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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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For me I'd say up to the early 60s. Maybe from like the 1850s (beginning of the modern era) until the 1960s. With black and white TV, film or pre-TV (but after photos), where people dressed old fashioned, wore hats, where teachers used corporal punishment, women wore petticoats. Prior to that was another era, and after that, the late 60s, 70s and 80s seemed more 'retro' than old-fashioned. What about you?
My exposure to"oral history" probably goes back a few years more than most people here because I spent a lot of the weekends of my childhood with a schoolteacher bachelor uncle (b. 1904 - d.1996) and his mother (my great-grandmother -- also raised my Mom -- b.1873 - d.1963). And my Great-gran had a remarkable memory for things that happened in the wilds of Northwestern Pennsylvania eighty years (at the time) ago. This was an area that didn't lose its last mountain lions (called "panthers" locally) until about 1900, and my great great-grandparents had also passed down a few stories about the last dealings with the local native tribes.
Happy to say that I live today in the same house where most of those stories were handed down, but -- If only I were able to recall half of what she tried to pass on.
My exposure to"oral history" probably goes back a few years more than most people here because I spent a lot of the weekends of my childhood with a schoolteacher bachelor uncle (b. 1904 - d.1996) and his mother (my great-grandmother -- also raised my Mom -- b.1873 - d.1963). And my Great-gran had a remarkable memory for things that happened in the wilds of Northwestern Pennsylvania eighty years (at the time) ago. This was an area that didn't lose its last mountain lions (called "panthers" locally) until about 1900, and my great great-grandparents had also passed down a few stories about the last dealings with the local native tribes.
Similar experience but differnt geography. I was fortunate to have parents and grandparents who were gifted and vivid story-tellers (& that I was interested enough in what they had to say)
Oral history for me goes to my German great grandmother. Born in the 1870s, she remembers, as a child, her father meeting in secrete after Bismarck had banned the socialist party. My German grandparents remembered the 1920s and the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazis, and of course WWII.
My Ma spend her childhood in Germany in WWII and the postwar era, so she remembers air raids, bombs, war, ruined citys, the Americans marching in, postwar hard times (barter, care packages, and hitchiking cross-country to visit relatives since the trains werent running) , and better times as the 50s got underway.
My American grandparents recalled WWI and the Spanish Flu epidemic, the 1910s in an old neighohood in Milwaukee & the Roaring 20s on a poverty stricken farm in Wisconsin (granmother) and Al Capone's Chicago. (grandfather) My Chicago grandfather recalls, as a child, pre-Prohibition Chicago, beer gardens, and when our neighborhood was actually an industrial suburb out in the country (the surrounding farms were built-out in the 1920s).
Both of them have very vivid memories of the Great Depression and the hard times of that era. Their memories and political opinions formed in that time helped form my politics, too.
Then my Dad picks up with memories of growing up during the Depression and WWII era, and into the late 1940s and 50s.
I was born in 1961 and I guess references my dad (b.1921) to his childhood and younger years would constitute what I envisioned as the olden days. He still uses terms such as icebox.
Things that my dad could tell me about. Seeing "Birth of a Nation" in a theater. Seeing Ty Cobb play. Quitting school to work to support the family when his father died when he was in 7th grade. Raising his own family during the Great Depression. Working the Kansas wheat harvest with horse powered machinery. Passing headphones around to listen to the radio. Lying about his age to try to get into World War One.
Ditto. As a child can remember when we had an icebox, not a refrigerator. The iceman came twice a week and delivered a 25 pound block of ice. To we kids back then, the old days were the last half of the 19th century, since the old people often told tales of that era.
I'm still a kid. For me it is pre 1970. After that is when I think things really started to change to how they are today. Sure it started in the early 60s, but the vast majority of America still had the pre 1960 attitude of everything being "nice" and much more conservative. I wish I could have lived back then, I much prefer it to today's society.
1900 to 1950. Times that my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles talked about. Times I heard so much about but happened before I was born.
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As a child can remember when we had an icebox, not a refrigerator. The iceman came twice a week and delivered a 25 pound block of ice. To we kids back then, the old days were the last half of the 19th century, since the old people often told tales of that era.
