GETTING PERSPECTIVE
THEN
In 1955, the American Revolution had ended 172 years before, considerably less than two centuries. The Civil War was about half that old, ending 90 years before, when a few Revolutionary War veterans were still alive. In the 1950s there was a handful of centenarian Civil War veterans still alive. The Spanish-American war had ended 57 years before - my paternal grandfather, whom I knew well, was born in 1874 and served in it, so in that time it was still in living memory.
WWI had ended 47 years before, and many veterans were still alive and marched in parades on Armistice Day. My parents were 8 and 9 when the war ended, so although they were not much affected by it, they remembered it well and all the adults in their day had lived through its terrors.
Then WWII started just twenty years later, ending only ten years before. My parents were in their 30s during the war, and my brother Gary, five years older, was conceived before Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the war. I myself was born in March 1947, only 19 months after Hiroshima and the end of the war. Most adult men I knew had fought in the war. Since my mother's family was German, many of her relatives fought on the other side and were now living in an occupied country. It was all current history and still very much a part of our cultural environment.
In 1955 the Korean War had just ended in a stalemate two years earlier and was still filling the newspapers, Though I was only six when it ended and don't remember it, my brother told me about reports on the radio of dogfights between MiGs and Sabrejets and giving the daily death tolls. I found it amazing that my own brother remembered a war. At the time I assumed that wars were things of the barbaric past and I would never see such horrific events in our safe modern world.
I remember doing some calculations around that time and figured that I would be 29 when the country turned 200 years old, certainly a major landmark. And way off in the misty future, if I somehow survived until I was 53, I might celebrate the Millennium. I remember thinking that only very old people like my grandparents still remembered the 19th century. Almost everyone alive had always written years starting with 19, and would continue to do so for several more decades. I wondered if we would call the year of the Millenium "twenty hundred," as the previous centenary year had been nineteen hundred. Little did I dream that I would spend years of my programming career preparing for Y2K (yes, it was a real thing and would have been a disaster but for thousands of people like me).
Of course, the Bicentennial came and went, and wars continued to occur. Vietnam came along about the time I reached draft age and it profoundly affected my young adult years, coloring my politics, opinions, and expectations for the rest of my life. Eventually, even the Millennium came to pass and was celebrated around the planet, though I was on call that night and couldn't get too drunk.
NOW
Now, 68 years later, that framework of American history has aged considerably, as have I. The same milestones still exist, but they are much further back in time. The Revolution ended 240 years ago, and the country is fast approaching another birthday. Forget the Bicentennial, in just three years we will be celebrating its Semiquincentennial, or 250th birthday. I have been alive for almost a third (31%) of the history of the United States.
The Civil War ended 158 years ago, getting into the ancient history range. WWI is now more than a century old. Even WWII, which still seems like recent history to me, started 84 years ago, and its veterans are quickly disappearing. "Remember Pearl Harbor!" Not many people do.
And "my war," Vietnam? It ended in a whimper 48 years ago, the same interval as WWI was when I was a child. All the events that occupied the news throughout my life - the countercultural revolution, peace marches, civil rights, the Cold War, the space race - all are just paragraphs in the history books, and not even very close to the back of the book, with plenty of newer wars to fill later chapters,
Assuming one has to be at least six years old to remember a current event, no one under 53 remembers the Bicentennial; no one under 35 remembers Nixon; no one under 30 remembers the Millenium; and no one under 28 remembers 9/11. Kids under 13 won't remember Trump stealing the 2016 election. And kids now in third grade, as I was back in 1955, won't remember the start of the COVID lockdown.
I remember talking to my father's dad David Crawford in 1969, when I was 22 and he was 95 and in his last year. He said, "You know, I grew up in the 1880s, driving buggies and wagons until I was a middle-aged man. But I saw the beginnings of cars, airplanes, telephones, two World Wars, and now I've just seen men land on the moon. Isn't that remarkable?" And it assuredly is. Few generations in human history have experienced so much change.
But in my own life, I've seen the moon landings, the advent of computers, the Internet, and spaceships taking off almost every day. I survived Y2K and a worldwide pandemic. I have seen close-up photographs of all the planets and some of the asteroids and moons in our solar system, and even some outside it. During my lifetime we've learned about continental drift, DNA, the size and age of the universe, the accelerated expansion of space, extrasolar planets, the structure of the atom, and scores of subatomic particles. We've learned that human history goes back many times farther than we ever imagined. We've learned the molecular details of how living things function and interact. We have telescopes in space and probes traveling toward other stars. We can detect the vibrations when black holes collide billions of lightyears away. We have affordable handheld devices that can take pictures, make calls, tell exactly where we are, and answer any question. That's quite a lot for one lifetime, too.
It's all just a matter of living long enough to get some perspective.
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