I was momentarily distracted last week by a comment thread at The Belmont Club, when one of the participants made mention of historian Jacques Barzun, who is something like 102 this year. The commenter noted that Mr. Barzun not only remembers Paris during World War I, when the German Army came perilously close to bombarding the place – but how he also remembers conversing with his own then-very-elderly grandmother, whose memories went back to the 1830s. Imagine, being just a step or two removed from such memories. It reminded me also of a conversation with another writer I know, who teaches languages and music, down in Beeville, Texas.
Imagine, he said – someone of our age (we are both in the fifty to sixty spectrum) talking to the oldest person we know – who would be in their nineties. So, their own childhood memories would go back to the early twentieth century – like Mr. Barzun’s. I did have this experience once, when I was just about 18, and because 18-year olds had just then been given the right to vote and it was an election year, I thought I ought to take some interest in politics. Which I did, but it proved to be very fleeting – the interest really didn’t kick in at full-strength until the last year or so. The mild interest of that year took the form of an afternoon at the Republican Party HQ in my home-town, doing what-I-can’t-quite-remember . . . but the other person minding the office that day was an elderly gentleman who said he was ninety-something, had grown up on a ranch in Montana and had been sent to school (a one-room schoolhouse, of course) every day on a horse; a very tall horse, so his father had to lift him up into the saddle, the horse took him to school, and the teacher lifted him down at the other end, and tied up the horse. In the afternoon, the teacher put him up into the saddle – and the operation proceeded in reverse. This would have put those schooldays of his in the late 1880s, at least – but he had some other fascinating yarns, of joining the Army and being a cavalryman in the days before World War I when the cavalry still meant horses. He had been on Black Jack Pershing’s expedition into Mexico, chasing after Pancho Villa, and had deployed to the Western Front as a very new 2nd Lieutenant. I so wish I had written much of this down at the time, or even remembered his name – it was much more fascinating than stuffing envelopes and answering the phone.
But, said my writer friend – now imagine that the oldest person you know, had talked as a child to the oldest person they knew. So, a child of ten or eleven in about 1920 had talked to a ninety-year old person . . . and that person’s memories – since they would have been born in the 1840s – might encompass the Gold Rush, and at the very least, the Civil War. A roll of typescript among some of my Granny Jessie’s papers paralleled that kind of memory-span. In about 1910, two of her aunts were learning to use that newfangled gadget, the typewriter, and as a typing exercise they had interviewed the oldest man in Lionville, Chester County PA. Alas, I do not recall his name either, and the roll of typescript is also long gone (a wildfire which burned my parents’ house pretty well cleaned out all the family memorabilia in 2003) but his first-hand recollections dated from the early 1800s. He told the great-aunts of long-horned wild cattle being brought in from the west, and of working as a carpenter. One of the curious notations was that coffins that were built then were constructed with a peaked lid, a puzzle which had just then been considerable of a mystery to the archeologist excavating Wolstonhome Town, near Jamestown. That design turned out to be the last of an archaic custom, which the archeologist went to a great deal of trouble to unravel – but there it was, testament for the use of an ancient and disused custom, preserved in an old typescript.
Now, let’s get really adventurous – and suppose that that oldest person who talked to the oldest person that you knew, who was born in the 1840s, had talked as a child to the oldest person they knew, who at eighty or ninety years of age in the 1850’s meant they had been born about 1760 – so that their memories would encompass the Revolution. Depending on where they lived, they might have seen George Washington, or his little army of Rebels on the march, heard Paul Revere or William Dawes riding by their house, shouting an alarm, or heard the church-bells ringing to celebrate their victory.
Yes, it is two hundred and change years ago – but to think of it in terms of memories, transmitted across the generations, we are only three steps removed. It isn’t really that long ago at all. History isn’t past – as another historical commentator remarked in another context, certain memories lie at the bottom of our minds, like lees at the bottom of a cup of wine, only waiting to be stirred up again.
It’s a cool thought experiment. One pedantic nit-pick: I think you meant to type “born about 1760″, not “1860″.
Comment by Alex VanderWoude — 20100424 @ 1905
I’ve thought along the same lines — as a child in the late 1940s, I recall talking to a 90+ year old gentleman who sold the Sunday news papers in the town restaurant (Ripley’s Believe It or Not supposedly recorded him as the World’s Oldest Newsboy). He was born sometime in the 1850s and must have had at least some memory or impressions of the Civil War. I’ve wondered if he ever had the opportunity to talk to a similar 90 year old about his impressions of the Revolutionary War.
And I can recall my grandmother mentioning that her uncle was a riverboat gambler back in the 19th century. I was always disappointed she would never tell me anything else about him.
Comment by Prairie Curmudgeon — 20100424 @ 1908
Totally right Alex - so corrected! Thanks (Say, do you need a job as an editor… ;-0)
Comment by Sgt. Mom — 20100424 @ 2020
What makes me crazy is that we’re expected to not act like it was only three memories ago.
Comment by Scott — 20100424 @ 2112
Good post. I like how you put it. It’s interesting, because the Bible is recorded history, but most people were illiterate and the “stories” had to be passed from generation to generation.
Comment by Custom Dog Tags -Klint — 20100425 @ 1044
YES!
My Dad (80 this year) can talk about the stories he learned from his Grandfather, about G-father’s dad (the Civil War vet - who had lots of medical issues from it). So that’s two jumps to get back 150 years.
My own grandfather (Dad’s Dad) had a lot of great stories about WWII (he retired as a Naval officer, and never quit got over it ). My Dad recently mentioned that his Dad had once commented that “The War” in the USA was The Civil War, until at least WWI.
This is actually the best argument I’ve seen in favor of affirmative action - I’m not a great believer in it - if the memories of ending slavery (and yes, I know the War of the Rebellion was about a lot more) are so alive in my family, and we’ve been in California since the 1920’s, why should I be surprised that the impact is still around for others?
Comment by andrewdb — 20100425 @ 1206
I have often thought of this.
I’m in my 60’s.
My grandmother was born in rural Minnesota in the 1890’s.
She remembered the first time she saw electric lights, the first time she saw a car, airplane, etc.
As a little old lady, she boarded a 707 and flew off to Hawaii.
Comment by ed — 20100425 @ 1429
Sgt. Mom, I think I’d be a better proof-reader than editor. Spelling and grammar mistakes just seem to reach off the page and claw my eyes, which is actually a bit of a curse when I’m trying to enjoy what I’m reading (for example, Truckee’s Trail). But making suggestions about the work itself? I would certainly have opinions, but I honestly think they’d be worth little more than a bucket of warm spit. Better to get someone who has actual arthurial cred (as you would say), not just someone with a hyper-developed sense of syntax.
Now if all you’re looking for is some help weeding through your next epic, well, that’s a kettle of fish of a different color…
Comment by Alex VanderWoude — 20100425 @ 2257
I missed the chance for these types of discussion within my family, grandpa Dedmon was a bit of a distance from me (16 hour ride) and I rarely got to see never mind talk to him. The last time I saw him was ‘77 and I hadn’t gotten very deeply into family history at that point. Unfortunately he passed a couple years later, I later found out he was in an engineering company responsible for capturing one of the German railway guns…I keep threatening to last long enough for the tri-centenial and be one of the few people that remember the assination of John Kennedy. Just for fun I played the degree game and discovered I’m 5 degrees of association from Queen Victoria. Adolf Galland…Adolf Hitler…Paul Hindenberg…Kaiser Wilhelm…Queen Victoria!
Comment by Bob Dedmon — 20100426 @ 0514
A contemporary in college (I’m 47) said that her grand mother (or great grandmother, I’m not sure) had, as a small child talked, to a very elderly old black woman in town who remembered British troops marching to the capital.
Comment by Jim A. — 20100430 @ 1055
I told my Dad a while back that if I subtracted his age from his birthdate, I got a date before Custer’s last stand. He has therefore lived through a third of the history of the United States. Of course, now the same calculation puts him back to 1842. Only one more roll of his life puts us back into the French and Indian War. We’re closer than we think.
Comment by Martin Morehouse — 20100430 @ 1259