I Remember The Storm of 1926

Isn't it funny to listen to "old" people talk about back in the day?  You're already following where I'm going with this question aren't you?

I was a teenager in the 80's and thought it was ridiculous how people would go on and on about storms 20, 30, 40 years prior.  Telling me about the horrific snow storm of 1950-something may as well have been discussing something as long ago as an 1920's event or the 1904 San Fransisco earthquake.  Ancient freaking history.

Why do old people do that?

Multiple times I have reminded people how the circumstances of weather following drought this year is exactly how the Flood of 93 came to being.  1993.  I talk about it as if it happened two or three years ago.  It is so incredibly fresh in my memory.  In 1992 my friend and I walked to an island in the Missouri River.  WALKED. The water was the lowest either of us had ever seen and without getting our feet wet, we stepped over the little trickle onto the island.  Last year I posted pictures of my son doing exactly the same thing. 

In 1993 I visited the same park where the river was out of its banks and flooding the park which was impossible to imagine considering the height of the banks.  They are almost cliff-like with a significant, dangerous drop to the water below.

Or let's discuss the Blizzard of '82.  I remember the night it started snowing, not so much the following days.  I probably knew from the snowfall at night that there wouldn't be any school so I surely slept in.  This was a mere two years after moving to St. Louis from Oregon so seeing the town flip out over several inches of snow was laughable, but definitely not memorable.  But that night, the sudden accumulations, THAT was memorable.  But let's get this straight, it was THIRTY years ago!  And I remember it as clear as if it happened last night.  My mom and I had gone to Venture... what, you don't know what Venture is?  Oh, yeah, that's a store like K-Mart that closed... well probably twenty years ago.  In fact, K-Mart now lives in the building where I was shopping that night.  It was expected to snow that night, it may have started with flurries as we walked into the store.  While my mother is a shopping pro and can go at it for hours upon hours, I'm pretty sure we were not there for more than one hour.  By the time we left the store the parking lot was a genuine mess and several inches had to be cleared from the car.  It was stunning how much snow had fallen in such a short time.  Now I don't exactly remember the ride home but it surely blurred into the many times I've ridden in the car with my mom driving in the snow.  Even to this day I get a tutorial about how to drive in the snow, reminders of pumping my brakes, and no sudden movements.  Every. single. time.  By the way, when you drive in the fog, do not use your brights.

So here we are decades later and I am able to talk about ancient history in first person as if they happened only yesterday, but do not ask me where I left my glasses.  My memory is shit.

50 years ago

Fifty years is a long ass time.  Yet as I near the half century mark, fifty years isn't quite so... immense?  I certainly find men over fifty attractive, something that turned my stomach back in my twenties.  The thought of me turning fifty also isn't terrifying.  In fact, several people have said they enjoyed being in their fifties.  I look forward to it!  Certainly better than the alternative, right?

But the historical events that happened "FIFTY YEARS AGO" just don't seem quite so freaking long ago.  Fifty years ago was 1961.  Kennedy was a new president, Martin Luther King Jr was rattling the status quo, Vietnam was rumbling into our vocabulary, and Americans stood in mortal fear of communism.  These are all images recorded on film, played over and over through my school years so that I remember them as if they had happened in my lifetime.  I know, I know, I'm a young puppy for not being alive during the Kennedy Administration or to be able to participate in the conversations of where I was when the President was shot.  Sorry, I was a cluster of cells hanging out in an ovary, unfertilized, unconscious of the world's events.  Take it up with my mother, not like she had any power over the issue either.

In the mid-70's I was force fed these images.  Adults around me discussed them with just yesterday like tones.  "Fifty years ago" back then was the 1920's and that was ancient history!  We studied President Wilson, discussed the after affects of World War I, and the boom years proceeding the Great Depression.  The films lacked sound, the pictures were all black and white, the style of dress foreign and odd. 

Is this how kids today view the ancient 1960's?