OT - Indians, and other tough people of the past.

[shooter]

Has anyone ever stopped to think how weak and out of shape we have gotten as a society? The horse thread got me thinking about this. I've heard that Indians could take off running in the morning, and cover up to 100 miles a day on foot! Don't know if that's 100% true or not, but no doubt they could travel a long way. I was also watching a show on the History Channel the other day, and they were talking about archers in the Middle Ages. I know the History Channel isn't always up to speed on info, but they were saying that the average draw weight on a longbow for an archer was 120+ lbs, with the stronger ones going up to 180 lbs. I know there are some people who still pull those kinds of draw weights, but I don't think those people are too common. I also think it's amazing the kind of strength exhibited in people of the past considering their size. I've seen several Civil War uniforms that would have been snug on me in the 4th or 5th grade, but they were probably stronger and had more endurance than I do. People just had to work for more things back then than we do. EVERYTHING was a chore. Getting water, cooking dinner, farming, was all done with little or no mechanical assistance. Even my granddad, who is 80, lived like the 1860's until he was out of high school. They had no electricity, running water or telephone until he had already left the farm close to 1950. The first telephone he used was in the Navy. I'm sure some of you have lived this way and know what I'm talking about, but it's hard for me to imagine. I can't imagine cutting and splitting enough wood to heat my house with exclusively for the winter. It kind of makes me wish things were a little like that these days. A lot of people don't know how to put in a full day's work, and some wouldn't do it even if they knew how. Ok, enough long winded talk for now. It's just something that's been on my mind lately.

[20cows]

Yeah, we're pretty soft.

Educated.

-but soft.

[TedH]

Agreed. We have most everything we need available with the flick of a switch or push of a button. I've always said I wished I had been born 100 years earlier.

[AJMD429]

Yeah. We try to live a semi-earthy lifestyle, like many 'rural' people, but use power equipment quite a bit, and whine if the electricity goes out. Even using a chainsaw is 'cheating' compared to the old days, or for that matter a really tough modern-steel saw.

[geobru]

I remember my mother telling me that her brother would run across country to get from their place on the Columbia River to Selah to attend a Friday night dance. It was a two day ride to take the road. I've looked at the maps and it is a good 25 miles across two mountain ranges to get there. I guess he never thought much about doing it though.

Our first house wasn't much more than a shack, and it was heated by wood. The first year we lived there, I wasn't able to put up enough wood for the winter and we froze our tails off. That is the only year that we were short on wood. Like they say, necessity is the mother of invention, and it is also a really good motivator!! Cutting wood for that stove was a lot of work, but it was really satisfying to look out in the woodshed and see a couple of cords there after a hard stint of splitting! I have to admit that I enjoy the heat pump in our current abode!

[Bogie35]

Yep. I'm very soft. I get winded watching football.
However, I think most of us would get in shape pretty quick, if we had to in order to stay alive.

I also think I was born at the wrong time. Life may have had more meaning to me 100 or so years earlier. I would certainly miss the internet though. And what would I do without a Fender guitar and a tube amp? Oh great! Now I'm probably gonna have nightmares!

bogie

[Blaine]

It came at a steep price......women were worn out crones by 30 and people lived to 45 if they were lucky.....

[C. Cash]

I am still in awe of my Grandparents. My Grandmother said you were in the cotton fields before the sun came up and you left them when there was no light left. That was the kids, Mom, Dad...the whole family there. Dragging a cotton sack or choppin cotton in that heat had to be brutal. They all lived off the land, farmed, ranched, did carpentry, and ran trap lines during hard times back in Texas and Oklahoma, and tried to do the same when they got to California during the Depression. What gets me is how knowledgable they were...these people who were supposed to be ignorant farmers. They could build a house from the ground up....they could do it all. Their knowledge of crops and the land rivals any professor that I know of. They never complained or gave up. I remember my Grandfather hitting his thumb so hard that blood would be streaming down. He would calmly take out a piece of masking tape, wrap it up and continue on with the work. Never a groan or a grimace. I hop up and down, say a few choice words, wonder if the nail is coming off and take a break. It was never an option to those folks to not get the job done. I don't think we will see their likes again, at least in large numbers.

[vancelw]

Agreed. We have most everything we need available with the flick of a switch or push of a button. I've always said I wished I had been born 100 years earlier.

I used to say the same thing, but the older I get the more I like my HVAC and quilted toilet paper

I don't miss sitting in a sweltering outhouse, wondering if the red wasps were all circling above me, or if there were some below.... Nope. Not one bit.

[shooter]

I don't think I would want everything to be the way it was 100 years ago. I just wish we had to work a little harder for what we have. It might make us appreciate it more, and teach us how to work harder. I've been on the other end of a cross-cut saw with grandpa, who's 50+ yrs my elder, and he wore me out. I have a very good work ethic, especially for my generation, but I couldn't hardly keep up with him doing chores until he got a little older. He can split wood with the best, and he doesn't seem to ever quit. You just don't see that much with people under 30 yrs. of age, and don't see it that much more with older ages these days, either.

I enjoy a lot of the comforts of modern society. I guess my original intent was to say I wish we weren't so lazy and complacent as a society. If we had to grow our own food, catch or kill our dinner, and didn't sit in front of a t.v. or computer all day, we would be better for it IMHO.

[FWiedner]

I think you give the holy ancients too much credit.

Necessity makes people do what they have to, the point being that not many people currently have to perform such physical feats just to live.

If today's people had to, they would. Period.

[vancelw]

Agreed, shooter. I can and have done all those things, but seldom seem to do so anymore. We have all gotten soft, and the generations below us could not survive without electricity and canned food. The other day, I was trying to show my daughter how to operate a P-38 to open a can so she could take certain things for her lunch. I found out it was a moot point, because most of the cans in the pantry had pull-tab lids!

I wonder how many of the younger generations (mine included-I'm the last of the baby-boomers) could actually can their own food, let alone have the equipment to do it???

I've seen people that thought meat came from the store. They wouldn't eat anything you had processed yourself, whether it be venison, pork, beef what ever. If it didn't have plastic wrap and a grocery store insignia-no way!


{sigh}

[Mac in Mo]

I also ponder this a lot as I spend a lot of time in the woods away from conveniences. My grandparents also picked and chopped cotton in southeast Missouri when they were children. My Grandpa worked in the CCC as a young man. They were tough people. Before being laid off I was a framing carpenter for about 8 years. I left law enforcement to take up this job. There were times when I wondered if I would make it, but your body grows strong and used to the constant hard work. I grew to really enjoy the challenge, and slept very well at night. As to the archers drawing very heavy bows, they did this from a young age, training throughout their life for that one job. Still, they would probably enjoy having a compound bow to use. Whenever I am out in the cold weather wearing my nice insulated boots and thick socks, I marvel at those who didn't have such equipment, such as Civil War troops or even some troops in WWII and Korea. How they survived is mind boggling. Kevin

[Jacko]

My Mum grew up in a 2 room tin shack with a dirt floor with a large family in an isolated rural area. Sparrow and Scotch Thistle stew was a staple food for my Dad as a child when they returned from a Bushtucker, Kangaroo or Duck hunt empty handed or the farm garden was not doing well. My kids find it unbelievable that we had outhouse's and did not get running water until 1969 in suburban Brisbane. My parents have both mussed to me that I was born a 100 years too late and it used to amuse them no end how I go out of my way to experience things from the past. I've come to realise it's because I wanted to be like them

Least I'm aware I'm soft compared to my parents. They marvel at their parents and Grandparents establishing the rural communities where they grew up. Some of the young fella's I see skipping round the streets today I'd love to send back in time to wake them up to themselves.

Any of you folks shook the hand of a young fella lately, limp and wet - Talk about needing to harden up

regards Jacko

[Sixgun]

Blain said it right. Most people were worn out by 45 or 50.

Could you imagine ANY gyms or health clubs being in business in the old days?

I like the happy balance.----------------------- Drive a car, (Jeep) modern medical techniques, cut grass with a diesel tractor, FIOS computer/phone/TV connections, the best of appliances and working tools, etc.------------------------for my exercise , I shoot old guns, read magazines, heck, even cast my own bullets!!!

For real, I heat 100% with wood and split all my wood with a wedge and a sledge, even though I could go out and buy a log splitter. I dig my own ditches, put up my own fences and about a million other things around here. I'm 55 and can outwork most 20 year olds. Can walk the mountains with 30 pounds of gear and a 10 pound rifle all day.

But............like I said, a happy balance. If I need to go to the store, I ain't walking.----------Sixgun

[76/444]

Hmmmm,... very interesting. Obviously there are some folk here who have not visited our rural America.

I lived on a mountain in rural Maine during in my twenties. Every thing the OP listed , was what was done BEFORE going to work. I used to put up 9 to 10 cord of wood and shovel a minimum of a ton of coal under my A-Frame Oslo I built, just to keep warm for the year. Tend a two acre garden, can and dry or fill root cellar sand bins with not so perishable veges. Dip water from the well when I screwed up and pipes froze,... use a sauna for bathing all winter,...tend my animals in what ever weather came my way,...the list goes on from there. I had to snow mobile in after first snow two miles just to go home. Walk the historic stage coach road when spring thaw made the mud, mostly from the deep frost on the road from snowmobile traffic, about three feet deep until it dried and impassably for my truck. There were many a day I had to hitch up my cargo trailer to my snowmobile and go 2 miles down the mountain, twenty miles to the lake, a couple miles across the lake when froze hard, and about a mile or so on the power line right-away to town, to get supplies, and then go back again. This I did only for a decade or so,.... but I got a good taste of what the OP is describing.

The up side was walking out on my balcony and seeing, breathing nature at its fullest. I had a lumber company's private reserve around me that I could travel all day and never see a sole. Just a whole lot of what God created.

My point?

Where I was in Maine, and I am sure in many other states across this country as well,.... this is a way of life that continues for more than most would believe to this day. It was my neighbor's good will and unselfish support that got me through my first years. Something that was so natural for people living at that level of existence,... that no matter who you were, or where you came from, .. it became a part of your being that lasts forever. Working from daybreak to late night was the only way to survive,... so we did it. It kinda removes the petty complaints so many like to whine about who live outside that reality. A once a week game of bridge, over some home made dandelion whine, by a warm wood stove, before hopping on my snowmobile and head two miles up the mountain for home,.... seemed like quit the Saturday night out back then.

If one looks hard enough,.... what is described isn't that far in the past.


just one man's opinion

[Fiddler]

If the economy stays on its current downward spiral, the "tough old days" may stage a spectacular return, with numerous unexpected twists. Will you be ready?

[C. Cash]

I think you give the holy ancients too much credit.

Necessity makes people do what they have to, the point being that not many people currently have to perform such physical feats just to live.

If today's people had to, they would. Period.

Survival is one thing. Doing it with Faith, Honor and true skill is another. That's what makes many of the early folks so honorable in my mind. Sure, no one of these folks was perfect, and there were scamps back then too. But overall, they did much right. Our country has lost it's roots/foundation, and it is survival of the fittest just about every where you go now. When the poop hits the fan there will be a much different method of survival than that exhibited by our ancestors.

[Malamute]

"It came at a steep price......women were worn out crones by 30 and people lived to 45 if they were lucky....."


I disagree with this idea. The "life expectancy" figures we see today like to pump us up and tell us how good we have it, and we do in many ways, but it doesnt mean everyone was dropping like flies of old age at 50-something or 60-something. "Life expectancy" figures include infant mortality, childrens diseases and accidents, etc on up through the ages of life. People died more from diseases and accidents, farming is dangerous, as is dealing with animals regularly. How many people in this thread just recounted their folks or grandparents in their 70's or 80's and had lived the sort of life we consider primitive, or people in their 50's that they couldnt keep up with when doing hard work? There were plenty of folks that lived to true old age, it was just tempered by all those that didnt live that long. I recall a friend in Az in the 1980's telling me about cowboying with an old rancher in his 70's. He could barely keep up on long days riding brush working cows. The old guy had a horse dump him once, or a cow kick him, and broke some ribs. He pushed them back in place, and worked the rest of the day (several more hours) before getting it checked out. The point of that is, he was as much a product of the last century as anyone, and hadnt dropped dead of old age in his 50's, or certainly wasnt worn out.


I also agree that most today arent very tough, mentally or physically, but I believe they can and would be when or if needed. I feel we just dont have very high expectations with our younger people, and they arent pushed to find their limits, except for many of those in military service. I think the softening of our society has a number of causes, not all good, but some comes from the desire of parents to "make a better life" for their kids, and not want them to have it so hard as they did growing up. An honorable intent, tho some of the side effects are less than desirable. Some balance may be in order. We can have better medical care, and safer working conditions, and still build strong bodies and tough minds. I've experienced some of both styles of living, the harder parts by choice. I think it's good expreriences, tho I like running water and electricity. Heating with wood is something I like, and enjoy. I'm glad i don't have to try to keep a tipi warm all winter with wood any more tho. The cabin and wood stove are just fine with me.

[Modoc ED]

Along the lines of what the OP ("shooter") said, I have to say if it is true about what the American Indians used to do with their old and infirm, I'd have to say I would be put out to pasture, abandoned and left to die by the Indians if that practice were carried out today. The Indians would say, "Ed who cannot walk far on crappy knees and who can't run 100-yards without weezing for breath, you are no longer useful to us".

When we used to visit my great-grandmother in Harrelsville, NC in the late 1940s, she had a two seater outhouse, an outside well with a working station built over it with the proverbial rope attached to a bucket in order to draw water and a new-fangled hand pump at the end of the counter in the kitchen. She was modern in the electricity department as she had electricity in some parts of her house.

She used to go out to the chicken coop/pen and kill a chicken every morning for breakfast and again at night for supper. She had cattle in the field next to her house and with the help of her handy-man, would kill and butcher a cow once in awhile.

She and others of her ilk were tough compared to us today.

[Fiddler]

[shooter]

Hmmmm,... very interesting. Obviously there are some folk here who have not visited our rural America.

I lived on a mountain in rural Maine during in my twenties. Every thing the OP listed , was what was done BEFORE going to work. I used to put up 9 to 10 cord of wood and shovel a minimum of a ton of coal under my A-Frame Oslo I built, just to keep warm for the year. Tend a two acre garden, can and dry or fill root cellar sand bins with not so perishable veges. Dip water from the well when I screwed up and pipes froze,... use a sauna for bathing all winter,...tend my animals in what ever weather came my way,...the list goes on from there. I had to snow mobile in after first snow two miles just to go home. Walk the historic stage coach road when spring thaw made the mud, mostly from the deep frost on the road from snowmobile traffic, about three feet deep until it dried and impassably for my truck. There were many a day I had to hitch up my cargo trailer to my snowmobile and go 2 miles down the mountain, twenty miles to the lake, a couple miles across the lake when froze hard, and about a mile or so on the power line right-away to town, to get supplies, and then go back again. This I did only for a decade or so,.... but I got a good taste of what the OP is describing.

The up side was walking out on my balcony and seeing, breathing nature at its fullest. I had a lumber company's private reserve around me that I could travel all day and never see a sole. Just a whole lot of what God created.

My point?

Where I was in Maine, and I am sure in many other states across this country as well,.... this is a way of life that continues for more than most would believe to this day. It was my neighbor's good will and unselfish support that got me through my first years. Something that was so natural for people living at that level of existence,... that no matter who you were, or where you came from, .. it became a part of your being that lasts forever. Working from daybreak to late night was the only way to survive,... so we did it. It kinda removes the petty complaints so many like to whine about who live outside that reality. A once a week game of bridge, over some home made dandelion whine, by a warm wood stove, before hopping on my snowmobile and head two miles up the mountain for home,.... seemed like quit the Saturday night out back then.

If one looks hard enough,.... what is described isn't that far in the past.


just one man's opinion

Point well taken, but I was making a GENERAL statement about our present day society. I realize that there are exceptions to the rule, but generally people don't have to do those kinds of things anymore. I also agree that if people had to, they would. There will always be the few who live that way either by choice or necessity. I also realize that this way of life is more common in the western states and rural areas. When I lived in New Mexico, I knew several people that were a throwback to 100 yrs. ago. They just do things differently than city folk, and they aren't afraid to work. Some places just don't have all the amenities, or it's too expensive to get them. I think there is something rewarding about putting in a full day's work splitting wood, building fence, working the garden, etc. To me it just gives a little more purpose to life.

We have medical advances today that our grandparents and great grandparents didn't have. If they had those same advantages, no doubt a lot of them would have lived much longer, and probably had a fairly good quality of life in their old age. I'm 26, and I see people my age and younger all the time that don't have a clue what it is to put in a full day's work, and most of them wouldn't care to do it anyway. Technology is great, but I think it makes people lazy.

[RKrodle]

Dad was born in 1918 and grew up in rural Texas during the great depression, although he always said they never knew it was a depression because they never had anything before it or after it. Dad was 43 years older then me and I remember when he was still alive he would bump into someone he knew when growing up and would talk about the good old days. When they were finished talking and we moved on he would look at me a say them good old days weren't as good as most people remembered, and that he didn't miss them. He didn't miss following a team of mules all day long for days at a time just to get 40 acres put in. He didn't miss hiring out to plant onions by hand for a penny a hundred, and making a dollar a day doing it. He didn't miss putting up 3 or 4 cords of wood by hand every year. Hoeing cotton sunup to sundown in the middle of summer in the Texas heat, then picking it by hand. He liked having tractors and equipment to farm with, running water in the house and electric lights. After I was born dad quite farming full time and took a job working full time and farming part time, he left for work before sunup and came home and farmed til dark, or later. Before he died he had gotten so he would take some time off on Sundays and watch the Cowboys play, I even caught him taking a nap a couple of times. Dad died at the ripe old age of 63, worn out. So be careful for what you wish for, sometime we forget the bad and remember the good.

[AJMD429]

I don't think I would want everything to be the way it was 100 years ago. I just wish we had to work a little harder for what we have.

I just wish I didn't have to work so hard for what all the people on welfare have...

[vancelw]

Dad was born in 1918 and grew up in rural Texas during the great depression, although he always said they never knew it was a depression because they never had anything before it or after it. ...he would look at me a say them good old days weren't as good as most people remembered, and that he didn't miss them. . So be careful for what you wish for, sometime we forget the bad and remember the good.

Ricky, my Dad and uncles have said the same exact things. Life was hard and simple. My grandparents share-cropped for years before they could own their own place. My grandfather sold the timber off of his land (broke my heart as a teenager) but he wanted money to leave for my grandmother when he died. He left this world soon after without a smidgen of debt, and the timber he sold paid for his funeral.

I'm only the second person in my family that has never had to pick or chop cotton. I'm the first to have any kind of college degree.

Life was hard, not so long ago, but I never heard the old folks complain. It was just life the way they knew it.

I'm glad I got to see the old-fashioned way of life, but I'm glad I don't have to live it (just yet. Someone did mention the world economy, which has been on my mind some.)

[76/444]

As my 67 year old Comanche trail pard, raised on a OK'ey rez. always says,... "



"The Good Old Days,..........



there weren't noth'n good about'em!"

[Ben_Rumson]

That the old timers were a tough lot became apparent to me too watching the History Channel... It was hearing that a couple of mid 60s to 70 y/o men made a near a 100 mile winter horse back ride to attend some very important gathering of the Continental Congress....

A hard days work ...a hot shower... clean clothes... gulp of whiskey...soft bed...

[DixieBoy]

RkKrodle - My Dad was born the same year, and though he grew up farming in Ohio, alot of what he's told me mirrors what your Dad lived through as well. They worked HARD in those days, and it wasn't for the romantic notion of putting in a hard day's work. They had to, plain and simple. But it's undeniable that they knew so much more about so many things that most of us today don't. Like growing seasons, the importance of the phases of the moon, and caring for your horses....just so much more than we today.

Dad's still hanging in there, though we lost Mom this past summer at the age of 89. Both of them had lived through the depression, and like others have said here, they just figured that those times were to be gotten through...and they did it. When World War Two came along Dad joined the Navy, met Mom and got married in 1945. He'd worked on sonar gear during the war, and when the war ended he got involved in the beginnings of the electronics industry. He always said that he was grateful for the chance to not have to go back to farming after the war. As much as he remembered about it, he didn't romanticize it either....it was hard work, and you could be wiped out by so many things. Drops in grain prices could clobber a family, no matter how hard the parents and kids had worked. It's for this reason that I figure I'll always hold a respect for family farmers.

One other thing that reading about the Indians has brought home to me. Diseases that we have seen eradicated for decades could take your life from you, with ease, in those days. I'm the beneficiary of modern medicine, as are alot of the guys here. Much as I miss what I think were the good aspects of "the old days," the simple fact is that I'd be dead if it weren't for modern medicine. So, I guess we have to figure that into our nostalgia.

We have the luxury of romanticizing about "the old days," and I'm as guilty of that as anyone is. I teach history at a community college, and my favorite period is the Frontier West. I would love to have a chance to visit those times somehow, but I'm also aware that it wasn't a picnic by any stretch.

Something someone else brought up here that I agree with. Alot of our generation (the baby boomers) were raised hearing "we want you kids to have it better than we did" or words to that effect, from their parents. They were certain they were doing right by us, and who can blame them for this ? The irony is, that now that we've had a number of years go by and seen the effect of having people struggle so that we could have it better, it turns out that we are not nearly as tough as our folks generation. What they went through is what made them tough, and they sought to spare us from those hard times. There's a major irony here. I've realized for years that my own generation, and me personally, can't hold a candle to how tough my folks' generation was. I'm just glad that they both instilled in us boys the importance of an honest day's work, pride of workmanship, and many other values that they held.

Too many of my generation are now raising yet another generation, and we haven't done too good a job of it. Witness "modern culture" and our last election for proof. I just hope that we can turn things around before we all get a chance to see if we can tough out a real depression here. I doubt we'd handle it well. Have to see, won't we ? - DixieBoy

[AJMD429]

Something someone else brought up here that I agree with. Alot of our generation (the baby boomers) were raised hearing "we want you kids to have it better than we did" or words to that effect, from their parents. They were certain they were doing right by us, and who can blame them for this ? The irony is, that now that we've had a number of years go by and seen the effect of having people struggle so that we could have it better, it turns out that we are not nearly as tough as our folks generation. What they went through is what made them tough, and they sought to spare us from those hard times. There's a major irony here. I've realized for years that my own generation, and me personally, can't hold a candle to how tough my folks' generation was. I'm just glad that they both instilled in us boys the importance of an honest day's work, pride of workmanship, and many other values that they held.

Too many of my generation are now raising yet another generation, and we haven't done too good a job of it. Witness "modern culture" and our last election for proof. I just hope that we can turn things around before we all get a chance to see if we can tough out a real depression here. I doubt we'd handle it well. Have to see, won't we ? - DixieBoy

Yep - the "Greatest Generation" maybe wasn't so 'great' in the sense that their achievement of material success and luxury created a whole 'boomer' generation (myself included) who are the most spoiled, materialistic, and selfish bunch to ever be given the privilege to vote. While most of them were out of the home, delegating the education and moral instruction of their children to others (too often the 'government'), they produced a generation where 'marriage' was considered obsolete, 'welfare' was assumed to be something the undeserving 'fortunate' needed to hand to the 'unfortunate' who mostly were just thieving and lazy individuals too self-centered and irresponsible to deal with reality.

Today, still unsure if I'll get a paycheck for the next couple months (patients would rather pay down their Best-Buy accounts for their kids' X-BOX-360's, than pay doctor bills), and having plumbing repairs and repairs on our 15-year-old vehicles to pay for, we had the privilege of standing in line behind someone at the Kroger who was buying lots of premium meat, premium liquor, and tons of 'convenience' and junk food, who paid for the whole mess (except the liquor) with a 'food stamp card', then headed out to load her ill-gotten food into a brand-new Ford-350 dualie pulling a nice boat. We had about $80 to spend to feed the family until mid-February without dipping into the homeowners line of credit, even though I work 60-65 hours a week. I'll probably get a paycheck in mid-February, although usually don't in January, even though in January I usually have to pay several thousand dollars in taxes (borrowed against our home) to feed, clothe, house, and pay for the medical care of this sons-of-greatest-generation crowd. While many of these folks drive their 350-diesels, are 'single-parent' live-in's of guys making three times my hourly as UAW workers, and spend more on gas for their lake boats than I do on food, I get up each day and go to work, despite whatever aches and pains and issues I have to deal with, only to have much of the time I could care for patients with REAL medical problems diverted to doing the 'disability' paperwork for this crowd.

So, maybe I'm not as physically 'tough' as my ancestors, but I'll guarantee I've far greater self-control than they did. Last year, I was forced by our government to GIVE AWAY $272,000 worth of labor (and family doctor prices aren't that high) I'll never get paid for. So, in that sense, I'm tougher than many of my ancestors; how many of them would put up with such slavery? Or, maybe I'm just wimpier and less willing to fire the first shot in a revolution THEY would likely have started years ago.

[Ysabel Kid]

Agreed. We have most everything we need available with the flick of a switch or push of a button. I've always said I wished I had been born 100 years earlier.

+1

Well, I always said (past tense) that. After my surgery, I am really glad I was born when I was - and early enough to have the surgery before B-HO-care!

[MrMurphy]

I agree with some, though not all of this. My grandfather was born in 1906. He started working at age 9 because his father died. He worked hard, and long, until he was in his late fifties, maybe a bit longer before retiring. With six sons, he more than carried on the family name. He was a carpenter before power tools, though halfway through his career they came into common usage. But even to his dying day, living in the middle of Los Angeles, they still grew a garden out back till the mid 1980s. They'd had a cow and some chickens there till the 40s and the end of the war.

He grew up (as did my grandma) before aircraft were common, cars were rare, electricity was for townfolk and sliced bread, premade was still a theory. When he died (1989)......things were vastly different. Even at 83 he could put a grown man on the ground (and did...several times) simply by squeezing his hand. Hammer and saw for fifty years, you get a hell of a grip. Aside from hoboing all over during the depression looking for work, his one big adventure was hunting up in Alaska in the 20s. Considering at that time it had not appreciably changed from the 1880s I wish I was old enough to remember what he told us (I was around 8 or 10 at the time, he died when i was 13).

People now are softer than they were then because they haven't HAD to be hard. In the same situation some would fail, others wouldn't, just like anything else. Even back in the 1800s, "townies" vs farmers/ranchers were thought soft then too.

I'm only a year out of the Air Force, and in my job (Security Forces) being out in the elements, treated like stuff, subject to the vagaries of scheduling, weather, alarms, the enemy in some cases, etc we had less than choice things to say about the 'REMF' types with inside jobs etc. Put in the same situation though, most of them would have either made it......or not. You can never tell. When you're put in a situation where there is no other option but putting up with it (rain, snow, whatever) or pulling through the situation (forced march, long patrol with heavy gear, etc)....it's put up or shut up time.

I had a 5'1 female machine gunner, about 100lb wearing all her gear including body armor. I watched her more than once pick up 700 rounds of 7.62mm in a backpack (40+ lbs) the gun (27 lbs) the barrel bag (5 lb) plus her personal equipment (20+ lbs) and carry it to a vehicle. Not very fast, but she wouldn't let anyone help her. She was motivated, and knew she had to get it done. We'd help normally, but she was insistant she not be thought of as a wimp.

When some big guy said he couldn't do something, we just pointed at her. There are still tough people in the world. You just have to give them reason to rise to the occasion.

Most guys and girls, with the proper training (growing up on a farm, etc) could do the same job their ancestors did. Because in the same situation, you have to, or starve. Makes it pretty simple.

[piller]

Toughness does seem to come partly from a state of mind.

AJMD429, I will be sending up prayers for you and your family. I see a large number of patients who refuse to buy medicine for their kids unless it is covered by Medicaid, but they have beer in their grocery cart. What would they do if they had to earn a living?

[mescalero1]

RKrodle,
My paternal grandmother taught me a lot about the world and homo sapien behaviour,
I remember her telling me,
" Francis, them darned old fools, don't know what they are talking about, I remember those days; and they were'nt that good"

[Warhawk]

Both of my grandfathers were born in 1890. My mother's father was the oldest of 5, with four little sisters. His folks died of a fever when he was 13, and he went to work in the logging camps in Newport, Arkansas. He managed to keep the family together and raised those four sisters, one of them lived to be 103 years old. His "big adventure" was going off to fight the Germans in France, in WWI. I've been told all my life about what a great shot he was with a rifle, and he often credited his ability to shoot with his staying alive through the war. When his unit shipped to France from England, he was kept behind as a rifle instructor. He eventually went to France, but many of his original unit never made it home.

After the war he came back to Arkansas and was able to buy a little 80 acre farm. My mother was born in 1937, the youngest of 9. My grandparents raised 9 kids off what they could produce from that 80 acres. Mom says they either raised cotton or strawberries while she was at home. They raised those kids in a little house that had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a "front room". My mother was born on the kitchen table. Grandpa had a smokehouse and always put in a big garden. Mom remembers that "going to town" was when grandpa would hitch up the team to take a load of watermelons to town, or something else from the garden.

They lived about a mile and a half from the Little Red river, and my grandpa was known for "hoggin" catfish. Hoggin, is what the locals there call hand fishing. Mom said that grandpa and the boys would take a wheelbarrow and walk to the river. Then they would bring the catch home in the wheelbarrow. They also did a lot of duck hunting, and other small game hunting. Mom says that any meat they had growing up was from whatever grandpa shot, or caught out of the river.

Three of mom's brothers fought in WWII, along with two more brother in laws. Another brother in law was killed fighting in Korea. Grandpa died in 1969, had a heart attack while putting in a watermelon patch. Only the three youngest are left, I don't think any of them would say they had an easy time growing up, but they probably wouldn't trade it for anything else.

[redhawk]

I enjoy reading these kinds of stories.

One grandpa who was a cattleman and peanut farmer died of a heart attack at the age of 72. My other grandparents lived a life that most people today only read/hear about. When I was a kid they had no running water, no inside bathroom, heated with a wood heater, washed clothes in a #2 washtub and rubboard (remember those?), grew most of what they ate in a 3 acre garden, had a smokehouse. Grandpa could build, plumb, do electrical work on neighbors water pumps, and anything else that needed to be fixed. He was healthier tha most today and his physic would rival most of those who work out with weights today, though not from using them, just hard work and righteous living. Granny could garden with the best of them and can, preserve, cook, and bake like noone I have ever known. She taught me more than anyone ever could about God's great creation and the meaning of life in general.

They were tough people, mentally, physically and spiritually. After working from sun up to sun down most of their lives, we lost granny at the age of 99 and grandpa at the age of 94. Nothing wrong with them physically, just old. Hope I am in as good shape as them at that age. This world lost something when they died.

[Bogie35]

[vancelw]

I'm only in my 40s, but my grandparents lived a very simple life. Pa passed away in 86 and Ma in 93.

Pa plowed the very large garden with a horse drawn plow up until the mid 70s, when he finally got a small garden tractor.

On Saturday nights, they would load up the pickup with eggs, milk, butter, etc. and stop by all the houses on their "route" on the way to town. Lots of times they would leave 5 dollars worth of farm fresh product and get 3 or 4 dollars in pay. The rest was charged to the customers "account." When they got to town, they would buy the things they couldn't grow;sugar, flour, peanut butter.

They still had the smokehouse out back, but I'm too young to remember them not using the deep freeze.

Wood heat stove in the living room. Us kids knew not to touch it. Ma would cook stew or beans on it sometimes to make efficient use of the heat.

Outdoor toilet until 1976. Took Ma a while to break Pa from putting his coat on and heading outside when he needed to go in the middle of the night.

We took baths in a washtub on the back porch. Every week, even if we didn't need a bath.

The quickest way us kids could get in trouble was letting that screen door slam, or chunking china berries at our younger cousins.

Electricity ran the lights and the well pump. No much else.
Phone seldom rang. Most folks just came by the house if they needed something. Whenever you showed up (even at 3am) Ma would start cooking for you, no matter how much you protested.

No AC, no TV. We didn't hang around the house and get in the way much. If we weren't helping in the field, we went fishing...or snake hunting. My arm stayed purple and blue all the time from my 16 gauge that kicked like a 10. The stock was so long I couldn't get the butt on my shoulder. It rested on my upper arm. If I had spare money, I bought a box of shells and patrolled the creek and pool banks.

Problem was, I was so active as a youngster I could eat whatever and however much I wanted. Now that I'm not so active, it has definitely caught up to me.

[.45colt]

My family as a whole was either farmers or laborers,hard working people. I could fill the page but My favorite story is that My Dad quit school at 14, and went to work 10 hours a day for six years digging ditches pick and shovel.
When WW2 broke out it wasn't long before Dad was in the Army. He went in at 159lbs and at the end of basic weighed 180. Dad died in 1981 but I can still see the look on His face about all the good food and basic training being a "Country Club".paid to eat sleep and exercise....... He loved every minute of it.

[2571]

I think you give the holy ancients too much credit.

My daughter weighs 110 wet. She rows 6 days a week. When she was at a rowing camp next door to the CG academy, she said her team would laugh at both 'Colors' and reveille because they had already been on the river for 90 minutes.

When some thing stole her bike, she ran the 4 miles between classes on her college campus until she could afford a beater bike at a garage sale.

Seen her and her friends swim a mile in 60° water, ride bikes for 20 miles and then run 7 miles in a pouring rain because they think triathalons are ''fun". And, they paid $35 each for entry fees.