On this day 1903

[JFB]

10:35 Winds 25 to 30 miles per hour from the North

 

[Wyandot Jim]

 

[Fox Mike]

From a flight that wasn't as far in distance, as the length of the loading area of a C-5, to space in 115 years. Where will we be in the next 115 years?

 

[SAJohn]

My Grandmother was a teenager before she saw her first car let alone an airplane.

Apollo 11 landed on the moon 65 years and 8 months after that first plane flight. My Grandmother watched the moon landing on a TV.

 

[Selena]

From a flight that wasn't as far in distance, as the length of the loading area of a C-5, to space in 115 years. Where will we be in the next 115 years?

If the Democrats have their way, living in trees.

 

[Bob Wright]

Many times folks have asked me if I were one of the Wright brothers.

I have to say yes.


Bob Wright

 

[vito]

When I was the Administrator of a county nursing home in central Wisconsin in the mid 1990's I had a very elderly resident who, while physically in bad shape, had a totally clear mind. She was 106 when I knew her and had many fascinating conversations with her about her youth in rural Wisconsin in the 1890's and early 1900's. She told me about one day at school the teacher showed the students a Milwaukee newspaper with an article about the Wright brothers flight in North Carolina. She remarked how she and her girlfriends laughed because they knew the teacher was just pranking them. Being farm girls they KNEW that machines did not fly. She lived long enough to see aviation grow, the space program come into being and men land on the moon. She had large, magnificent photos on her "bulletin board" of Jupiter (and if I recall, Saturn as well) then her great grand nephew had sent her. This nephew was the director of NASA's JPL that was running the Galileo project which sent our first rocket to Jupiter.

The very elderly are like repositories of knowledge that our society mostly ignores. This same woman told me of seeing small groups of Indians pass their farm coming down the road and seeing her father and grandfather sending the girls inside, just in case, and standing outside armed with their rifles and shotguns. This was just a few years after the end of the Indian wars in the Great Plains and locals still viewed the natives as suspicious. Just amazing to hear such stories, not from a history book, but from someone that actually experienced these events personally.

 

[arfmel]

“My Grandmother watched the moon landing on a TV.“

Mine did too, but never believed it was anything other than a TV show, like Star Trek.

 

[Selena]

I remember one of the residents of IVH telling me how in the 1940s Amelia Ehrhardt had inspired her to take flying lessons and how those lessons had been interrupted by "the war" then put off indefinitely by marriage and children. Still another told me of sweet talking the brakeman of a freight train into allowing him to ride back and forth to Indianapolis where he would go to concerts by – of all people – Spike Jones. And described the show in great detail. Then there was one older man who told me how proud he was to be able to fill out a bank deposit slip for 2 1/2 dollars and get the slip and a single gold coin to the teller. Two weeks later there was a run on the bank and he lost the hard earned money it had taken him over a year to save. He told me of tramps that would knock on the back door and his mother would give them chores, usually splitting wood or weeding the garden, in return for a meal, a half loaf of bread and the privilege of sleeping in the hay mow for the night. He was quick to point out that these men would get insulted if they were offered these considerations for nothing.

People ask me why I volunteer at IVH. What they don't seem to understand is that I get far more from being there that I donate in time and effort.

 

[Colonialgirl]

This same woman told me of seeing small groups of Indians pass their farm coming down the road and seeing her father and grandfather sending the girls inside, just in case, and standing outside armed with their rifles and shotguns. This was just a few years after the end of the Indian wars in the Great Plains and locals still viewed the natives as suspicious. Just amazing to hear such stories, not from a history book, but from someone that actually experienced these events personally.

I heard stories abut how the Indians in Oklahoma/Missouri would come around in the winter with SNOW on the ground wrapped in blankets and wearing moccasins. When they "re-positioned"their blankets , they were NUDE underneath them . That was from my Mom and my Great Grandma.