Last week would have been my Grandpa’s 118th birthday had he not passed away in 1997. He managed to have a long and interesting life. He was born in 1904. He’s was the last of the generation that actually admitted how much the past really sucked. He knew. He lived it, once. And that was enough.
Everyone has to listen to someone older tell them how great everything used to be. It only gets worse as we have more and more technology to capture moments, and reinterpret them as memories. Oh that was a bad moment, but let’s look for the good.
I’m lucky. I had old, old grandparents.
His generation didn’t have more than one reality. He didn’t have all these things we have now to revised and rewrite history. It’s not like the Boomers where they have all those retro-themed restaurants that all look like the set from Grease.
My Grandpa had one photograph of himself as a kid. One. Back then there was only one, maybe two influencers. The one guy who owned a camera who traveled the countryside and took pictures.
To give you a sense of how old he was…he was too young to fight in WWI and too old for WWII, but he remembered both.
My Grandpa loved that fact that new stuff was coming out all the time. I never heard him once bitch or lament the good old days. Everything sucked back then. Everything.