What would you ask an "old timer"?

[BlueSideUp]

There are a lot of older people out there with amazing life experiences. For a lot of older people their experiences will die with them, having never been told.

My wife's grandfather was a photographer/pilot in WWII and the Korean War. Apparently he stayed in the Marines as long as possible, ending his active duty at the El Toro Marine Base instructing in the club airplanes. Some of his old photographs are amazing, he has boxes upon boxes of slides in his office. Because he was a photographer he has some famous friends including Chuck Yeager.

At this point in his life he likes to listen to the radio (he can't see much any more) and be generally grouchy. His health isn't very good but he is fully mentally aware. I have spoken to him in the past about flying (it's what I do for my career) but sometimes it's tough to figure out what to say. I'd like to talk with him more, especially before he is gone.

So given the opportunity what would you ask? What life experiences would you like to hear about? I'm sure fellow Pelicans have relatives who built the country through the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

[slodave]

I can be rather to the point and have asked my grandmother, now in her 90's, what it was like growing up as a child, the depression, early cars her family had...

[johnco]

One of my best friends died Wed. he was 83. Although I went to school with his kids, I was closer friends with him. I used to sit there for hours listening to his war stories, about his childhood, etc. once after telling his stories about the war, he gave me names of people he served with.. a few hours searching the internet and I had phone numbers and addresses for a few of them. One call reached the son of one of his friends.. that call turned into hours of stories about this guy's dad he had never heard before. My buddy's death upset me much more than my own father's recent death earlier this year.. I'd have no specific questions to ask but would give anything just to hear the same old stories again I had heard so many times before. another old buddy, 87 years old, was murdered a few years ago, used to sit there for hours talking about times long ago.. once you get those old guys talking, they seldom run out of stories

[svandamme]

i never had to ask my grandfather to talk , he told stories
some of them were fun, some were not as fun
we also noticed that some things, he didn't talk about , they were there, we could tell, but he wouldn't talk...

we could also tell that the war never left him , he hadn't seen big battles or attrocities, but he was a forced laborour after he was a POW ( POW's of occopied territories were released after some time ) and in his later life, he seemed very prudent and dilligent about not wasting any money or resources , he had his little diy shack where he would make things out of nothing... creative recycling so to speak....

grand pa went last tuesday at 86... i wasn't in touch with the family in the last 3 years and that's a big regret of mine.. i was to late for some final stories... he was unconscience and had received last rights by the time i got back...

i know one thing, most of his life, he was still worried over things he endured in WW2, and that to me is enough to be a pascifist and never accept that war is a solution to anything whatsoever...

[tabs]

I've listened to and remembered the stories of my elders all my life.

I once talked to a man who was in his late 70's, he said he had come to the US from Mexico when he was 65 years old and couldn't speak a word of English. He said that to learn English he would stay up all night reading and trying to learn. When I met him he could speak English better than most Americans.

[on2wheels52]

One of my life's regrets is living the last 30 years of my father's life so geographically distant form him, missing out on some of his WWII experiences. He didn't expound much of the combat side but had a great memory of day-to-day events.
The upheaval of those years was so defining for that generation, nothing remotely comparable for us.
Jim

[Nostril Cheese]

I'd ask an old timer which was smoother, Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog?

[nineoneone]

I ask my grandfather when he was about 90, What's it like to be SO old you can't get any,


he looked me square in the eye and said, don't know son, you'll have to ask someone else.

I still laugh about that, my grandmother slapped him in the back of the head when he said it and then the whole room was laughing....that's was 1978 or 79

[MichiganMat]

"What does canned meat taste like"?

"Have you ever referred to someone as a CandyAss"?

"Did part of you die a little during the 60s or did it just make you more grizzled"?

[rammstein]

I'd like to have an honest discussion with an old timer as to whether or not "things are worse" now than when he was young. I am sure the first answer would be yes, but I'd be interested to see if, after hashing it out, we could come to an understanding that things are very much the same.

[svandamme]

Originally posted by rammstein
I'd like to have an honest discussion with an old timer as to whether or not "things are worse" now than when he was young.

i'm pretty sure that anyone who was in his 20'ies in 1944, beeing or having been in either Europe , or the far East would disagree as to it beeing worse now...

[bt1211]

I would ask
What would you do differently?
Who would you say, I'm sorry to?
Is there anything you wanted to see/do, that you never got to?
Was there another woman that you (sometimes) wish things worked out?

[Joeaksa]

Whatever you ask, get a tape recorder or video camera and get copies of it.

The one regret I have in this area with my Father is that video cameras were not easily available when he passed and I have only one audio recording of him talking.

[M.D. Holloway]

I drive my Wife nuts at family gatherings because I ask her Grandparents what they think about the latest technonology and what is going in in the world. I often talk to my Dad about all the latest developments as well. My Dad is most amazed at the technology and reliability of vehicles these days compared the ones of the 40s and 50s. He is often blown away with the various medical diagnostic equipment. Mind you, he is 83 years old.

The most common thing that all the ol' timers seem to get a big kick out of is TV. We take it for granted but to them it is amazing stuff.

Recently my Dad has opened up more and more about WWII and his time spent in France, Belgium and Germany. After a few beers he laughed and said "You kids think that oral sex was invented in your generation. Let me tell you, I got the best blow jobs in France. Those women just seemed to love us GIs. Yep, we were young, dumb and carrying an M1..."

[MRM]

My grandmother died a few years ago and I used to try to get her to tell me stories. She would just sit back and say "Oh I can't remember those things". But I learned that if I didn't ask any questions and just struck up a conversation with her and got her talking she would end up telling me the stories I wanted to ask her about.

If he's a prop era pilot you might start the conversation with fairly neutral technical questions about the airplaneshe flew and how they compared to others of the era. I had an uncle in law of about the same vintage who would clam up if you asked him about the war point blank, but he would be the first to tell you that the last"fun" airplane built was such and such prop fighter and that all the jetsthat came after took the romance out of flying and then he was off to the races. Maybe the same thing will work for you.

[BlueSideUp]

That's pretty funny. Grandparents definately have a great sense of humor. He was probably entertained by your reaction too.

One story my late grandfather told me about was from the 1960s. He was an engineer who owned a pool construction company from the San Francisco Bay area. His company built the swimming pool for the Olympics in Mexico in 1968. He chartered a DC3 to fly some of his crew and supplies down to Mexico City from SF. Somewhere in Baja they had engine trouble...in his words "the damn thing was on fire and sprayed oil all over the place!". They landed at a nearby field that happened to have some other DC3s on the ground. He made a deal with the Mexicans that they would replace the engine on his airplane if they could borrow his rudder. I guess one of their airplanes had a damaged rudder and they wanted to use it. My grandfather assumed they would only use the rudder for as long as it took to replace the engine. The mexicans were gone for two weeks! For a week and a half his airplane sat on the ground with no rudder but two good engines. He laughs about it now but I'm sure he was more than a little steamed back then.

[bigchillcar]

lube, if he got oral in france..did any get ass in greece?
ryan

[MRM]

Lube, you win this thread. No one else needs to even try.

[Rick Lee]

I make it a point of asking very direct quesitons when I meet folks I know have lived through a lot. They won't be around forever and I don't meet such people every day.

About 15 yrs. ago I was in a pub in Weimar, Germany and sat next to a WWI (yes, the first one) vet. Had a chat with him. I also knew a German who was shot in Stalingrad and flown out on the very last plane before the Russkies had them surrounded. I've met plenty of people who've met Hitler. I've had lunch with some ladies in Warsaw who watched the Warsaw Ghetto uprising get crushed from their own windows. I know plenty of Germans who spent years in Siberian gulags after WWII and I've even met a few Long March vets in China.

[svandamme]

Originally posted by Rick Lee
a WWI (yes, the first one) vet.

right now, world wide, there's only a handfull of these fellows left... to bad, they carry a terribly important message, even if most/many of em are still to banged up to speak about it...and as such makes their existance mostly symbolic...

either next year, or the year after we will probably run out of these living relics...they'll finally find peace after having lived with the terrible memories, memories of mankind at it's worst