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People you’ve known or met who could remember furthest back in history.

It’s amazing the Transit has been with us for over half a century now,

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here’s a white example

In the US we had the Econoline Van:

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The engine was in a lump between the seats.
 
The trouble with remembering history is that it wasn`t history at the time.

One of my regrets is not talking to older members of the family about stuff they remembered when they were still around to talk.
 
The trouble with remembering history is that it wasn`t history at the time.

One of my regrets is not talking to older members of the family about stuff they remembered when they were still around to talk.

I used to have a cassette tape of my parents and assorted aunts and uncles nattering on about their childhoods, punctuated by the sound of chinking glasses. At the end, it turned into a sing-song. Apart from talking about the communal laundry aka the ‘bag wash’, most of their memories centred around people who lived on the shady side of the law, and who ended up in prison for knocking their wives about a bit.
 
My problem (or one of them) is that I have such a poor memory. So in terms of telling my children about ‘the olden days’ I’m hampered by the fact that I can barely remember them.

For example, I went to York on a school trip on one of the last scheduled steam train services. What do I remember about it? Bugger all, except that we had a fish and chip supper at the end of the visit, but the teacher misread the time, and we had a mad dash to York station, as a result of which I had terrible indigestion.
That’s the great thing about the way back when machine- you could make it up as you go along, they’ll be none the wiser. Particularly if you’re born into a long line of rural dwellers where nothing essentially changed from when the Romans left until about the 1960s. You could get teary eyed, regaling them about the time crop rotation came in in the mid-1700s.
 
That’s the great thing about the way back when machine- you could make it up as you go along, they’ll be none the wiser. Particularly if you’re born into a long line of rural dwellers where nothing essentially changed from when the Romans left until about the 1960s.
This is true. For example, Lily Savage aka Paul O’Grady went to the same school as me in Birkenhead. He’s a year younger than me, so I should remember him, but I don’t. When people would ask me about my memories of him, I’d make stuff up. Subsequently on reading his autobiography I found out he’d been in the prep school but never made it to the main school, having failed the entrance exam, so in fact I never knew him.
 
I used to have a cassette tape of my parents and assorted aunts and uncles nattering on about their childhoods, punctuated by the sound of chinking glasses. At the end, it turned into a sing-song. Apart from talking about the communal laundry aka the ‘bag wash’, most of their memories centred around people who lived on the shady side of the law, and who ended up in prison for knocking their wives about a bit.
Was it even a crime then?
Rape within marriage wasn’t made a crime in the UK until 1994.
 
This is true. For example, Lily Savage aka Paul O’Grady went to the same school as me in Birkenhead. He’s a year younger than me, so I should remember him, but I don’t. When people would ask me about my memories of him, I’d make stuff up. Subsequently on reading his autobiography I found out he’d been in the prep school but never made it to the main school, having failed the entrance exam, so in fact I never knew him.

My mom was in high school with Barney Kessel, same age, but never heard of him.
 
I used to have a cassette tape of my parents and assorted aunts and uncles nattering on about their childhoods, punctuated by the sound of chinking glasses. At the end, it turned into a sing-song. Apart from talking about the communal laundry aka the ‘bag wash’, most of their memories centred around people who lived on the shady side of the law, and who ended up in prison for knocking their wives about a bit.
I recently recorded some family interviews on my horns from cassette and put it on YouTube. Recollections of life in the blitz and before the nhs and when houses cost not much .
 
My maternal grandmother was born at the end of the 19th century and could remember times before cars and electric lights. Strangely she didn’t recall Titanic, and when she saw the film many years later she thought it was fictional. That may have been a function of age however, as I can remember her seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark some years before and filing it a a horror film, and unsuitable for family Xmas viewing.

Her husband Frank was 12 years younger and so too young for WW1 but too old for WW2, but he was a watchmaker by trade originally and worked for Smiths instruments in avionics during the war and later in automotive until he retired. Sadly he died in the late 80’s or early 90’s, but Lily survived him by some 20 years.

On my wife’s side, her grandma was of Hugenot descent and very active in the Labour and trade union movement in East London, and once had Clement Attlee round for tea and cakes. Her stories were amazing, and her thoughts about the tories not fit to repeat, bless her.
 
My wife can trace her hueguenot ancestry back to Francois Roubiliac, a celebrated sculptor with work in Westminster Abbey.
We have the family tree framed.
 
It occurs to me in light of all these recordings of our elders talking about the way things were – which of us has plans to record anything similar for the grandkids? Life before netflix, the internet, cell phones, regular flu shots, etc. will seem as alien to them as the horse-and-buggy days did to us.

Follow-up question: what medium is even available for such a thing? Tapes? CDs? 8 mm videocassettes? These are all as weird and obsolete as the eras that spawned them.
 
Much later, my father in law’s younger sister married Jeremy Price, already a squadron leader in the RAF. He flew bombers and tankers after WW2, and later took on multiple squadrons of RAF Victors, and was involved in the planning, logistics and refuelling of the Black Buck Vulcan sortie to the Falklands. His grandma married her sweetheart many years before, but he died in the 1918 flu, and she survived him by over 70 years, and had many tales to tell. Fascinating stuff!
 
It occurs to me in light of all these recordings of our elders talking about the way things were – which of us has plans to record anything similar for the grandkids? Life before netflix, the internet, cell phones, regular flu shots, etc. will seem as alien to them as the horse-and-buggy days did to us.

Follow-up question: what medium is even available for such a thing? Tapes? CDs? 8 mm videocassettes? These are all as weird and obsolete as the eras that spawned them.
I recently cleared my father's place and kept an old late 60s Grundig 4-track tape recorder precisely to be able to listen to some of the tapes he's recorded. The machine stills works fine despite not having been used for at least 30 years. I hope the more recent technology ages as well.
 
The oldest person I recall knowing was my paternal great grandmother Alice, born around 1878. (She is described as 23 years old in the 1901 census) The only place I ever saw her was sitting in the same chair in the living quarters of the pub kept by my Grandfather... her only son. This would be at a few consecutive Christmases in the 1950s, when I was under 10 and she would be in her 80s. She said little, and was quite a diminutive, though scary figure..in typical all black Victorian clothes and button boots. She had one of those silver chain purses which contained a seemingly inexhaustible supply of silver 'threepenny bits', which she distributed to us. Her husband, my Paternal Great Grandfather John,, was long gone and I never knew him, though my middle name is 'after' him.

On my Maternal side, a cousin has traced back to the 18thC and recorded stuff I was previously totally clueless about, but in keeping with the thread, the oldest one I knew, was my Grandfather Jack, born 1897, who died in 1969 aged 74. He fought in WW1 ( Driver/Lance Bombardier -Royal Artillery) and was awarded the Military Medal and mentioned in dispatches. He was 5'4" dripping wet.
There's a pic of him somewhere on here in the Photo section, which I'll try to link to later.

Edit: He's here : https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/photographs-from-the-archives.41708/page-6#post-664044

He was my Hero in many ways. A quiet spoken man, with a tremendous sense of duty, but not a trace of 'militarism' or jingoism. He was patient and wise. Although I never met him, Jack's father John, born 1858, gains a mention in a newspaper article from 1909, which I have transcribed here :



Intriguing that the case was adjourned.. so that there is very probably further information somewhere concerning the final verdict. 'Misadventure' wouldn't surprise me.. though it seems very unlikely that young Fred and his mysterious friend spent the previous evening totally unseen by anyone.

It's also interesting to me that the street on which young Fred Cuthbert lived..still exists, though with newer housing. His most direct route from where he had allegedly been for the evening, back to his house, would be straight across the railway crossing.with no need to stray along the track to where he was found.
Most odd.
That’s a sad story about the death on the railway Mull. Reminded me of a story of my mother’s about a boy she was at school with in the 1930s and 40s who was the class joker. He was on leave during the war, seeing his girlfriend and was late returning to his base so skipped on a train without the correct travel warrant and was killed when he climbed onto the roof before a tunnel, to avoid the ticket inspector.
 
This is possibly a bit tenuous, but my maternal great uncle Bertram emigrated to the USA just after WW1. In his early years there he lived and worked as a ranch hand in Texas and Arizona. In the early 1960s as an old man he came back to the UK to visit. I can remember meeting him with my dad and asking him if he had a six shooter and Winchester rifle and if he'd had any gunfights! Yes, he said, mainly skirmishes with Mexican cattle rustlers who came over the boarder to steal cattle. Then he told us that Bisbee, Arizona, where he was living, was just up the road from Tombstone, and did we know what had happened in Tombstone? Well, we sort of did as the film Gunfight at The OK Corral had come out in 1957. He said when he was first there in the early 1920s - around 40 years after the gunfight - he had met many folk who had witnessed or been involved in the incident and that it had been, and still was, a hugely controversial incident, and remained so until this day (he was talking in the 1960s) and I believe still is to this day, particularly amongst the descendants of the families involved. So, I knew a man who knew people who had been involved in the gunfight at the OK Corral (only it didn't take place at the OK Corral, but that's another story) Will this do?
 
I was speaking with my maternal grandfather, who told me his horse saved his life once. It was in the Great War 1914-18. He was in the 21st Lancers, as a Military Policeman. He was riding his horse along a country lane in France, a narrow track running down to a stream. As he approached the stream, the horse stopped, and refused to go any further. My grandfather got off his horse, to try to walk him on, but smelt gas (chlorine). Had he gone on, he would have been, well, affected by the gas. As it was, in later life, he went blind.
 


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