Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hmmm I picture myself at 80 sitting in a rocking chair listening to Rush while some youngster yells at me to turn that noise down. I'll laugh and tell her that they're not my mother, even though she'd sound like it.
I think it is worse than that. There will be no old photos to peruse because everything was digital. No old diaries to read because everything was digital. No old love letters or cards to read because none were written or sent. No treasured books to share because they were replaced by digital ones.
I wasn’t interested in family lore, either, until we were at my aunt’s house sitting around the kitchen table. My mother and my aunt were reminiscing over their childhood in Nebraska. I loved it. Kept asking for more stories.
Maybe it was the utter unlikelihood (to us) of these “old†people ever having been children.
A passage from a novel that was so poignant, I saved it:
""Do you all remember DesJarnette's melons?" She said it with such longing that Bob was moved, and he glanced around the table, imagining all the old women as young girls, slender and lithe, cutting open the sweet melons and never dreaming they could be old women, ever." --- Annie Proulx, "That Old Ace in the Hole".
All this stuff about technology and kids who aren’t interested in old photos...the point was that today’s old-people-to-be are documenting mundane stuff NOBODY is interested in. Endless selfies, ordinary food they ate, etc. The problem is not the technology; the problem is the indiscriminate documentation of anything and everything, sometimes when there are much better things to photograph right next to them.
Selfies of people at signs announcing Entering National Park, when the park natural scenery itself is ignored? BO-RING to the max, unless it is just part of bigger set showing the park beauty.
Great Stuff!
But I must report that none of my grandkids are remotely interested in my history, and my stepdaughters have no interest in who my family might have been.
It was well worth watching, thank you OP.
I am now ancient and in the telling stories of my youth I am starting to sound ancient.
It was nearly 60 years ago, 1961 to be exact, we purchased a four bedroom two bath home on Dundee Drive in Santa Clara for $29,900 and if that doesn't date me I don't know what would. Grew up around that area playing in the pear orchards and exploring the dry creek beds.
We laughed at anyone living in the sticks of Milpitas.
Lawrence Expressway was a two lane road and the San Thomas Expressway wasn't built yet.
Between the small towns of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara there were prune orchards on both sides of the El Camino Real.
50 years ago I found myself a combat medic with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam and I suppose it is getting to be like ancient history not unlike the ancient history of the second world war we heard about just 25 years ago.
I remember picking string beans for 2 cents a pound in the fields around the San Jose Airport which really wasn't all that far from our house. We could cut through the orchards on our bikes and be there in a few minutes. The orchards had dirt roads winding through them so we could ride.
But then San Jose had a population of 100,000 so there you go.
Kids today only interested in electronics,texting and I Pads.
My history starts in 58 page book starting in 1812 in Wolverhampton England,spreading out on the east coast,father born in 1884,first wife died of influenza in 1909,second wife 1935 of strep,there was no medicine then.
I am now ancient and in the telling stories of my youth I am starting to sound ancient.
It was nearly 60 years ago, 1961 to be exact, we purchased a four bedroom two bath home on Dundee Drive in Santa Clara for $29,900 and if that doesn't date me I don't know what would. Grew up around that area playing in the pear orchards and exploring the dry creek beds.
We laughed at anyone living in the sticks of Milpitas.
Lawrence Expressway was a two lane road and the San Thomas Expressway wasn't built yet.
Between the small towns of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara there were prune orchards on both sides of the El Camino Real.
50 years ago I found myself a combat medic with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam and I suppose it is getting to be like ancient history not unlike the ancient history of the second world war we heard about just 25 years ago.
I remember picking string beans for 2 cents a pound in the fields around the San Jose Airport which really wasn't all that far from our house. We could cut through the orchards on our bikes and be there in a few minutes. The orchards had dirt roads winding through them so we could ride.
But then San Jose had a population of 100,000 so there you go.
50 years is half a century.
Thanks for this. Even if you have kids that don't appreciate family history, I love hearing about the Valley of Heart's Delight.
I arrived there in the late 1980's -- late, indeed -- but there were still orchards.
Before he died, Steve Jobs decreed that apricot trees, reminiscent of his childhood in Santa Clara County, be planted on the grounds of the new Apple campus. In the late 90s he bought the house behind his Waverly home in Palo Alto and planted apricots there.
I'm trying to imagine Lawrence as a two-lane road.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
