My Historical Life

Some of my (distant) cousins and I get together via email occasionally to share any small new finds - we found most of the major stuff - and just to check in generally. We are scattered from Ireland to Scotland, New York, England and both the east and west coasts of Australia. We were discussing what we would be looking for first when next year the 1921 British census is released. That got me to wondering when the 1950 US census will be released: 2022! I may have to disappear for most of next year...

One of my cousins was saying that she'd turned her attention for once to her husband's family history. She described his family as dysfunctional but didn't say why. Aren't we all, I'm thinking. She said that her mother-in-law was finally opening up about the family and that an uncle was gathering family photos, remarking that no one had ever wanted them before. We all treasure our skeletons far above all the 'normal' folks in our families so my cousin may manage to turn that family's self image around. 

I have always been in awe thinking about my grandparents and all that they survived: WWI, the influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, WWII, the polio epidemic and the pre-antibiotic era, not to mention that women only got the vote in the US in 1920. I've been a bit excited - weird, I know - to be living through a pandemic myself - and I was damned determined that Bill and I would survive. Then I got to thinking that actually I've lived through a lot of other things. 

I was in the third grade when JFK was assassinated (I skipped first grade). I remember having our Spanish lesson in front of the television when the principal came in and changed the station from the PBS channel to show the news about it. We were all sent home early that day. I remember thinking I should be happy to get let out early but I was sad and a little bit scared about what all this meant.

My generation at school narrowly missed the Vietnam war. I remember growing up hearing all the foreign names every night on the news and double digit reports of deaths almost daily. I was nearly numb to it up until high school when I realised people I knew might be in those casualty figures. A lot of my friends would be going to college and thus exempt, but not everyone could make the grade - or afford the tuition. 

Then there were the civil rights rights, the assassinations of MLK and Bobby. My parents were sympathetic to the plight of black people but we worried about whether the violence might impact on us. Judge Luther Bohanon determined that Oklahoma schools would be desegregated and this led to a certain amount of violence in high schools. Something like three deaths occurred in the early 1970s. This led to high school councillors proposing that kids could graduate early if they avoided study hall periods and earned extra credits in summer school. This charted my future: I took English Literature one summer and Algebra the next and I graduated in 1972 rather than 1973. I turned 16 two weeks after graduation and grown up life began for me when most had to wait until 18 or 19. I stumbled a lot.

I remember the US Presidents during my lifetime, though I can't name them in order. I didn't take much interest in politics - it just made people yell at one another - until Clinton. People were outraged at the influence Hillary Clinton had with her husband. I thought that sounded like a great reason to vote for him even though I knew nothing about his policies. I've learned more about the political history of the US by reading John Kenneth Galbraithe's World Economy Since the Wars and Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. I was fascinated to read about things that happened during my lifetime that I only heard in passing at the time. 

I'm conscious that in the 1990 census I found myself as the main bread-winner who was also the Responsible Person in the family. My then husband had brought me a surprise 20-month-old step-son 17 days after our wedding and then informed me that 'child-rearing was woman's work'. So when I filled out the census form, I put myself down as head of the household. No doubt his son's descendants will remark that I must have been a difficult person. With any luck, I'll live long enough to see the release of the 1960 (76), 1970 (86) and maybe even the 1980 (96) US censuses!

And now I've lived through Trump and Brexit. We are now in the Covid Pandemic and the sixth mass extinction (climate change). It will be interesting to see how things unfold. 

Had you ever considered your Historical Life?