I shoulda lived in the late 1800's!!!!!!!!!!!!

[the ringo kid]

Not one of the better Twilight Zone episodes.

Warren Oates was the tank crew Corporal. The episode is: "The 7th is made up of phantoms." Actually, I thought it was a very good episode partly because of Warren Oates being in it as an early career appearance.

The Twilight Zone S05 E10 The 7th Is Made Up Of Phantoms - YouTube

 

[DeathGrip]

The only thong i cant live without is

I'm not a editor but....... I have to point this one out.

OH, The humanity.

I went to see a friend at the beach. The Canadians are here.

Oh, My eyes! My eyes!

 

[DWFAN]

Well....,durn it. Looks like I've snapped back to reality. Hot showers are pretty important come to think of it. Guess we should put an ad in the WTB section for a reliable time machine.

Hot showers? Back in the Nam if you got a hot shower you were lucky. If they filled your water tanks early in the mourning, That they being me, you had a warm shower heated by the sun. Otherwise you got wet and lucky for it. Try a week or two out in the boonies. If someone passed gas it smelled good. Ah the life of an infantry man or a combat engineer. It was the Asian wild west. If you weren't being shot at you were just wet and miserable. Or both. Don't wish for something that is nothing more than a dream. Life then could be real tough.
DW

 

[Arik]

I am guilty of romanticizing the past - I love going through old photos and imagining what it must have been like back around the 1880s - when freedom was really free.

I just want to once hear someone who wants to romanticize going back as anyone but a white man....You know..."when freedom was really free"



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[Wyo]

Living 'way back when sounds like fun, or something, but every time I visit an old cemetary and see how many children aged 5 or less are buried there, i'm reminded how "unfun" it would have been. Myself, I'd have been dead at 35 from a bad appendix. Or for sure at 50 from a perforated intestine. Not very appealing. Paraphrasing Steve McQueen in "Tom Horn" - "If you had known how raggedy assed the old west really was, you wouldn't a thought so much of it."

 

[BaldEagle1313]

Living 'way back when sounds like fun, or something, but every time I visit an old cemetary and see how many children aged 5 or less are buried there, i'm reminded how "unfun" it would have been. Myself, I'd have been dead at 35 from a bad appendix. Or for sure at 50 from a perforated intestine. Not very appealing. Paraphrasing Steve McQueen in "Tom Horn" - "If you had known how raggedy assed the old west really was, you wouldn't a thought so much of it."

Yup. Grandma was born in 1877, 9th of ten children. Of her four oldest siblings, three died before she was born.

 

[model70hunter]

I remember that Twilight Zone episode. 30 cal carbines, M-1's and 1911's did not overcome superior numbers.

 

[RobertJ.]

Sir, whenever I get feeling romantic about stepping back in time, I think of one word:

Dentistry.

Hope this helps, and Semper Fi.

Ron H.

That was exactly my first thought!

And, when I was younger, I drank and had a big mouth. I seriously doubt I would have made it past 21!

 

[walkin jack]

I used to feel the same way but as I got older and older those reality checks started kickin' in. The allure of the cool looking guns and the romance of sittin' around a camp fire out on the open range with a pewter coffee pot bubblin' and a pan of beans and bacon filling my nostrils with those aromas mixing with the smells of sage brush. Laying on my back under a blanket with my head resting on my saddle and looking up at a huge full moon and a sky full of squillions of stars. Having my trusty steed for companionship and the peaceful feeling that comes from solitude.

I can close my eyes and see myself pushing my way through bat wing doors into a saloon on some dusty street in some frontier town. Walking up to the bar and ordering a shot of rye. The odor of cigar smoke and the tinkling sound of the piano in the corner adding to the ambiance of the place.

Taking my best gal out for a buggy ride and a picnic by a quiet little stream in the shade of a little stand of willow trees at the waters edge. Cold fried chicken and boiled eggs and unrefrigerated beer.

But the older I get, the more I understand the reality of my existence. For one thing I'm going to be 70 years old in June. I am 99.99999% positive that I'll make it easily and beyond. But one of those realities I've mentioned is that I'd probably have been dead for years had I lived in the mid 1800s.

Even if I'd died of natural causes which could even include something as simple as an abscessed tooth or chicken pox or an infection from a simple cut or injury that got infected and went systemic, I'm sure I'd not have made it as far as I have living in THIS time.

But with my luck I'd probably have died very young. Kicked in the head by a horse or shot by a bandit or what have you.

And I never get very far if I start thinkin' about all the stuff I have that I wouldn't have ever know about if I'd lived back then. One of the main things is air conditioning. I don't see how ANYONE lived around here before that especially trying to sleep at night while sweating like a pig.

But one good thing about living back then; nobody had to put up with the aggravation of a computer or a cell phone!

 

[Beemerguy53]

A lot of us tend to romanticize about some other era, and daydream about living in it. But as others have noted, life was harsh and short then, and they definitely didn't have the modern amenities we take for granted...

This thread reminds me of my friend Gino. His parents are from Ischia, a little island about 19 miles off the west coast of Italy. It was very simple and primitive when his parents were growing up there, and Gino tells me they didn't even have electricity until the Germans came during World War II.

When Gino was a kid in New York, growing up in a bi-lingual household, he once asked his Dad what was the Italian word for "toilet".

"I don't know", said his father. "We didn't have one!"

 

[Donn]

I don't disagree with some of your points, but I think I like living in a time where there is no smallpox, polio, cholera, or any number of other deadly diseases that are essentially non-existent in a developed country. I'm kind of partial to showers and flush toilets, too... but I was raised in the city. Me and horses have an agreement. I don't try to ride them, they don't try to kill me.

+1^^^^^ Not crazy about the idea of returning to a time when a broken bone or abscessed tooth could be life threatening, not to mention surviving from birth to 3 years was problematic. While it would be nice to return to a time when we were a Republic and not a democracy, I'll stay here, thank you very much.

 

[moosedog]

I have often thought about that.
I think I would have made a decent Viking or Pirate too.

 

[jimmyj]

Hi:
I was born in the late 1930s and grew up in the 1940-1950 era.
We lived in a low income rural area. Living in a board shack no electricity, running water, or telephone. Water was from a pitcher pump, lighting from oil lamps, heat from a stone fireplace, cooking from a wood stove, bathing from a tin tub on the back porch, and toilet was a outhouse (paper from a Sears-Roebuck catalog). Walked a mile to the school bus stop to ride to school 15 miles away. At the country school heat was from wood heaters in each class room. Grades 1 though 12. Shopping was on Saturdays at a small town 20 miles away. Every one worked at the mines and farmed. During WWII children and old men were the only people in the area as the men were away in the armed services and the women worked in the defense factories and ship yards. Evening were spent around the battery operated radios listening to the war news.
Jimmy is happy in the era he is living in now.

 

[wbraswell]

No electricity, means no refrigeration, no A/C, no recorded music, no communication outside of shouting distance.
Men worked in the fields, took care of animals, and chopped wood. Women worked in the house building fire, preparing food and making clothes. That's what you did from dawn til dusk. Living was a full time job. You worked hard, no holidays, no weekends, no money. A feast would be a meat, a starch, and a vegetable. A meal would be a starch. No hobbies, no leisure time, no entertainment. You worked, you ate, you slept, you survived. Have you noticed how somber folks look in old photos. That's because they didn't have much to smile about. No S&W forum, who wants that?

 

[jaykellogg]

It is fun to imagine what life would be like in an earlier time. Let's see the 1880's, no automobiles, all transportation was horses, mules and some oxen. The "exhaust" from these creatures lay in the street and smelled. In fact, the whole area had a particular "air" about it.

I kind of like the era just before JFK was killed, but I am a white man. If I were of African descent I would not like that era so much.

I am fortunate that my 93 year old father is still alive. When I hear his stories of growing up I am impressed by what he lived through. In 1934 Grandpa was making $20 a week and Dad was 14. Dad worked as a night clerk in a motel and made the princely sum $10 a week. Dad was allowed to spend his money as he wished, but some was always paid to the grocer's so the bill never got to $20 and then the family would be cut off. In addition to working as a night clerk, Dad mowed lawns, worked around the auto dealership where my Grandfather worked and made homemade doorstops which he sold through a local retailer.

 

[Arik]

I have often thought about that.
I think I would have made a decent Viking or Pirate too.

Now Vikings. .I'm all for!

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[Marshwheeling]

The only thong i cant live without is my DvD player and collection=Shasta included.

The only thong I can't live without is the one my sweetie wears. (At 60, she still looks good in it.)

 

[ChuckS1]

Cowboys were mostly teenagers who were killed by the weather.

Hmmm, I know a bunch of teenagers I wish were cowboys/cowgirls...

But seriously, we're looking at this knowing what we know today. If you lived back then and didn't know you were missing out on our modern stuff, then it wouldn't be as bad.

 

[wbraswell]

Like these people who don't believe in vaccines. Yeah, lets bring back the good old days. Smallpox, polio, TB.....

 

[amazingflapjack]

I have a copy of the Frederick Remington's bronze, "Mountain Man" and it tells a very descriptive tale about the existence these individuals lead. One of the things that Feral pointed out is very obvious-no body fat/all muscle and sinew; horse and rider!