Deanna,
I'm 43. My FATHER was born in 1923 and grew up during the Depression. He fought in WW2. My grandparents were those people you described and I remember virtually all of those things you listed in your article. When I called home using a Sprint FON card on the then-new global fiber optic network during Desert Storm, my dad got choked up and almost cried. When he explained what was going on he said, "Son, it sounds like you're next door. When I left for Europe I said good-bye to my folks and we all figured it was for good. And I never spoke to them again until I got off the train at the depot in Jeff City after the war. You see, there were a few telephones at the post office and that was about it. And you had to just about yell into the phone to be heard when you called to the next town. So it just hit me how much things have changed...how much I have seen in my lifetime...what I have been a part of...and it overwhelmed me for a minute."
My father was on the first wave of infantry landing craft that hit the beach at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He was one of the very, very lucky few who came through that unscathed...physically. He also designed the world's largest COBOL database, the Houston Port Terminal Railroad Authority's surface freight tracking system. It is still tracking all of the surface freight in the northwestern hemisphere today...now THAT's a "dinosaur!"
He taught me to hunt rabbits with a single-shot .22 rifle when I was 12. He didn't even carry a gun. He taught me to fish when I was about 5, and he never picked up a fishing pole. When he was 9 years old, he and his father caught the world record blue catfish from the Missouri River on a jug line. They were fishing to survive after my grandfather got laid off from his job as a conductor on the railroad. He made his living fishing commercially and gambling.
While all of the homes I've lived in had indoor plumbing, our second homes did not. My grandfathers always had farms, river cabins, etc. I'm very familiar with outhouses, ice boxes, coal oil lanterns, and pumping drinking water by hand...or thinking nothing of sticking a tin cup into a cold spring and drinking from it.
I remember when the fax machine was invented. And I remember when the overhead projector was the "high-tech" audio-visual equipment in the classroom. And most of my classrooms didn't have air conditioning until I was in high school.
The point of all of this, though, is that I've only met one other contemporary about my age who has ever had a similar set of life experiences. I married her. And she is from Europe and spent a lot of time with her grandparents. I think I must be the world's next-to-youngest Baby Boomer. I have a brother 3 years younger than I am.
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