I think it would be worth it to ask the oldest relative you know, “did your Grand Father or Grand Mother tell you of any of their early childhood experiences?” I told my children about how my Grand Father told me about the masts of the ocean-going sailing ships in Boston Harbor and how they looked like a forest of trees. If they tell their children this (or if I tell my grandchildren this) those children - - having eyes that see today, in 2022 - - will have seen, touched and talked to someone (me) who has known, seen and touched someone (my grandfather) who has seen with their own eyes sights that took place in the late 1800’s That is 150 years of eyes on this world.
We could ask people we meet with for lunch or dinner or in the church lobby the same question. What interesting answers we would receive. Did their grandparents experience time of great political change? Scientific change? Wartime change? For example, I could tell my Grandchildren about the Civil Rights march I participated in at Boston, Massachusetts with Martin Luther King. I could tell them I have seen the beginning of space exploration and I saw the Challenger explode in the sky as I was walking to lunch. I could tell them I lived at the tail end of World War II and during the Korean war. I could tell them that I participated in the Vietnam War while in the Navy. I could tell them that when I was a teenager a computer took up a series of rooms and only governments and large companies could own them. They had what were called “vacuum tubes” and required, needed, air conditioning. When I was a child the railroads ran with steam engines, not diesel-electrics. Their Great Grandfather (my Father) shoveled coal in them.
I was fortunate my Grandfather told me of the tall, square masted ships that looked like a forest of trees in Boston Harbor.
