the expansion era of the United States.

Had a nightmare a while back and talked in my sleep which woke up the wife. She said I mumbled "Help" several times.

My bedside reading of late has been "That Dark and Bloody River" by Allen Eckert.

I was dreaming of a bloody Shawnee ambush along the Ohio. Tomahawks and scalps.

I cut back on the whiskey after that.
Yes I am a pirate, 200 years too late. The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder, I'm an over-40 victim of fate.....
Originally Posted by Ranger_Green
Originally Posted by Old_Toot
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


I'm with Ol' Toot on this one. This time is important.

in a bad way
for myself, 1800-1840, or 1900 onward
when Granny was asked, she said "I don't care, but I don't want to go back before they got electric."

I think she got electric (REA generator) in the 30's
I came North to find some of the last wild places in the USA

It was everything I’d dreamed for.
When I grew up late 60’s to mid 70’s,
Originally Posted by 2legit2quit
I came North to find some of the last wild places in the USA

It was everything I’d dreamed for.


That’s living right my friend, well done!
All the posts about the old days being too tough, boring, or that 'some ear infection would have killed you at 6', are precisely the reason a lot of us wish we could go back. To get away from soft suburbanites.

humans are built to handle advertisy and hardwired to find ways to even thrive or enjoy life during it. Your great grandad didnt need a mistress, tattoos and gut hanging over his belt to prove he enjoyed life.

Any day he made it home, no wars with germany brewing, all the kids tucked in bed, was a good day.Sitting there on the porch holding just his wifes hand was all the heaven he needed.

We eat until our pants split, screw anything that moves and still need a doctor prescribing drugs to be happy.
Which 'Era' ???
- - - - - - - - - -

The Final One! And it's looks like I might be right.
Don't say I didn't warn you ...
Soft suburbanite? LOL

This soft suburbanite has hand stacked 1000 bales of hay in a day on many, many occasions.

From the seventh grade on I and my younger brother and sister were up at five each morning to feed and milk cows before school and repeated chores after school before bed.

Chores were done in a three walled barn, whether the temp was 110 degrees or 20 below zero. Critters get fed, milked, and watered, regardless of weather conditions.

About half of you guys pining for previous centuries would have never seen your third birthday had you been born then. No vaccines, no antibiotics, typhus, pneumonia, small pox, measles, scarlet fever, syphilis, gonorrhea, polio, tetanus, strep, rabies, staff, diptheria, mumps, pertussis, famines, lethal bacterial infections in any wound. Had you made it to adulthood, you could have watched children die in infancy, and wives die in childbirth. Yes, real romantic!

How about Ireland in 1847? Would that not be a fine time to be born, or better yet, a fine time to try and keep your children alive?

Or Russia, anytime between 1910 and 1970?

Why do you think it took 100,000 years for human population to reach the first billion, but only a few decades after the invention of vaccine, antibiotics, and mechanized farming to hit eight billion?

I have said it many times. Compared to our ancestors of 100 years ago, or 1000 years, or 5000 years, we have achieved heaven on this Earth.


Originally Posted by huntsman22
Yes I am a pirate, 200 years too late. The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder, I'm an over-40 victim of fate.....


Grins, I have a friend of Norwegian ancestry. You know where this is going!

Yes, he thinks he belongs at the oar of a Viking raider with a shield and battle ax at hand ready to rape and pillage.

Personally, I do not see the attraction of brutalizing the weak and helpless, let alone raping young women or girls and leaving bastards all over a foreign nation.
It's just that our sheer numbers in relation to consumption rate is likely to bite us on the arse pretty damn hard in the near future.
Originally Posted by DBT
It's just that our sheer numbers in relation to consumption rate is likely to bite us on the arse pretty damn hard in the near future.

Yes, a visit from Saint Malthus is long overdue. I am afraid the longer the interval, the stronger the correction will be.
Captain Thomas Kennedy lived in Newville and Carlisle Pennsylvania from 1745 to 1831. He found in the 2nd Pennsylvania regiment and went through Trenton and Princeton. He weathered Valley Forge and his first wife died. He fought under Mad Anthony Wayne and directly under Col. Walter "the Irish Beauty" Stewart in the 13th at Montmouth and saved the nation right there in the Point of the Woods engagement. He returned after that and went with Col. Davis south to South Carolina and was a Captain of the 2nd Militia when they cut the British to ribbons at the battle of King Mountain. His one Brother in Law, Major Colonel James McFarlane was killed by Col. Kirkpatrick in the Whiskey Rebellion trying to settle the peace. He was the Sheriff of Carlisle and wanted to keep the peace but wanted to represent the rebels. Thomas Kennedy raised 15 kids in Newville and lived to see his oldest son John become a Judge and his second oldest son Thomas fight valiantly in the war of 1812. Thomas suffered from PTSD after the war and went a roaming and travelled around the world for three years. He returned from Africa with elephant ivory and gold. He died of malaria 4 years later and the family moved to Indiana. Thomas the patriarch remained in Pennsylvania and probably watched most of his generation fade on. The men of Carlisle found Native Americans with their Lancaster style long rifles and tomahawks and used them to great effect against the British as well. I am sure that he had a great life.

My Great Grandfather John Eliot Kennedy lived from 1882 to 1971 in Gary, South Dakota. He lived close to the Indians and they would stop at his farm and were welcome there. He was a farmer but also worked as a blacksmith and tinkerer. He invented all kinds of mechanical devices. He was extremely strong until he was in his late 80s. Many people even today remarked about how strong he was. He had forearms like Popeye from work and blacksmithing. When he was 76 his named started making fun of him. His neighbor was a bigger fella who was a drunk but worked as a sheriff's deputy in the town. He used to cuss and swear at Grandpa John from the other side of fence. John habitually carried a tool belt that had some metal punches and always had a hammer. My uncle was visiting with him and Grandpa John tool a punch and hammered him with this his hammer right through the fence. They put him in jail for two weeks and took a picture of him in jail. The deputy and nobody else in town ever bothered him again.

1760s-1820s in Western Pennsylvania would have been pretty cool.
South Dakota in the 1860s to 1930s would have been cool.
But Alaska as an adult living from 1950s to 1980s would have been the best.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by DBT
It's just that our sheer numbers in relation to consumption rate is likely to bite us on the arse pretty damn hard in the near future.

Yes, a visit from Saint Malthus is long overdue. I am afraid the longer the interval, the stronger the correction will be.


Some argue that discoveries in science will prevent a crisis and propel us into a glorious future, but I suspect that we are running out of time to avoid the crunch. When it happens, it may not destroy civilization, but the world will be an entirely different place after the dust settles.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter


Personally, I do not see the attraction of brutalizing the weak and helpless, let alone raping young women or girls and leaving bastards all over a foreign nation.



Being a 3rd Gen German American living in the 60's, I met all types. I once had the dubious pleasure at age 9 of having a middle-aged fellow tell me how grand it was to be in the SS.

" . . . ah! und ze uniform! Strong, young, virile, handsome. . .blond(!) Ah! You would have been a God! Ze women would all go vit you. You had any woman you vanted."


. . . but of course he was never actually in ze SS and he only knew this from friends, and he spent ze entire war in Berlin, because he was . . . not able to go. Blah! Blah! Blah!


What is bizarre is that this was almost verbatim the speech Roschmann gives Miller at the end of The Odessa File. I'd say my guy had just lifted it from the book, but Odessa File didn't come out until 1972 and I was hearing this bunk in the mid-60s. I can only speculate that this guy and the author, Forsythe, got it from the same source. I find that even 50 years on to be rather terrifying.



Just as an aside: I also bumped into a group of "Vikings" having a regional conclave back in 1996. I was bowhunting a private campground, and the owner mentioned he had a party coming in. They seemed like fairly nice people. I brought in a button buck that I'd arrowed mid-morning and got hailed as the mighty hunter, and spent some time with them drinking coffee and such. I suppose everyone has to have a hobby.
Fur trading era up around Hudson Bay or maybe the gold rush days in California and Alaska.Call of the Wild by Jack London has always intrigued me.
Originally Posted by jackmountain
1950-1965
1980-2000.
2016-2020.
It’s all Over now but the crying.

Like a buddy of mine used to always say.... “Don’t blame me, I voted for Wallace.


My daddy used to say when someone asked him if he was going to vote Republicans "I have voted Republican but Eisenhower isn't running. ".
Originally Posted by DBT
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by DBT
It's just that our sheer numbers in relation to consumption rate is likely to bite us on the arse pretty damn hard in the near future.

Yes, a visit from Saint Malthus is long overdue. I am afraid the longer the interval, the stronger the correction will be.


Some argue that discoveries in science will prevent a crisis and propel us into a glorious future, but I suspect that we are running out of time to avoid the crunch. When it happens, it may not destroy civilization, but the world will be an entirely different place after the dust settles.

Science won't save us.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter

Man is a predator, often the easiest prey is other humans. It is only through education that we curb that innate tendency.

Really? How does education perform this miraculous deed?
All things considered from reading this thread I'll take post WW2 when you could go to Alaska and homestead. I had an old WW2 veteran friend who passed in 2014 who told me that IIRC, he had the chance to go to Alaska and get either 500 or 1000 acres just for showing up and staying there I believe 5 years. He and his brother were seriously considering going out and getting adjoining blocks so they would control either 1 or 2 thousand acres together. Their wives nixed it.

A guy could have "lived off the land" like Daniel Boone but at the same time had the potential of a bailout from modern medicine if needed, assuming he could get to it. No Indians left to lift your hair or burn you at the stake.....but it was the last frontier.
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by DBT
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Originally Posted by DBT
It's just that our sheer numbers in relation to consumption rate is likely to bite us on the arse pretty damn hard in the near future.

Yes, a visit from Saint Malthus is long overdue. I am afraid the longer the interval, the stronger the correction will be.


Some argue that discoveries in science will prevent a crisis and propel us into a glorious future, but I suspect that we are running out of time to avoid the crunch. When it happens, it may not destroy civilization, but the world will be an entirely different place after the dust settles.

Science won't save us.


And yet it is the only hope we have. Science is not going to create a utopian society. None of us will live to see utopia nor will we see the end of days but when we or someone we love gets some illness that has killed people in the past, we will pray science has found a cure.
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter

Man is a predator, often the easiest prey is other humans. It is only through education that we curb that innate tendency.

Really? How does education perform this miraculous deed?


People have a tendency to make better decisions based on knowledge rather than ignorance.
Originally Posted by JimFromTN

And yet it is the only hope we have. Science is not going to create a utopian society. None of us will live to see utopia nor will we see the end of days ...

Are you a prophet?
Originally Posted by JimFromTN
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter

Man is a predator, often the easiest prey is other humans. It is only through education that we curb that innate tendency.

Really? How does education perform this miraculous deed?


People have a tendency to make better decisions based on knowledge rather than ignorance.

History teaches us knowledge allows people to make bad decisions more efficiently.
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by JimFromTN
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter

Man is a predator, often the easiest prey is other humans. It is only through education that we curb that innate tendency.

Really? How does education perform this miraculous deed?


People have a tendency to make better decisions based on knowledge rather than ignorance.

History teaches us knowledge allows people to make bad decisions more efficiently.


🤣🤣🤣👍👍👍
My great-grandfather went west at the age of 12 riding on a pony next to a wagon driven by his 19 year old brother and his brother's 16 year old wife. They left a farm in Ohio near modern day Columbus and settled on the edge of the Prairie in Illinois. That was in 1824. Great-grandfather was a member of the old settlers' association in Champaign County which was restricted to the first 400 white settlers in the county. John Deere hadn't yet invented his steel plow, and the prairie soil was unbroken. The Potawatomi and Miami tribes passed through the area into the 1830s.

I often think of those three living in a grove on the edge of the empty prairie when I see young people today who fail to launch into their 20s and 30s.
Originally Posted by OldHat
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter

Man is a predator, often the easiest prey is other humans. It is only through education that we curb that innate tendency.

Really? How does education perform this miraculous deed?

Well, do you run around grabbing anything you want out of the hands of people on the street? Do you walk up to every attractive woman in town and rip her clothes off?

Or did your Mother and Father educate you that such was not acceptable behavior?
80s and 90s
Love to do it all over again.
Originally Posted by JimFromTN

And yet it is the only hope we have. Science is not going to create a utopian society. None of us will live to see utopia nor will we see the end of days but when we or someone we love gets some illness that has killed people in the past, we will pray science has found a cure.

I will play the role of prognosticator.

It is easy to see that history repeats itself over and over again. Man is the same basic animal he has been since civilization originally arose independently in six locations around the globe during the third millennium BC.

There was once a glorious golden age with world travel, trade, global exchanges of culture, and growth of science.

Climate change led to massive famine, then plagues, and the dark ages ensued. The churches used the fear and superstitions of the surviving people to exert draconian control and theocracies arose across the globe.

The next famines and plagues could be avoided, if the world were to be ruled by the likes of the Chinese Govt.

If some entity forced women into sterilization after the first baby was born every where in the world, then human population growth could be reversed. But who among us is willing to live in that world? Not I!

(of course, this is just the world which global leaders like Soros, and Gates envision)

And soon as population starts to diminish, every city in the world would begin to look like Detroit. No profits can be had in that environment. It would lead to a great depression to shame the 1930s.

Human societies of today function on growth. No longer is a man willing to stand at his father's side, learn his trade, and take his place in support of the community. Every person wants more than his/her parents had, And they want to give even more to their children.

So it is inevitable that human population will grow until it is no longer sustainable. (just as is the case with every other biological population on earth). Then those numbers will crash.

We will have a choice at that point. Will we let superstition and fear rule the day again? Will we once again hand our futures over to a handful of priests who will suppress science and retard the recovery of civilization?

Or will we hand our futures to the scientists who will quickly rebuild our industries, and accelerate the coming of the next over population and collapse.

Or maybe the Yellowstone Caldera will let loose, or another giant asteroid will fall out of the sky and mammalian life will go the way of the dinosaurs. Then Mother Nature can determine which species will come to dominate the Earth after the next several million years.

I doubt they will find as much trace of man as we find of the dinosaurs.

Then eventually our sun will supernova, and Earth will be left a smoking husk.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Soft suburbanite? LOL

This soft suburbanite has hand stacked 1000 bales of hay in a day on many, many occasions.
From the seventh grade on I and my younger brother and sister were up at five each morning to feed and milk cows before school and repeated chores after school before bed.
Chores were done in a three walled barn, whether the temp was 110 degrees or 20 below zero. Critters get fed, milked, and watered, regardless of weather conditions.


Ok Thats a good upbringing. But your folks accepted that risk of child labor with increased risk of trips, falls, trampling also kids being more susceptible to hypo- and hyperthermia . Some might consider it child abuse. I guess my point is some would accept even more risk, disease and famine ihcluded. Some of us are in jobs like that rignt now. I'd agree some fellas dont understand what the old days entail though.

Y’all do realize none of this really matters.

I mean get a philosophical as you want.

Im still pulling for the Federalist period!

I like the hats!
No matter at all. It is just mental masturbation.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
No matter at all. It is just mental masturbation.


Yup! 😊😊😊😊👍👍👍👍👍

Oh! I really like the firearms of that period too! 😁

I would have struck a handsome figure!!!

[Linked Image from i.postimg.cc]
Ok Idaho_shooter was right, the old days do look scary grin
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Soft suburbanite? LOL

This soft suburbanite has hand stacked 1000 bales of hay in a day on many, many occasions.

From the seventh grade on I and my younger brother and sister were up at five each morning to feed and milk cows before school and repeated chores after school before bed.

Chores were done in a three walled barn, whether the temp was 110 degrees or 20 below zero. Critters get fed, milked, and watered, regardless of weather conditions.

About half of you guys pining for previous centuries would have never seen your third birthday had you been born then. No vaccines, no antibiotics, typhus, pneumonia, small pox, measles, scarlet fever, syphilis, gonorrhea, polio, tetanus, strep, rabies, staff, diptheria, mumps, pertussis, famines, lethal bacterial infections in any wound. Had you made it to adulthood, you could have watched children die in infancy, and wives die in childbirth. Yes, real romantic!

How about Ireland in 1847? Would that not be a fine time to be born, or better yet, a fine time to try and keep your children alive?

Or Russia, anytime between 1910 and 1970?

Why do you think it took 100,000 years for human population to reach the first billion, but only a few decades after the invention of vaccine, antibiotics, and mechanized farming to hit eight billion?

I have said it many times. Compared to our ancestors of 100 years ago, or 1000 years, or 5000 years, we have achieved heaven on this Earth.


How deep was the snow and how far did you have to walk back and forth from school, and did you have to carry your sister? grin
Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Soft suburbanite? LOL

This soft suburbanite has hand stacked 1000 bales of hay in a day on many, many occasions.

From the seventh grade on I and my younger brother and sister were up at five each morning to feed and milk cows before school and repeated chores after school before bed.

Chores were done in a three walled barn, whether the temp was 110 degrees or 20 below zero. Critters get fed, milked, and watered, regardless of weather conditions.

About half of you guys pining for previous centuries would have never seen your third birthday had you been born then. No vaccines, no antibiotics, typhus, pneumonia, small pox, measles, scarlet fever, syphilis, gonorrhea, polio, tetanus, strep, rabies, staff, diptheria, mumps, pertussis, famines, lethal bacterial infections in any wound. Had you made it to adulthood, you could have watched children die in infancy, and wives die in childbirth. Yes, real romantic!

How about Ireland in 1847? Would that not be a fine time to be born, or better yet, a fine time to try and keep your children alive?

Or Russia, anytime between 1910 and 1970?

Why do you think it took 100,000 years for human population to reach the first billion, but only a few decades after the invention of vaccine, antibiotics, and mechanized farming to hit eight billion?

I have said it many times. Compared to our ancestors of 100 years ago, or 1000 years, or 5000 years, we have achieved heaven on this Earth.


How deep was the snow and how far did you have to walk back and forth from school, and did you have to carry your sister? grin
We walked 1.2 miles to school. Rain, snow, sleet, sweltering heat, below zero, made no difference. The little darlings can't be expected to do that today. Hell, I see the school buses picking up/dropping off kids inside the village limits 2 blocks from the school now. And people wonder why they're a bunch of fuuckin fat ass poosies.
Originally Posted by 158XTP
Ok Idaho_shooter was right, the old days do look scary grin


Absolutely frightening!!!
Originally Posted by Blackheart

We walked 1.2 miles to school. Rain, snow, sleet, sweltering heat, below zero, made no difference. The little darlings can't be expected to do that today. Hell, I see the school buses picking up/dropping off kids inside the village limits 2 blocks from the school now. And people wonder why they're a bunch of fuuckin fat ass poosies.


O O's apparent snide remarks notwithstanding.

Until I was twelve, the bus stop was one mile from the house. 1.0 on the odometer of the car last week.
I still own the property, and my son lives on it with his three kids. The bus stop is still a mile from the house. But his oldest daughter drives a 4x4 truck to school and delivers her little brother and sister.

I now have a John Deere 4020 with an eight foot hydraulic blade purchased just to maintain that driveway.

My sister was born on my 1'st birthday. So she was in first grade and I was in second, 1963. We had some deep snow, it was cold, with drifts to the belly on our old mare. There was no way the old 1953 Ford sedan was going out in that crap. I remember going out with Dad to shovel a path through the drifts from the house to the outhouse 100 yds away.

Dad had built a sled about 24 inches wide by 48 inches long all of pine 2x4s with 2x4 runners to haul hay bales out to the field. We drug it around by a rope from the saddle horn on the mare. The sled was still around when my kids came along and I gave them rides behind the saddle horses.

I well remember Mom bundling Sister and Me up in our warmest clothes, then wrapping the two of us in a heavy quilt on that sled. She drug us out to the bus each morning with the mare and then retrieved us in the afternoon each day until the weather broke and it rained the snow away.

Getting to the bus was not as tough as getting the ten gallon milk cans to where the milk truck could pick them up. The milk truck picked up at a neighbors house about 1/4 mile from our barn. But it did not cross the rickety canal bridge to come to our place. So Dad had a two wheeled cart built to hang two milk cans from. He pushed it over to the neighbors place each day on the muddy (in bad weather) or snowy two track.

The cart sits in my daughter's yard as art. She thinks it looks cool.

I have placed about 500 yds of gravel on that 1/4 mile since I purchased the property. It is pretty decent today.



When I was twelve we purchased an additional property with the house 100 yds from the bus stop on the paved county road. I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
O O's apparent snide remarks notwithstanding.


Notwithstanding you were unable to decipher the meaning of my little grinning emoji . . . I was trying to gently signal that you are too full of yourself. wink
"It can never be a long time ago, it can only be right now." Laura Inglas Wilder, Little house in the Big Woods.
Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
O O's apparent snide remarks notwithstanding.


Notwithstanding you were unable to decipher the meaning of my little grinning emoji . . . I was trying to gently signal that you are too full of yourself. wink

Unable to decipher? My ass! Your intent was not subtle, indeed the opposite.

Full of myself? Not at all! Just telling historical facts.

What I did growing up was not extraordinary. It is representative of farm life for millions. The only difference is that our parents chose to live that way two or three decades longer than most.

It has left me all the more appreciative of the conveniences in my life today.

I was feeding cattle from a horse drawn wagon in 1980. How many people today know how to harness, hitch, and drive a team. I AM kind of proud of that skill.
I grew up on a farm, but we had no milk cows. Even back then I was cognizant enough of that fact to thank god for such.

Ime dairy farmers seldom raise puzzy kids.
Grandpa's milk cows went through the ice one winter.


Everyone was happy.....even if they were not able to show it.
No need for me to pick. Good Lord put me here for his good reasons. Life is good & bad then and now and we are fortunate for what we have been provided then, now and in the future.
Originally Posted by Jim_Conrad
Grandpa's milk cows went through the ice one winter.


Everyone was happy.....even if they were not able to show it.


Who led em out onto the thin ice ? 🤔
Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
This is from my maternal Great Grandmother:

The Autobiography of Bertha Frances Boyd (1882-1964)
1958

Dear Children,
Here is my happy childhood days, from the time I was three years old, to the best of my memory, your daddy and I spent of our lives together; as my father moved on a farm just across the road from your daddy’s folk in Putnam County, Missouri, when I was three years old and your daddy was five years old. My father’s children were most all girls and his father’s children were most all boys. We children played together and when we were old enough to go to school, sometimes wading snow shoe-top deep, the boys going ahead and kicking the snow out and making a path for the girls to walk in. We played outdoor games at school, such as ball and dare base and other simple games. With such exercise we were strong and healthy and had a lot of fun.

We always walked to church which was 1½ miles; a little country church built on my grandfather’s place and when we were old enough to work in the field, we all worked together, sometimes for my father and sometimes for his father; just wherever there was work that needed to be done.

And when I was 16 years old and your daddy was 18, we decided to get married, not giving a thought to the fact that I could not boil water without scorching it and that he did not have a $20 bill to his name. We got married on the 17th day of April, 1899, went to his folks and lived with them the first summer. He farmed with his dad and I helped his mother with the housework, for she was sick all summer and on the 29th day of June, Lank and Alice, her twins was born. So, I really got a lesson on housework and taking care of babies that summer, which was a lot of help to me in later years.

So that fall we moved into a little house on his uncle’s place and were so happy to be out to ourselves. Although we had very little to keep house with, we did not complain, for we never thought we needed very much. We lived there that winter and in the middle of the winter, his grandfather died; so when spring came, we moved in with his grandmother, for in those days an old person never lived alone. We farmed her place one year, then she decided she wanted to live with her daughter, so she sold her farm and went to live with her daughter and moved to another house on the lowlands of the Sharitan River.

By this time, we had our first baby, a little girl. We named her Essie. We lived there one winter, then in the spring, we decided to go to Oklahoma Territory, thinking we could go to the new country and file on land and that someday we would have a home of our own.

[Linked Image]
My Grandmother, Essie Henderson
born 1900.
(photo circa 1950s, Drumright OK)

We had friends who had gone to Oklahoma and they wrote to us and told us some wonderful things about the new country which, of course, made us want to try our luck. My folks begged us not to go and said we would not stay, that we was just wasting our time and money. But we still wanted to try our luck, so we sold what little we had and on the 5th day of April, we boarded a train and started west for the Oklahoma Territory. We got to our destination on the 7th day of April. We got off the train at a little station called Tucker. It is now called Belva. It was a terrible looking place right in a canyon between two high hills, or rather bluffs. I never will forget what Noah said when he looked at those bluffs. He said “Well, I just have a notion to just Tucker right back.” But so many people told us when we left Missouri that we never would stay, that we would be glad to get back; but we did not want to be a piker and we did not want to hear them say “Oh, I told you so”, so we just made up our minds that we could stay and tough it out if our friends and other people could.

[Linked Image from i.ytimg.com]
Belva, OK

The Indians were still plentiful and the cowboy and his gun was a part of the law, but the cattlemen were moving out and turning the country over to the homesteaders pretty fast. Our friends met us at the train and brought us to their place, which was west of a place where there was a store and a post office, now called Lenors, in Dewey County, a few miles south and east of Vici. Our friends name was John Lawson, who lived in a sod house, the first sod house I ever seen.

[Linked Image from i.pinimg.com]
Sod house, Indian Territory, OK
(circa 1900)


Well, it rained a lot that spring and one day it would rain outside and the next day it would rain inside, for the house had a dirt roof. Well, we stayed there a few days, then we moved into a little dugout, just three miles south of Cestos. There was not any Cestos there then, for we were there before Cestos was there. Well, we lived in the little dugout that summer, battling the snakes and tarantulas and the centipedes, and also another roof that leaked so bad that there was only one dry place in the house when it rained and that was under the table, which was made of rough lumber from a sawmill a few miles away. I would put the baby (Essie) in a box and push her under the table to keep her dry, spread a tarp over the bed and well, you know the rest.

We lived in the dugout that summer and on the 27th day of October, our second baby was born, a little boy. We named him Guy. He was born in the dugout. Our bedstead was made of rough lumber, homemade, and our chairs were nail kegs. So then and there we decided that if we was ever going to get any land that we had better get busy, for all the best land was taken before we got out here or had a chance. So we knew a man that had a claim out in Woodward County, who said he was tired of Oklahoma and wanted to go back east. We asked him what he would take for his claim. He said $200. So we bought him out and we filed on the land. We felt that we were pretty well off now that we had 160 acres of land, even though it was covered with rocks. Never had no house at all, no fence, no well of water, in fact, no nothing, except a spring of jip water so bitter no one could drink it. Well, Noah and his dad went out to the claim, which was east of Woodward, close to the place where we got off the train, when we first landed in Oklahoma. And they built us a little house, just one room 12’X18′ feet in size, built it out of rough lumber from the sawmill, not very nice; but it was a mansion compared to the dugout that we had been living in, and we were oh, so proud of it, for most of our neighbors still lived in sod houses or dugouts. So, in the claim we planted our first crop, which was kafir corn. We had a team of small horses. Noah plowed the sod with a sod plow. The male board was bent rod. He used a gallon syrup bucket to plant the seed. He filled the bucket with kafir, had holes punched in the bucket and tied it on the back of his plow, and in every third furrow he plowed, he drug the bucket behind the plow and this planted the seed, and surely God was with us and helped us for we raised a fine crop of kafir, the best we ever raised, although times were hard for we had plenty of feed and nothing to feed nothing to feed it to. But luck came our way, for we had a neighbor that had cows and no feed, so he let us keep three of his cows and milk them that winter for their feed, So we had our first milk and butter that winter, and with two little children to feed it was a real treat.

But we still had to have bread, too, and a few other things. So, me and the two babies had to stay alone out on the claim, in that wild western country, for Noah to go and find work, in order that we might eat. And he had to go so far back into western Kansas to find any work at all, that he could not even come home on weekends. Our few neighbors lived in dugouts, off in canyons, and the wolves and the coyotes were so thick and so hungry that they just howled all night long, right close around the house, and many times I had such a creepy feeling, I was almost scared, and wondered what I would do if one of the children would get sick. But surely God was out there also, for not one of us got sick while he was gone. So we had bread and milk that winter. With lots of rabbit and quail meat, for there were lots of them, and we fared real well. The rabbit and quail were so thick they would come close around the house. If Noah was at home, he would kill them with the gun and when he was gone, I would sometimes catch them in traps. So, we fared pretty well that winter.

The next Spring we planted more kafir, and made a garden and put up a little fence so we could keep the milk cows, which meant so much to us. In August we had our third baby, a little boy. We named him Dave. He was born in the little shack on the claim, with a Mrs. Rodell as a midwife in attendance. A wonderful person she was, for with no money, a doctor was out of the question, but with God close by, we did not need a doctor. We just got along fine. We lived in the little shack 5 years before we could make a cistern, so we could have water at home; and that was a great treat, for we had hauled all of our water in barrels with wagon and team and hauled it 5 miles for 5 years. And many, many times I felt in my heart that it was just not worth it to endure all the hardships of a new country for 160 acres of land not too good and for the experience of a pioneer life, But after we were there 5 years, we got a deed to our land, which made us feel better, and after the Oklahoma Territory was admitted to the Union and became a state, we felt we were safer and that we had helped to conquer the wild west and that we had helped to make and to improve one of the greatest states in the Union, the great and wonderful Oklahoma.

Then in the year of 1906, on April 1st, we had our fourth child, a little girl. We named her Ocie, a precious little one that we only got to keep 8 months. When she was 7 months old, I took the children and went back to Missouri to visit my folks who I had not seen for 5 long years, and I was so homesick for them that Noah told me that we could not both go, but since his folks were out here where he could see them often, for me to take the children and go back and see my folks and he would stay home and work. I went but it was the saddest trip I ever made, for while I was there, my baby took sick and died. I had to put her away out there so far from home and he could not even come to us or be there for the funeral, for at that time we had no way of getting him a telegram, closer than Alva, which was about 50 miles, and only a wagon and team to make the trip. So, he just could not make the trip. You will never know how hard it was to take her out there well and hearty, then have to bury her out there and come back home without her. But we never know what we can stand until we are put to the test.

After coming back home, we lived through another 2 years of pioneer hardships on the claim, and in 1908, on the 29th of March, we had our fifth child, a little girl. We named her Elsie. We were as happy as most anyone could be in a new country, enduring life as most all pioneers could expect. But in 1909, we decided to try something else, so we traded the farm for some property, a dwelling house in Quinlan, and a meat market and ice business, which we thought we could handle without hiring any help, if I could help in the shop. So we moved to town with our children, which was a bad mistake, but we got along very nicely with our meat and ice until we began to sell on time. Well, it wasn’t long until we had more on the book than we had in the bank, so we had to give up the meat business.

Well, while we lived there in town, we had another baby. It was a girl. We named her Gladys. She was born August the 1st, 1910, and in 1912, a boy. We named him Otis. He was born August 2nd. So, by that time we had the Arkansas fever, so we sold our house and with two covered wagons and what we could haul of our belongings, we started for Arkansas. We journeyed along very nicely until we got to Marshall, Oklahoma, a few miles south of Enid, and that is as far as we got, for our oldest girl, Essie, fell out of the wagon and the wheel ran over her leg and broke one bone, so we had to stop there and it was several days before she was able to travel. So we found a few days work and by the time she was able to travel, we had decided to just stay there in Garfield County, Oklahoma, so we rented a farm and Noah and the boys cut wood and sold it to buy groceries that winter, for by that time the boys Guy and Dave were big enough to help. We soon got acquainted with some fine neighbors and enjoyed living there, and we soon picked up a start and got along very well financially. We stayed in Garfield County for 9 years. We changed farms once, moving from the farm over by Marshall to a farm over by Hayward, and in the year of 1915, October 25th, another baby girl. We named her Florence, another blessing in our home, for nothing can bring as much pleasure in a home as a baby’s smile. We loved our children and was willing to work hard for their support and that they might have the necessary things of life to make them comfortable. We lived there a few years; I think 9 years, had two more children were born to us while we lived on that place. A girl named Ruth and a boy. We named him Jasper for his father whose name was Jasper Noah.

We got along real well financially while we lived there, got a nice start of cattle, the Aberdeen Angus type. World War came on and prices went up on what the farmer had to sell. We got a good price for our hay; we had lots of hay to sell. We had to haul it 18 miles and sell it to the oilfield workers, for a new oilfield was opened up at Covington, 18 miles from our place, and at that time horses was used for all kinds of oilfield work, and it took a lot of hay to feed them. There was no trucks or cars in that dav and time as there is today, in 1958.

And in 1920, while we still lived near Hayward, a preacher came to our house. It was Brother Rollie Cunningham and brought to us the Word of the Lord. He was the first one to preach the faith to us, and we both knew he had the truth, that what he preached was Bible. And we accepted the faith and was baptized, Noah, myself, and Elsie, March the 20th, 1920. Elsie was just 12 years old at the time, but we only stayed there on that place one year after we were baptized, for there was no church there, so we could assemble.

Our first place we rented near Vici was 6 miles south of Vici. We rented it from Bro. Bob Davis and while we lived there we drove a team of horses 10 miles to church; rode in a spring wagon and we went most every Sunday, seldom ever missed church, but as time went on, we moved several times. One move was close to Lenora and while we lived there our last baby was born on March the 3rd, 1926, a little boy. We named him Kermit. We lived there on that place a few years and when Kermit was 10 years old, in 1936 we moved to Delta, Colorado, not being able to get a house when we first got there, we lived in the house with Joe and Gladys 8 months. They had gone out there a few years before we did, had got settled and was operating a restaurant.

We lived with them 8 months, then Noah got a job on a ranch up on a mountain range called Horsefly Range. He worked for an old man. His name was Archie Terrell. He was a bachelor so I went along and cooked for them and kept the house for my board and room. We worked up there all summer and up into the winter. Then Grandma Boyd took bad sick and they called us home. By that time the snow was 4 to 5 feet deep. We had to be brought out with; a team and sled and snow was half-side deep to the horses. I was so glad to get down off from that hill, I never did want to go back up there.

Then we got a job working for Grant McCracken, a man we knew in Oklahoma, before we went out there, so we worked for him one summer, then we rented a place in what was called Disappointment Valley, close to a little post office named Cedar, southeast of Norwood. We lived there two years, then decided we wanted to live closer to Delta and closer to the children. So we moved to a little farm southwest of Delta. This was on a mountainside, not far from a little town, Olathe, Colorado.

By that time Noah was failing in health and was not able to farm, so we got Guy to move in with us and take over the farm work and on this little ranch is where Noah passed away in the year of 1942, April 26, at the age of 62. I was glad we were living on the mountain where he spent his last days, for he loved the hills and the tall pine trees. He would often tell me how he loved the hills and would often go up on the mountainside and sit under a big pine tree for hours, just enjoying the scenery and meditation. I often hated to move so bad that I would try to talk him out of a move he had planned and would cry if I could not, (which of course, I couldn’t) so would start getting ready for the move. But after all, since he passed on and I am left alone to meditate and to think, I am glad now that I did give in to his wants and went along with him, for after all, he suffered hardships as well as I. Many times the roads were rough, the trials were hard, but we made our marriage last until parted by death.

I stayed on in Colorado for awhile, lived with Guy part of the time and Kermit part of the time. J. R. went to California to work in defense plant as we had entered into World War II and he knew he would have to go in to the army soon so went on in and got into defense work, though it might delay his going into the army some, which maybe it did. Those were hard and trying days with heartache and sorrow. I was in California part of the time and in Colorado part of the time. Kermit also had to go before the war was over, bit with the help and the mercies of God they were safely returned. Otis also had to go, but he never had to leave the states, and spent most of his time in a hospital in Arkansas, so we were glad he did not have to leave the states. Kermit and Clara were married April 26, 1945, while Kermit was still in the Navy. After J. R. came home from the Army, him and Edit was married August 20, 1947. They moved to California. This left me alone part of the time, and then Guy bought a place in Delta, Colorado. He built a house on it and I lived with him until October 29, 1948. When I was brought to Vici, Oklahoma, sick, I was took to Elsie’s and stayed all winter with her. Then in April, 1949, I moved to Vivi, rented a little house from Edison and Lois Turner, where I have lived alone for 8 years.

And many things have happened since that time; some good and some bad. Well, here it is 1958 and I am still in the little house and I just got home from California. I went out there to a funeral. Gladys’ man, Joe Jones, passed away with heart attack September the 29th, 1958. I stayed a few days and Guy was sick out here in Oklahoma, so I came on back home on his account, for he had lost his health four years ago and had been failing in health ever since. He went to the hospital November 9th, 1958, and I arrived home that same day.




Our current generation thinks that life is hard! They have no clue how good we have it. Thanks ....
Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
This is from my maternal Great Grandmother:

The Autobiography of Bertha Frances Boyd (1882-1964)
1958

Dear Children,
Here is my happy childhood days, from the time I was three years old, to the best of my memory, your daddy and I spent of our lives together; as my father moved on a farm just across the road from your daddy’s folk in Putnam County, Missouri, when I was three years old and your daddy was five years old. My father’s children were most all girls and his father’s children were most all boys. We children played together and when we were old enough to go to school, sometimes wading snow shoe-top deep, the boys going ahead and kicking the snow out and making a path for the girls to walk in. We played outdoor games at school, such as ball and dare base and other simple games. With such exercise we were strong and healthy and had a lot of fun.

We always walked to church which was 1½ miles; a little country church built on my grandfather’s place and when we were old enough to work in the field, we all worked together, sometimes for my father and sometimes for his father; just wherever there was work that needed to be done.

And when I was 16 years old and your daddy was 18, we decided to get married, not giving a thought to the fact that I could not boil water without scorching it and that he did not have a $20 bill to his name. We got married on the 17th day of April, 1899, went to his folks and lived with them the first summer. He farmed with his dad and I helped his mother with the housework, for she was sick all summer and on the 29th day of June, Lank and Alice, her twins was born. So, I really got a lesson on housework and taking care of babies that summer, which was a lot of help to me in later years.

So that fall we moved into a little house on his uncle’s place and were so happy to be out to ourselves. Although we had very little to keep house with, we did not complain, for we never thought we needed very much. We lived there that winter and in the middle of the winter, his grandfather died; so when spring came, we moved in with his grandmother, for in those days an old person never lived alone. We farmed her place one year, then she decided she wanted to live with her daughter, so she sold her farm and went to live with her daughter and moved to another house on the lowlands of the Sharitan River.

By this time, we had our first baby, a little girl. We named her Essie. We lived there one winter, then in the spring, we decided to go to Oklahoma Territory, thinking we could go to the new country and file on land and that someday we would have a home of our own.

[Linked Image]
My Grandmother, Essie Henderson
born 1900.
(photo circa 1950s, Drumright OK)

We had friends who had gone to Oklahoma and they wrote to us and told us some wonderful things about the new country which, of course, made us want to try our luck. My folks begged us not to go and said we would not stay, that we was just wasting our time and money. But we still wanted to try our luck, so we sold what little we had and on the 5th day of April, we boarded a train and started west for the Oklahoma Territory. We got to our destination on the 7th day of April. We got off the train at a little station called Tucker. It is now called Belva. It was a terrible looking place right in a canyon between two high hills, or rather bluffs. I never will forget what Noah said when he looked at those bluffs. He said “Well, I just have a notion to just Tucker right back.” But so many people told us when we left Missouri that we never would stay, that we would be glad to get back; but we did not want to be a piker and we did not want to hear them say “Oh, I told you so”, so we just made up our minds that we could stay and tough it out if our friends and other people could.

[Linked Image from i.ytimg.com]
Belva, OK

The Indians were still plentiful and the cowboy and his gun was a part of the law, but the cattlemen were moving out and turning the country over to the homesteaders pretty fast. Our friends met us at the train and brought us to their place, which was west of a place where there was a store and a post office, now called Lenors, in Dewey County, a few miles south and east of Vici. Our friends name was John Lawson, who lived in a sod house, the first sod house I ever seen.

[Linked Image from i.pinimg.com]
Sod house, Indian Territory, OK
(circa 1900)


Well, it rained a lot that spring and one day it would rain outside and the next day it would rain inside, for the house had a dirt roof. Well, we stayed there a few days, then we moved into a little dugout, just three miles south of Cestos. There was not any Cestos there then, for we were there before Cestos was there. Well, we lived in the little dugout that summer, battling the snakes and tarantulas and the centipedes, and also another roof that leaked so bad that there was only one dry place in the house when it rained and that was under the table, which was made of rough lumber from a sawmill a few miles away. I would put the baby (Essie) in a box and push her under the table to keep her dry, spread a tarp over the bed and well, you know the rest.

We lived in the dugout that summer and on the 27th day of October, our second baby was born, a little boy. We named him Guy. He was born in the dugout. Our bedstead was made of rough lumber, homemade, and our chairs were nail kegs. So then and there we decided that if we was ever going to get any land that we had better get busy, for all the best land was taken before we got out here or had a chance. So we knew a man that had a claim out in Woodward County, who said he was tired of Oklahoma and wanted to go back east. We asked him what he would take for his claim. He said $200. So we bought him out and we filed on the land. We felt that we were pretty well off now that we had 160 acres of land, even though it was covered with rocks. Never had no house at all, no fence, no well of water, in fact, no nothing, except a spring of jip water so bitter no one could drink it. Well, Noah and his dad went out to the claim, which was east of Woodward, close to the place where we got off the train, when we first landed in Oklahoma. And they built us a little house, just one room 12’X18′ feet in size, built it out of rough lumber from the sawmill, not very nice; but it was a mansion compared to the dugout that we had been living in, and we were oh, so proud of it, for most of our neighbors still lived in sod houses or dugouts. So, in the claim we planted our first crop, which was kafir corn. We had a team of small horses. Noah plowed the sod with a sod plow. The male board was bent rod. He used a gallon syrup bucket to plant the seed. He filled the bucket with kafir, had holes punched in the bucket and tied it on the back of his plow, and in every third furrow he plowed, he drug the bucket behind the plow and this planted the seed, and surely God was with us and helped us for we raised a fine crop of kafir, the best we ever raised, although times were hard for we had plenty of feed and nothing to feed nothing to feed it to. But luck came our way, for we had a neighbor that had cows and no feed, so he let us keep three of his cows and milk them that winter for their feed, So we had our first milk and butter that winter, and with two little children to feed it was a real treat.

But we still had to have bread, too, and a few other things. So, me and the two babies had to stay alone out on the claim, in that wild western country, for Noah to go and find work, in order that we might eat. And he had to go so far back into western Kansas to find any work at all, that he could not even come home on weekends. Our few neighbors lived in dugouts, off in canyons, and the wolves and the coyotes were so thick and so hungry that they just howled all night long, right close around the house, and many times I had such a creepy feeling, I was almost scared, and wondered what I would do if one of the children would get sick. But surely God was out there also, for not one of us got sick while he was gone. So we had bread and milk that winter. With lots of rabbit and quail meat, for there were lots of them, and we fared real well. The rabbit and quail were so thick they would come close around the house. If Noah was at home, he would kill them with the gun and when he was gone, I would sometimes catch them in traps. So, we fared pretty well that winter.

The next Spring we planted more kafir, and made a garden and put up a little fence so we could keep the milk cows, which meant so much to us. In August we had our third baby, a little boy. We named him Dave. He was born in the little shack on the claim, with a Mrs. Rodell as a midwife in attendance. A wonderful person she was, for with no money, a doctor was out of the question, but with God close by, we did not need a doctor. We just got along fine. We lived in the little shack 5 years before we could make a cistern, so we could have water at home; and that was a great treat, for we had hauled all of our water in barrels with wagon and team and hauled it 5 miles for 5 years. And many, many times I felt in my heart that it was just not worth it to endure all the hardships of a new country for 160 acres of land not too good and for the experience of a pioneer life, But after we were there 5 years, we got a deed to our land, which made us feel better, and after the Oklahoma Territory was admitted to the Union and became a state, we felt we were safer and that we had helped to conquer the wild west and that we had helped to make and to improve one of the greatest states in the Union, the great and wonderful Oklahoma.

Then in the year of 1906, on April 1st, we had our fourth child, a little girl. We named her Ocie, a precious little one that we only got to keep 8 months. When she was 7 months old, I took the children and went back to Missouri to visit my folks who I had not seen for 5 long years, and I was so homesick for them that Noah told me that we could not both go, but since his folks were out here where he could see them often, for me to take the children and go back and see my folks and he would stay home and work. I went but it was the saddest trip I ever made, for while I was there, my baby took sick and died. I had to put her away out there so far from home and he could not even come to us or be there for the funeral, for at that time we had no way of getting him a telegram, closer than Alva, which was about 50 miles, and only a wagon and team to make the trip. So, he just could not make the trip. You will never know how hard it was to take her out there well and hearty, then have to bury her out there and come back home without her. But we never know what we can stand until we are put to the test.

After coming back home, we lived through another 2 years of pioneer hardships on the claim, and in 1908, on the 29th of March, we had our fifth child, a little girl. We named her Elsie. We were as happy as most anyone could be in a new country, enduring life as most all pioneers could expect. But in 1909, we decided to try something else, so we traded the farm for some property, a dwelling house in Quinlan, and a meat market and ice business, which we thought we could handle without hiring any help, if I could help in the shop. So we moved to town with our children, which was a bad mistake, but we got along very nicely with our meat and ice until we began to sell on time. Well, it wasn’t long until we had more on the book than we had in the bank, so we had to give up the meat business.

Well, while we lived there in town, we had another baby. It was a girl. We named her Gladys. She was born August the 1st, 1910, and in 1912, a boy. We named him Otis. He was born August 2nd. So, by that time we had the Arkansas fever, so we sold our house and with two covered wagons and what we could haul of our belongings, we started for Arkansas. We journeyed along very nicely until we got to Marshall, Oklahoma, a few miles south of Enid, and that is as far as we got, for our oldest girl, Essie, fell out of the wagon and the wheel ran over her leg and broke one bone, so we had to stop there and it was several days before she was able to travel. So we found a few days work and by the time she was able to travel, we had decided to just stay there in Garfield County, Oklahoma, so we rented a farm and Noah and the boys cut wood and sold it to buy groceries that winter, for by that time the boys Guy and Dave were big enough to help. We soon got acquainted with some fine neighbors and enjoyed living there, and we soon picked up a start and got along very well financially. We stayed in Garfield County for 9 years. We changed farms once, moving from the farm over by Marshall to a farm over by Hayward, and in the year of 1915, October 25th, another baby girl. We named her Florence, another blessing in our home, for nothing can bring as much pleasure in a home as a baby’s smile. We loved our children and was willing to work hard for their support and that they might have the necessary things of life to make them comfortable. We lived there a few years; I think 9 years, had two more children were born to us while we lived on that place. A girl named Ruth and a boy. We named him Jasper for his father whose name was Jasper Noah.

We got along real well financially while we lived there, got a nice start of cattle, the Aberdeen Angus type. World War came on and prices went up on what the farmer had to sell. We got a good price for our hay; we had lots of hay to sell. We had to haul it 18 miles and sell it to the oilfield workers, for a new oilfield was opened up at Covington, 18 miles from our place, and at that time horses was used for all kinds of oilfield work, and it took a lot of hay to feed them. There was no trucks or cars in that dav and time as there is today, in 1958.

And in 1920, while we still lived near Hayward, a preacher came to our house. It was Brother Rollie Cunningham and brought to us the Word of the Lord. He was the first one to preach the faith to us, and we both knew he had the truth, that what he preached was Bible. And we accepted the faith and was baptized, Noah, myself, and Elsie, March the 20th, 1920. Elsie was just 12 years old at the time, but we only stayed there on that place one year after we were baptized, for there was no church there, so we could assemble.

Our first place we rented near Vici was 6 miles south of Vici. We rented it from Bro. Bob Davis and while we lived there we drove a team of horses 10 miles to church; rode in a spring wagon and we went most every Sunday, seldom ever missed church, but as time went on, we moved several times. One move was close to Lenora and while we lived there our last baby was born on March the 3rd, 1926, a little boy. We named him Kermit. We lived there on that place a few years and when Kermit was 10 years old, in 1936 we moved to Delta, Colorado, not being able to get a house when we first got there, we lived in the house with Joe and Gladys 8 months. They had gone out there a few years before we did, had got settled and was operating a restaurant.

We lived with them 8 months, then Noah got a job on a ranch up on a mountain range called Horsefly Range. He worked for an old man. His name was Archie Terrell. He was a bachelor so I went along and cooked for them and kept the house for my board and room. We worked up there all summer and up into the winter. Then Grandma Boyd took bad sick and they called us home. By that time the snow was 4 to 5 feet deep. We had to be brought out with; a team and sled and snow was half-side deep to the horses. I was so glad to get down off from that hill, I never did want to go back up there.

Then we got a job working for Grant McCracken, a man we knew in Oklahoma, before we went out there, so we worked for him one summer, then we rented a place in what was called Disappointment Valley, close to a little post office named Cedar, southeast of Norwood. We lived there two years, then decided we wanted to live closer to Delta and closer to the children. So we moved to a little farm southwest of Delta. This was on a mountainside, not far from a little town, Olathe, Colorado.

By that time Noah was failing in health and was not able to farm, so we got Guy to move in with us and take over the farm work and on this little ranch is where Noah passed away in the year of 1942, April 26, at the age of 62. I was glad we were living on the mountain where he spent his last days, for he loved the hills and the tall pine trees. He would often tell me how he loved the hills and would often go up on the mountainside and sit under a big pine tree for hours, just enjoying the scenery and meditation. I often hated to move so bad that I would try to talk him out of a move he had planned and would cry if I could not, (which of course, I couldn’t) so would start getting ready for the move. But after all, since he passed on and I am left alone to meditate and to think, I am glad now that I did give in to his wants and went along with him, for after all, he suffered hardships as well as I. Many times the roads were rough, the trials were hard, but we made our marriage last until parted by death.

I stayed on in Colorado for awhile, lived with Guy part of the time and Kermit part of the time. J. R. went to California to work in defense plant as we had entered into World War II and he knew he would have to go in to the army soon so went on in and got into defense work, though it might delay his going into the army some, which maybe it did. Those were hard and trying days with heartache and sorrow. I was in California part of the time and in Colorado part of the time. Kermit also had to go before the war was over, bit with the help and the mercies of God they were safely returned. Otis also had to go, but he never had to leave the states, and spent most of his time in a hospital in Arkansas, so we were glad he did not have to leave the states. Kermit and Clara were married April 26, 1945, while Kermit was still in the Navy. After J. R. came home from the Army, him and Edit was married August 20, 1947. They moved to California. This left me alone part of the time, and then Guy bought a place in Delta, Colorado. He built a house on it and I lived with him until October 29, 1948. When I was brought to Vici, Oklahoma, sick, I was took to Elsie’s and stayed all winter with her. Then in April, 1949, I moved to Vivi, rented a little house from Edison and Lois Turner, where I have lived alone for 8 years.

And many things have happened since that time; some good and some bad. Well, here it is 1958 and I am still in the little house and I just got home from California. I went out there to a funeral. Gladys’ man, Joe Jones, passed away with heart attack September the 29th, 1958. I stayed a few days and Guy was sick out here in Oklahoma, so I came on back home on his account, for he had lost his health four years ago and had been failing in health ever since. He went to the hospital November 9th, 1958, and I arrived home that same day.




Most interesting. Thanks
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Unable to decipher? My ass! Your intent was not subtle, indeed the opposite.

Full of myself? Not at all! Just telling historical facts.

What I did growing up was not extraordinary. It is representative of farm life for millions. The only difference is that our parents chose to live that way two or three decades longer than most.

It has left me all the more appreciative of the conveniences in my life today.

I was feeding cattle from a horse drawn wagon in 1980. How many people today know how to harness, hitch, and drive a team. I AM kind of proud of that skill.


OK, then here's another great feat you can add to your history of super human accomplishments . . . grin

[Linked Image]
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter


I was feeding cattle from a horse drawn wagon in 1980. How many people today know how to harness, hitch, and drive a team. I AM kind of proud of that skill.


I do, I do..

But you're right, even a lot of semi experienced rural dwellers think the sole use of a single tree is hanging deer.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
Originally Posted by Idaho_Shooter
Unable to decipher? My ass! Your intent was not subtle, indeed the opposite.

Full of myself? Not at all! Just telling historical facts.

What I did growing up was not extraordinary. It is representative of farm life for millions. The only difference is that our parents chose to live that way two or three decades longer than most.

It has left me all the more appreciative of the conveniences in my life today.

I was feeding cattle from a horse drawn wagon in 1980. How many people today know how to harness, hitch, and drive a team. I AM kind of proud of that skill.


OK, then here's another great feat you can add to your history of super human accomplishments .


That you consider anything I have mentioned to be "superhuman" says much about your abilities. You do have my pity.
Today is just fine. Even 30 years ago cancer would have killed me at 34. I love modern medicine. People tend to romanticize the past. Like said before carrying water and non stop need for firewood is an issue most would have trouble contending with nowadays. People also forget that if you weren't rich you lived in the dark basically until the mid 1800's when candles became remotely cheap. Candles were expensive and reserved for the wealthy before that. people would bundle certain weeds and dry them in the summer to have light sources for the winter months. Window tax was very common under English kings because of lighting. More windows in your house = more tax. So if you were poor your house was lit by the cooking fire and you had as few windows as possible.
People miss that the argument is not just 'today vs back then' too .People in every era produced their 'frontier types', and probably had the same naysayers as we do here. They werent all moving out at the point of a sword or starvation either. Many had a choice between whatever level of comfort a town still offered, and a chance to make it good in 'the wilderness'. A large town in 1800 may not seem comfortable to us, but it still offered significant security, safety, suppplies and comforts over pushing a frontier. A certain % will always take on that unknown, I think the gene is inherent to humans, its how we spread out. You notice most of the comments are not about 'living in 15th century England under a lunatic King" because no one would want that obviously . 99% are about the frontier era, because these eras are times you can actually reset or shrug off social class. Its a time of freedom, forming new countries, new ideas, new laws. As long as you dont starve or get peppered by arrows of course wink

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