Old people are pretty cool because they lived history

Good. Usually school got canceled the next day because of it.

My grandpa told me when he was a kid people (not him) would walk around a local park looking for gay people to beat the shit out of.

youtu.be/0FE30a4J38Q

Vid related is interviews with people who fought in the American civil war

Sorry I don't know too much but he did showed me an audio file of a Russian number sation he got back then. He is also a civil war reenactor

My grandpa was a very wise man, started his own business with his own soil testing and pile driving business from the 40s through early aughts. His best advice he gave me was, "user, watch your drinking! It's taken many of [our family]"

>I didn't take his advice and am a hopeless alcoholic

>I mean, when did they start being common? 1900s, right? That's really recent when you think about it.
After WWII. Sure we had invented some refrigerator back in the 20s, but they were super expensive for common people. Remember, back then you can buy an entire meal for cents. A refrigerator would cost possibly $1000 or close to that number. It still costs that today, but since prices are inflated, its actually ~100x cheaper.

3 of my grandparents died before I was born. The last (my mother's father) died when I was about 4.

But my mother did tell me stories about him. He was born in 1882. He grew up in rural southern Scotland and would ride his horse to the library in Melrose to check out books. That's probably what gave him a love of poetry. He apparently would drop lines of poetry into everyday life all the time.

had a great uncle that rode with Pancho Villa and possibly also fought in the Cristero war

Was your uncle Indiana jones?

Rode his horse to the library. that's fantastic

My grandfather fought in the Battle of Stalingrad but died before I was born

my grandma is 93 and I learned from her that the past was not that interesting when it was going on, life never changes, and never to be surprised by anything

During ww2 my grandma was at school and they used to get the girls to sew socks for the army, I also heard they did a similar thing with metal collection for the boys, this was in NZ

In World War 2, the Germans confiscated people's bikes because they needed more metal for their war effort. My great grandfather was a stubborn man, so he decided to dissemble his bike into small pieces and hide them throughout his house.

When the war was over he reassembled the parts and made his bike again. I can imagine his smug face for being one of the few on a bike during the allied victory parades.

Makes me scared of new technology

Attached: 1509865591424.jpg (421x441, 33K)

My grandmother had to flee from the Soviets at the end of WW2 when they invaded Germany.
My granfather was in the Wehrmacht, but I don't know much about him, he is long dead.

Gramps used to roll burning tires down the chink shop with his mates for fun during the '98 chink genocide in my country

he was a pretty funny guy too, his favorite anecdote was when he reported this one chink guy for suspected communist activity and the next days nationalist thugs actually burn down their houses lol

>Grandfather was literally Soviet-Afghan war veteran who managed to get promoted to officer.
>Before i was interested in history and before he died, asked him about the war and tell me his experience and opinions.
>It war literally "Lmao shitslamic shitskin churkas got rekt but fucking gommie politburo fucked us over and cucked us from victory, all da fucking Ivan brothers died for nothing" and nothing else.
>so much fucking history and stories lost and left unspoken...

Attached: 67b.png (808x805, 812K)

not sure if it counts but here goes
>grandparents lived in colonial Indonesia (I'm Dutch)
>be 1937 or thereabouts
>my grandmother isn't born yet
>great grandparents live on an island near Java, the 'main' island of the Indies
>their first child dies there very young, around age 4
>shortly after they move to Java itself
>later they claim how lucky they were, since an uprising took place on that island not long afterwards, massacring all the Dutch nationals there
>hear this story from my mother a few months back, and how it's been passed down from generation to generation
>google this uprising
>nothing shows up, can't even find a mention of it
I'm still not sure whether it actually happened, or it was a coping mechanism to justify moving away from the place their son died, or something else entirely.

update: the island in question was Flores island

>grandma traveled to East Berlin for short vacation, interrogated by border guards
>her son (my uncle) climbed the Berlin Wall during the teardown night in 1989

Indonesian here, i regret to inform you that such massacres are indeed happening. Shortly after 17 August 1945 Proclamation of Independence, many interned dutch nationals are massacred by local militias, things went south when Dutch Military landed back in Indonesia to reclaim their colonies

this all happened before the war, though.

>soil testing and pile driving business
did he piledriver people face first into the dirt?

my bad

btw can confirm, such riot and uprising was indeed happened in flores, year 1907

It supposedly happened in 1937/1938, not sure exactly which.

never heard nor read it either. guess i'll have to ask local historians first

My grandma told me about how during WW2 there was a v2 rocket launch site in the woods close to where she lived and how she'd sometimes see one of them taking off. She also told me about how she'd see lots of planes going overhead and how she and her parents would go into manholes incase they would get bombed.

For most of the war one of our uncles (pacifist) was in hiding and apparently fled to the mainland at some point. We lost track of him and no one knows where he went. He probably died but maybe there’s a Korean or Chinese line of the family out there who has no idea they’re related to us
My family always placed a lot of emphasis on being grateful for your food, but one time when I was a kid I refused to eat something and my great grandma went on this whole spiel about rationing. I felt like an asshole

those were the days

Grandpa told me aout his life as a boy during the occupation of Denmark. Except for an incident with an Allgemeine-SS man, it was really comfy.

You can control it, user, eventually leave it. Don't let drink decide your life.

My grandmother used to tell me about how she'd make little snowmen made of tar in the summers down in Memphis, Tennessee. The days would get so hot that the streets would boil and bubble and you'd wind up leaving footprints in the road if you walked across the street.

She also apparently took off one of her shoes as a little girl and beat the crap out of a group of kids bullying her younger brother.

>Grandad is captain on boat during Vietnam
>Not much for him to do
>Goes to land precisely once, touring bases
>gets hit by Agent Orange
>gets Leukemia years later but beats it, he's still kicking

my grandfather tells me that his father during Stalingrad climbed on top of a tank and broke open the copula with a shovel and lobbed a grenade in there. Not sure if its true but seemed pretty badass

>great-great grandfather had bookshop
>very polite, very quiet young man would always come in there to browse
>great-great grandad knew he was poor as shit so would tolerate him lingering
>eventually got to know him, let him buy books on credit
>guy said he'd settle bill at end of the month
>guy came in one day, red-faced and very apologetic, saying he'd had trouble paying for rent and couldn't afford to settle account
>great-great grandad said not to worry about it, actually offered to lend him money but the guy had none of it
>guy later came back and paid tab in full, thanked great-great grandad profusely
>kept a correspondence with him for years, even wrote letters when he was in prison (big deal, since prisoners were only allowed a certain number of letters)
>sent great-great grandad a signed first edition of his book when it was published, inscription said something like 'to an honourable and good man
>it was fucking Adolf Hitler

We have absolutely nothing to back any of this up as the family burnt all his letters and the copy of Mein Kampf after the war. There's supposedly a police report when he was interrogated by the government during de-nazification that lists him as a 'personal contact' of hitler, but it's with my relatives in the fatherland.

awesome

Sp00ky

tell more

We just talked the roads melting thing in my local history class lel

Woah

bump

lel

My grandfather was present at the Reagan assassination attempt. I know that's pretty recent and not that notable, but he was in that crowd.

Also he was a sonar operator on a sub stationed near Cuba during the Korean War.

But think of how comfy that shoe probably was.

Only untill the tumor started to grow, of course

He was 11 when they marched into Denmark. He used to play pranks on the German soldiers. He'd leave a wallet out in the street tied to a string. The sentries would go for it, and then he'd yank it back. Most of the time the Germans were amused and they let him hang out at their posting.

Since the Germans no longer fall for the tricks, he does it to the newcomers only. The soldiers would laugh at the guy who fell for it. One day he sees a new victim and he's too young to understand the SS runes and so he does it, and the SS guy goes out and gets it.

He yanked it and the SS man fell and was humiliated, but no one laughed. He noticed Grandpa and ran after him. He grabbed him and cuffed him one and was going to take him when the block commander came out. He smacked down the SS man and took Grandpa home.

4 years later her was working as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Things were getting a little more rebellious in Denmark and some kid with with a pistol walked into the restaurant and shot a German officer dead right in front of his wife and kids. Grandpa got called out and he had to clean the blood off the screaming and crying children.

Fucking awful.

During Korean War kids would beg to American soldiers for chewing gums. They would even say "chewed ones are OK"

That's what my grandpa told me

My grandma told me some pretty interesting stories about my Italian great-grandparents.

One of them fought in WW1, he was in the Battle of Caporetto and received gas attacks by the Austrians. Apparently he lost a lot of friends during the war and almost went blind. He refused to talk about the war for the rest of his life. Later on, after the war ended, he came to Argentina, he embarked without a single penny in his pocket, and the only belonging he took with him was his mattress (apparently mattresses were very expensive in those times).
When he arrived at Buenos Aires, he had to drag that fucking mattress for 3 km until he got to the house he had arranged to stay. Rented a small room, got a job fixing radios (he was an electrician by trade), eventually married, got a comfy administrative job at a railroad company, bought a house, and started his life here.

On my mother's side the family was Spanish immigrants, my grandad and his 10 brothers all came from utter poverty in Spain, my grandad finished high school with the highest marks but he also had to work from an early age. He told me that in Spain, their family was divided between nationalists and Republicans to the point two of his cousins (they were brothers) would end up fighting on opposite sides. He also told me how during the Perón government, his brother dated the daughter of a neighbour, so the guy as revenge, went to the police and reported their family as commies. (They were Republican sympathizers, but not commies). Anyway, luckily the girlfriend tipped them off, so they had time to hide all the books that could be deemed "subversive", buried them in the backyard before the police raid. Later on he met the famous racing legend Juan Manuel Fangio when running his bar, and became friends with him.

My great(x100) grandfather cut off William Wallace’s balls.

my grandparent was apart of the first proto-Navy seal unit
He told me shanked a nip one time and it bothered him.

This is peak Netherlands.

which country

i thought the internet was banned in Indo lol how things?
t. aussie

How did the police not notice freshly filled holes in the backyard? Did they only look inside the house?

This is really interesting though, I'd love to hear more of these stories. I'm actually doing a research paper on Argentina in during the 70s-80s for my Cold War Latin America Class. The Dirty War was fucked.

Did he keep playing the wallet game after that?
...I was laughing until the whole crying kids covered in blood part.

>How did the police not notice freshly filled holes in the backyard? Did they only look inside the house?
I don't think the police was that interested. It was mostly a routine inspection, but the family did bury the edgier books just in case. Peronism was anti-communist but it wasn't hardcore persecution either. Nothing like the dirty war. At worst they might have served a short jail sentence, like 48 hours, until they were cleared of being Soviet spies.

My grandpa was born in 1928. He remembered taking the trolley/streetcar to school. He said that school at the time focused much, much more on grammar and language. People still got milk and other products from street vendors and milkmen. Medicine was different without modern antibiotics and other innovations; they used sulfa and quarantine to treat things like scarlet fever, which he had at one point. Polio, measles, and similar diseases were still serious public health issues. Suburbs weren't a thing until he was a young adult, so cities were the centers of activity. Movies were a big affair; they were very affordable and you could arrive early and stay late to watch the film multiple times.

Sounds like Indonesia. There was a massive riot there in 1998 where Chinese were beaten, killed, raped, or had their businesses and houses burned.

Detroit - Sunday, July 23 1967 - The Detroit Riot breaks out and on the following Monday morning, my mom (seven months pregnant with me) picks up two of her girlfriends and they all head into work at the Continental Corned Beef meat packing plant in Detroit. Cluelessly unaware as only women can be of the rioters, cops and military swirling all around them, they’re happily chatting away as they pull into the parking lot only to discover that it’s strangely empty of cars and when they get out, they see the owner and plant manager on the roof armed with guns, who yells at them to get their stupid asses back to the suburbs, as can’t see the goddamnedniggers are burning down the city?!...

Attached: detroit riot 1967.jpg (1400x822, 143K)

bumpity bump

thread is dead desu

Me great grandfather was one of the first motorcycle cops in the USA. He took bribes from run runners and speakeasys and murdered people because he could get away with it. Not the nicest guy.

He was getting a bit old for the wallet game and the German who saved his ass finally decided it was time to tell his parents what he was doing because the SS bruised him up real good.. His parents put his little ass to work in their grocery shop, but the Germans would drop by from time to time to visit their 'Designated Company Troublemaker' ,

:(

My Gran had two German and one Italian prisoners of war working on her family farm during the war. She rembers how the one used to cry every time he got a letter from his family back home, he even kept in contact after the war. She said after a while her dad invited them to eat at the family table but they always refused.

She was one of 16 kids apparently my great grandad used to always say “why would I pay for farm hands when I can breed them?”

My granddad once saw Hitler drive by at a parade.
His dad (my great-grandfather) once accidentally burned a swastika flag at a garden party that he hosted. The flag had small metal weights at the bottom, it waved against an electric fence, and the whole thing caught fire.

My grandmother told me a story about the first time she saw a microwave oven when she was a kid. Some white guy (She was black) came to the school and showed it to them. She also remembered when JFK got shot and everyone was crying apparently.

My next door neighbor who is like a second family was a green beret during Vietnam as he was a combat medic. He apparently loved the war, setting sights on the enemies and doing night raids and wished the U.S launched a full-scale invasion of North Vietnam. He also bought into the domino effect. He got out back in the 90s, but said it was fun.

I'm 20, my dad is 67, he told that, when he was a kid most of his neighborhood were a bunch of plantations and farms, that he barely saw a car out in the fields. And that the world was going to end in the year 2000. We are now in 2018 and he loves watching Daredevil on netflix.

This was very interesting, cheers.

>parents grew up before large scale industrialization of the old country
>dad was a street urchin in the capital, still a backwater
>used to run around and bring home rabbits, frog, snakes to eat
>mom helped raise silk worms and trade silk in other villages with her dad
>everyone still worried about the same things today
>dad's best friend as a kid starved to death giving all of his food to his younger siblings
>village innkeeper in mom's village got cucked, his wife ran off with the mayor's son
>dad's group of urchins liked to play with the local soldiers who would tell stories, play games, trade candy for rations

Main thing that my parents and grandparents taught was that people haven't changed all that much.

My grandparents on my dad's side both died before I was born. Apparently grandpa was abusive and an adulterer from what I've gathered. Also injured his hand severely in a factory incident so he was exempt from the war draft for WW2. Grandma was crazy and actually underwent electroshock therapy and spent time in a sanitarium. Dad himself had a boring enough life I guess. Says he remembers before the highways were introduced all over the state and whatnot. Says he saw The Beatles step out of their limo when he took his sister to a concert of theirs in Boston. Also says he saw J.D. Salinger a few times, but never spoke to him or anything.

Grandparent's on my mom's side have since passed but I spoke to them when I they were alive. Grandpa was the son of Polish immigrants. Drove a truck in West Germany and was going to be shipped off to Korea but the war ended. Worked as a plumber his whole life. Grandma lived a simple life. Worked as a secretary and could write in shorthand. Had her own general store at some point.

I enjoyed this story a lot, it sounds like a novel or movie or something

bump

see

My maternal Grandfather
>was a swimming instructor for the army, spending most of the war stationed in Hawaii.
>Saw action in Guam, was stationed at the same base as my paternal Grandfather. They may have bumped shoulders at one point.
>Was scheduled among the first wave of soldiers for the invasion of Japan, would have almost certainly been KIA had it not been for the Atom Bomb
>Was among the first American G.I.s to land in Japan as its occupying force. Talked at length about how insane the beach defenses were. Talked about going into villages where there was a battle rifle for every man, woman and child. Half the time they didn't even know that the war was over and would run screaming out of the fields when they saw the G.I.s coming to collect their guns
>Spent his liberty in Tokyo chasing around geishas (his eyes would light up when he talked about banging them, the old poonhound).
>Came to love and adore the Japanese and their culture, had a ton of authentic memorabilia, a sword, a silk kimono, illustrations, all of which got destroyed in a house fire in in the 1960's
I sure do miss him. He was the man

Attached: 1432907023-700e5c90d189899d59c0fcd989371962-1366x1084.jpg (1366x1084, 395K)

>grandpa was in 'Nam
>grandma lived through race riots in the Deep South

>Great Grandfather was an officer in Heer and NCO in the Reichswehr 1936-45
>Saw all the shit
>Mostly on the Eastern Front
>Got a break after being transferred to Italy and then France and then the Low Countries which was a nice breather in his words
>Wife and kids got Harried in the 1944 Darmstadt Raid
>Immigrated to Canada after the war, nothing left for him in Germany
>started a second family with a nice decade younger English girl he met in grocery store
>Her parents weren't too impressed
>Had a bunch of kids
>Didn't want to go back to Europe
>Wifey wanted to do the continental europe tour
>Yes dear
>End up in Arnhem. He was transferred in as part of the final push to break the British there at Market-Garden
>Some Dutch twenty-something were there as he toured his old battlefield
>Started harassing him whether hey heard the accent. Banter really.
>"Where are our bicycles?" they teased.
>"I would not know. The last time I saw them, your fathers were riding home on them."
>The fight was on.
>Dutch cops broke it up, stern warning to Grandpa, who explained it all
>Cop: Thank you for visiting our country legally this time.

Attached: HALT AIYEEEE.gif (192x192, 23K)

>Grandfather on my father’s side was an officer in the Philippine Army during the 60s
>when Marcos declared Martial Law during the 70s,he decided to join the Secret Police because he had to support his siblings who were younger than him at that time
>once it ended and with Marcos gone,he then joined Police force and went around Manila catching criminals

>Grandparents on my mother’s side experienced ww2 through the countryside
>Grandfather remembers how a group of Japanese soldiers fortified a school and turned it into their base of operations.
>Grandmother told stories about how they had to eat all the veggies they can find in the backyard of their house
>one of my Grandfather received a graze wound from when he fought the Japanese as a guerilla fighter

That’s all I remember from them since I haven’t talked to them in a long time and most of them have died

Attached: 4F9F268D-3E69-4DC2-9F15-75C373355DC0.jpg (1098x754, 478K)

My grandmother stayed in London during the Blitz. During one raid, she didn't get to a shelter in time and caught a bit of shrapnel in her leg as she was running through the street. Had that bit of metal gone slightly higher I probably wouldn't be here.

It's a real shame her memory is failing her. I have so many questions but she can't provide the detail in looking for and is often quite repetitive. But I take what I can get.

I want to believe.

Did he say how he felt about possibly having to invade and how he reacted to the bomb?

Not as cool as others, but my Great Grandfather worked as a welder for GM during the WW2 and I read some of his letters to family members during the war and it was casual as shit. One letter was 1943 and it didn't even mention the war.

Found his birth certificate, and this fucker was already 28 years old by the time Poland was invaded.

my granddad was shot twice in the stomach by commies in Malaya

>the family burnt all his letters and the copy of Mein Kampf after the war.

Attached: 1510325791004.jpg (458x460, 75K)

When I talk with mine more general questions help. They get rambling and then that helps them to remember other things.

Casual stories are good, too. I was doing some transcribing of some Freedman's Bureau papers and some of them were just about work place drama, one officer was whining about another guy being mean to him. It's so normal and yet so fascinating.

He never told me anything, I was like 7 years old when he died. My great gandmother died months ago and going through her stuff I found alot of old timey shit from him and her.

I have this one picture of my great grandma, that I think my nephews lost, that was her, and her brother sitting on a horse, with a dog sitting behind them on the same horse. Set in like rural 1930s Tennessee

>How did the police not notice freshly filled holes in the backyard?
Typically if you're going to hide something in a hole like that you put a false garden bed over it.

MY great grandfather is from Lyon and fought for the resistance and has lots of great stories, any interest?

>Grandfather's older brother spent all his inheritance
>Not much to do
>Joins army
>Becomes a tanker
>Germany invades Poland
>Aww shit
>Serves in France
>Injured after an attack by J87s
>Dunkirk
>Serves in Africa after recovery
>Injured again
>Shipped home to recover
>Recovers
>Transferred to 11th Armoured
>D-day
>Market Garden - part of the 'Garden'
>Part of clean up operation of Belsen
>Finds truck full of corpses
>Injured final time
>VE-Day

>Carried on life as if those 8 years were nothing but a small bump in the road.