# There are people still living who . . . **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 29, 2010, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814 "2010-10-29T20:28:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/21 "2010-10-29T23:09:36Z")
I don’t know if she’s still alive, but a couple years ago [a former slave’s daughter voted for Obama](http://www.npr.org/blogs/newsandviews/2008/10/109yearold_daughter_of_slave_v.html). Interestingly, she was born before the last Revolutionary War widow died. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/22 "2010-10-29T23:30:30Z")
A friend of mine is 45. Under Race on her birth certificate it says “Negro.” Probably not unusual for 1965 but it looks weird now. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/23 "2010-10-29T23:48:14Z")
> [@ZipperJJ](#): > > The Great Depression (US) seems not only like a million years ago, but that it happened in another country. > > But, there are plenty of us here who have grandparents and parents who lived through it. Both my parents were born in 1923, before the Great Depression started. > [@tdn](#): > > When I see footage from WWII, it always looks so old. It just seems like another era. It’s probably partly because most of it is in black and white. My parents were alive during it. Heck, my mother’s uncle died in it. My father was in the 13th armored division of the 3d army. My mom worked in an aircraft factory in the engineering division as a blueprint runner for the x1 jet project. > [@Zsofia](#): > > It blows my mind that my dad, who is only 79, remembers life without electricity quite well. the farm my mother was born on did not have electricity until after ww2, and my mother in law’s family farm did not get electricity until 1964 [well after she had moved out] and neither farm had indoor plumbing other than a hand pump in the kitchen until well after ww2. > [@Beadalin](#): > > My aunt – who is in her 60s – was hit with a ruler across her left hand whenever she attempted to use her left hand to write, color or use scissors in school. Children were only allowed to use their right hands, regardless of their natural handedness. She’s now pretty much ambidextrous because of that, but it was a long hard struggle. Born in 1961, was forced to use my right hand in catholic school - I have shitty handwriting in both hands. > [@alphaboi867](#): > > My grandmother was no stranger to corporal punishment; my uncles weren’t immune from being belted on their bare bottoms until they finished high school. She still ran into problems with schoolteachers using what she thought was excessive force. My uncle’s 7th grade teacher was known to be an alcoholic with a short fuse. Onetime he caught my uncle passing notes in class and _rammed his head into the wall_, :eek: he ended up in the emergency room for a head X-ray & stiches. > > Granny was furious. The principal did apologize _to her_, but she got nothing from the teacher and the idea that anybody would apologize to my uncle was considered totally absurd. The principal kept telling her not to “raise a fuss” because they were going to deal let him go quietly at the end of the year (she wasn’t the only parent that complained against him, mostly for drinking during the schoolday). She had to threaten to get her brother (a local attorney) involved in order to get reimbursed for the doctor’s bill. This was in the '60s when parents suing the school was practically unheard off. Oh, and to top it all off she was told she was overreacting when she transferred her kids to another school. One science teacher at the public school my brother went to in the early 70s was forced to retire because he tended to use a wooden paddle on the boys, and was also known to turn them upside down and slam them into a garbage can as punishments. He was a wrestling coach, and was pretty much as abusive as that jackass coach in The Punisher. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/24 "2010-10-30T00:01:20Z")
It’s shocking to me how fast wars move out of living memory - it seems when I was a kid there were WWI guys all over the place. Now we’re running a bit low on WWII guys. When my dad was a kid, there were Civil War dudes still around and there were tons of Spanish American vets. ---
**Author:** ![nofloyd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nofloyd/32/2870_2.png) [@nofloyd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nofloyd)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/25 "2010-10-30T00:07:19Z")
My dad (92) remembers horse drawn carts that delivered ice to private homes when he was a kid, so of course half the time he still calls the fridge the ‘ice box’. Local New Jersey history: He used to splash around in the Morris Canal (Jersey City end). You would never know water ran through that stretch now. > **[Morris Canal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Canal)** > > The Morris Canal (1829–1924) was a 107-mile (172 km) common carrier anthracite coal canal across northern New Jersey that connected the two industrial canals in Easton, Pennsylvania across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jersey to New York Harbor and New York City through its eastern terminals in Newark and on the Hudson River in Jersey City. The canal was sometimes called the Morris and Essex Canal, in error, due to confusion with the nearby and unrelated Mor ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/26 "2010-10-30T00:12:34Z")
My mother was born a year after the Titanic sank, and her earliest memory was watching the parade at the end of World War I. My grandfather was a draft dodger from pre-Soviet Russia; he came here, because he refused to fight in the Tsar’s army. ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/27 "2010-10-30T00:22:13Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Both my parents were born in 1923, before the Great Depression started. My father was also born in 1923. As a Boy Scout, he met Civil War veterans. ---
**Author:** ![TurboNuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f19dbf/32.png) [@TurboNuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TurboNuke)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/28 "2010-10-30T00:57:53Z")
My dad was born in 1925. Just last year, he told me the story of his(our?) family moving from Mississippi to Arkansas. About 1930, my grandparents were share croppers. A man with land convinced them to move to Arkansas to work his land. They moved from Mississippi to Arkansas in a covered wagon. It was 1930 but my family couldn’t afford a car or truck. My father’s brother was about 18 years old at the time but he died from meningitis. My grandmother was devastated by his death and got the family to move back to Mississippi. They sold most of their belongings and took the train back to Mississippi. My dad recently traveled to Arkansas and was able to find the grave easily. He was only 5 at the time but 75 years later he still remembered. ---
**Author:** ![C3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/c3/32/3108_2.png) [@C3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C3)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/29 "2010-10-30T01:19:44Z")
My husband delivered milk by bicycle as a child. They didn’t have indoor plumbing until he was in high school. He’s 42. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/30 "2010-10-30T01:26:39Z")
> [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](#): > > I was listening to [this](http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_1154_Adam_David_Miller.mp3/view)episode of The Story, and found myself flabbergasted that my life and this man’s life actually overlap. His story seems like something that should be lost in the mists of time, it’s so foreign to me: > > In the 1940s, Adam David Miller, a young black man from South Carolina, handed a note to a young white woman who frequented the shoe repair shop where he worked, and often chatted with him. The note said, “I would like to know you better.” A third party saw him hand her the envelope, and within a few minutes he was arrested, and soon charged with\* attempted rape.\* > > In a similar vein, I remember being nonplussed when a Doper wrote about having to have a male relative sign the papers with her when she bought a house, with her own money, for herself to live in alone. And this one actually happened a couple years after I was born! > > I don’t mean for the thread to only be about prejudices though. I’m interested in any story that kind of knocked your socks off because it features something you think of as “long, long ago,” but actually happened to someone who’s still walking around today. The 40s? That shit went on in the 50s and 60s, probably even the 70s. Ever hear of Emmet Till? [Emmett Till - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till) ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/31 "2010-10-30T01:36:45Z")
A friend of mine watched the Chicago Cubs play in a World Series. I remember when you had to call the operator to make a call. Also, when the UHF band was not on TV sets; you only have 12 channel choices. I also remember comic books for a dime and candy for a nickel. We also had milk delivered to our door, and the flag had only 48 stars. My parents remember Pearl Harbor, of course. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/32 "2010-10-30T01:37:17Z")
I remember when it was a Big Deal if women and girls wore slacks instead of dresses, and that was simply Not Done most of the time. In the coldest weather we froze our legs. Little girls would wear warm leggings but we high school girls wouldn’t do that. My first teaching job in the mid-sixties it was strictly prohibited to wear slacks. ---
**Author:** ![Pai325](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Pai325](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pai325)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/33 "2010-10-30T01:51:46Z")
I couldn’t wear pants to school at all, and even culottes were scrutinized to make sure they didn’t look too much like shorts. Meanwhile, the athletes on the basketball team (boys, of course, there was no such thing as girls’ sports) wore shorts with about a 3 inch inseam. McDonald’s didn’t hire girls to work. We had one rotary phone, hard-wired to the wall, and it was in the kitchen. I had cancer and was treated in the early 70s and have had medical students look at me to see how the now archaic treatment affected me. I’m in my 50s. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/34 "2010-10-30T02:00:45Z")
> [@MLS](#): > > I remember when it was a Big Deal if women and girls wore slacks instead of dresses, and that was simply Not Done most of the time. In the coldest weather we froze our legs. Little girls would wear warm leggings but we high school girls wouldn’t do that. My first teaching job in the mid-sixties it was strictly prohibited to wear slacks. My mother & every single woman her age I’ve asked have the same memory of going to school in the winter with long pants on underneath their dresses and taking the pants off as soon as they got inside. When the girls’ PE teacher at my HS first starting teaching (in the late '70s) she was not allowed to set foot outside the gym without first changing into a dress (yet the male PE teachers didn’t have to put on slacks & a tie). The only exceptions were during fire drills or if she was holding class outsite. My French teacher started teaching about the same time. Her first school’s dress code technically did allow female teachers to were trousers, but they also had to were a tunic or coat that went down to an inch above their knees. :dubious: So showed up in a pantsuit on her first day, got called into the prinicpals office and told him that her coat wasn’t any shorter than hers and dared him to do anything about it. He backed down and nothing more was said. She also mentioned that she wasn’t allowed to use “Ms” because she wasn’t married or divorced; district policy was that all single women had to use “Miss”. Married women could only use “Ms” if they kept their maiden names; divorced women could use either. When she did get married she kept her maiden name, but used Mrs at school because she was tired of correcting people. Naturally in class we all just called her “Madame”. ---
**Author:** ![KinkiNipponTourist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e9bcb4/32.png) [@KinkiNipponTourist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KinkiNipponTourist)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/35 "2010-10-30T02:22:53Z")
These stories are fascinating! What a great thread idea. I have a lame-o contribution. As a child, I lived with my family behind an older couple named Grace and Al. I was reading the _Little House_ books, and one day I arrived at what I thought must be an incredible discovery. I politely asked Grace if she had had older sisters named Laura and Mary and Carrie… Grace laughed her head off and assured me that she wasn’t **that** old.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/36 "2010-10-30T02:26:54Z")
> [@Beadalin](#): > > My aunt – who is in her 60s – was hit with a ruler across her left hand whenever she attempted to use her left hand to write, color or use scissors in school. Children were only allowed to use their right hands, regardless of their natural handedness. She’s now pretty much ambidextrous because of that, but it was a long hard struggle. This happened to me. I’m 50. I was forced to learn to write with my right hand. I still do, and I play guitar right-handed, probably because my guitar teacher assumed I was right-handed. I can’t remember, but I probably did too. I play hockey left-handed. I can write fairly well with my left hand. I wear my watch on my right arm, like a lefty, because it’s more comfortable that way. There’s a few other things I do like a lefty, too, but basically I’m right-handed now. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/37 "2010-10-30T02:29:17Z")
> [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](#): > > That \*is \*messed up. > > The marching band story reminds me of one of my own. I’m 37, and my high school had a smoking lounge - for students! I can imagine older people would have even more extreme smoking stories. I’m a bit older (50). In high school, seniors were allowed to smoke. Maybe juniors, too - can’t remember. Not only could we smoke in the senior lounge, but if the teacher smoked, he would smoke in class, and we could too. ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/38 "2010-10-30T02:37:05Z")
> [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](#): > > That \*is \*messed up. > > The marching band story reminds me of one of my own. I’m 37, and my high school had a smoking lounge - for students! I can imagine older people would have even more extreme smoking stories. I’m 39 and when I was in high school the central courtyard was the designated smoking area and during the four minute break between classes it was usual to see hundreds of kids and a handful of staff grabbing a quick puff. I remember sharing a casual smoke break with the principal. An Australian exchange student who was a friend of mine was completely shocked by all of this. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/39 "2010-10-30T02:38:50Z")
> [@KinkiNipponTourist](#): > > These stories are fascinating! What a great thread idea. > > I have a lame-o contribution. As a child, I lived with my family behind an older couple named Grace and Al. I was reading the _Little House_ books, and one day I arrived at what I thought must be an incredible discovery. I politely asked Grace if she had had older sisters named Laura and Mary and Carrie… > > Grace laughed her head off and assured me that she wasn’t **that** old.😃 On a related note, I always think it’s absolutely mind-blowing that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter lived long enough to be a Vietnam War correspondent. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2010, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814/40 "2010-10-30T02:46:38Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > On a related note, I always think it’s absolutely mind-blowing that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter lived long enough to be a Vietnam War correspondent. I’ve said this here before, but I think it’s worth repeating here. My father’s still living, and a grandfather of his was a Civil War veteran. My great-grandfather had been born in 1842, so he wasn’t much more than a kid when he fought. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/there-are-people-still-living-who/558814.md?page=3)