What were the thoughts of your grandparents back in the day ?

hollydolly

hollydolly

SF VIP
Location
London England
If you think of all the various things we worry about on a daily basis.. or have worried about as we've got to these ages we are now.. and some of it matters.. and most of it didn't in the end. .

By the time we get to be dead.. none of it will have mattered.. our thought and actions with regard celebrities.. politicians, the news.. every day living..whether we have a nice colour car..or the latest phone..whatever it is.. none of it eventually matters..

However.. have you ever though of what your grandparents were thinking while they were going through adulthood.. what was their concerns and worries ?.. does anyone know ?

I wish Id been mature enough to have asked my own grandparents ...

what about you folks ?
 

I would think making ends meet and providing sufficiently for the family would have been at the top of their list. My grandparents were all raising their young families during the Great Depression, so that in itself was probably the biggest worry. Farmers would have worried about their crops... factory workers about whether they'd have a job the next day... I'm from a coal mining region, so safety was *always* a huge stress, Depression or not.
 
Here in the Uk, I'm sure a big worry for my grandparents was how they would pay their medical bills, pre NHS which didn't come into effect until 1948.. long after injured and ill soldiers returned from the war...

Another would have been living conditions given that Britain as a whole, and particualrly where my grandparents lived were all but destroyed in the Blitz, meaning some families were living 10 to one room in the only available housing which were slum tenements.. and sharing one toilet on a common public landing between 4 houses..( flats)
 

Both sets of my grandparents both raised their families during the depression.

Dad's family lived in the city & the house they lived in had a very small yard & not much room for growing anything. Everyone in that area worked at the local packing house & as soon as they boys were big enough, they worked their too.

Mom's side lived mostly in the country or the outskirts of a city. Grandma & grandpa & some of their siblings would put some of what they raised aside for their parents. Living in the country just outside of town, they were able to raise pigs, chickens, turkeys & diary cows. They sold milk, eggs & poultry too. Grandpa had several different jobs which included game warden & township policeman.

I think the people who lived in the country had it better than the ones in the city during the depression. At least that is what I learned from my family experiences.
 
My grandparents were immigrants coming over from Armenia, through Ellis Island. They worked hard building their business, providing for their family. They saw their 3 sons sent off to war. My mother started working in the family business when she was 10. She would have to translate for her father.

What I gathered, was that those old timers were Hard workers, doing anything to provide for their families during tough times.
 
Last edited:
dobielvr said:
My grandparents were immigrants coming over from Armenia, through Ellis Island. They worked hard building their business, providing for their family. They saw their 3 sons sent off to war. My mother started working in the family business when she was 10. She would have to translate for her father.

What I gathered, was that those old timer were Hard workers, doing anything to provide for their families during tough times.
Click to expand...
yes they did, they'd walk to work if they couldn't afford transport..even if it meant many miles..and they'd walk for a pittance of a wage.. I don't think my grandparents ever knew anyone who was on the dole... and it would never occur to them to draw the dole either..

My grandfather was a cobbler, he made all, the family shoes.. and even his neighbours and friends, as well as his usual customers

My granny looked after the surviving kids out of 16 births she'd had.. and still went out to work doing menial work...

They knew they had to do everything that could to feed and clothe these children. My father said he went to school with no shoes until he got boots at 14 when he had to leave school to start work to bring money into the house to feed the younger ones..as had his elder sister and brother
 
Last edited:
My Dad got drafted in 1944. He was a senior in high school and in 90 days he was in combat in Europe. He had been dating my mom and they were planning to get married after high school graduation. With dad overseas mom had nothing to do but worry about him and write letters. Dad was in and out of combat for 8-9 months then he was wounded near Dusseldorf, Germany on April 16th, 1945.

Of course, my Grandparents were very worried about my dad being in war and then when he was wounded. It was around 90 days after he was wounded when they found out how bad he was. He was lucky as his wounds were in his legs and feet, not life threatening.

He recovered from his wounds, and they were married, and the rest is history...

They are both gone now, and I miss them every day...
 
Depends if grandparents on mother's side or dad's side
Don't think both sets were on the same wavelength although they were about the same age

One grandfather's favorite pastime was grandchildren the other's was Ham Radio
One grandmother did all she could to ensure grandchildren had it better than her or her children
The other grandmother was mostly concerned about complaining

Both sets did manage families through the Great Depression and were very practical and probably thought mostly about practical things ... just from different angles, attitudes, perspectives and goals.
 
The only grand parent figure I hever had was my stepfather's mother. She was from Brighton Enland. She was a sweet lady. My mother hated her of course. My stepfather mentioned that recently. I told him I already knew that, that his mother was sweet and my mother had no reason to hate her.

I asked my stepfather at the start of the pandemic if they had money worries and things they couldn't get. All the hoarding that was going on made me think of it. They lived in a rural area. He said no, they had chickens and a garden. His father was also employed by a wealthy family in the San Jose area and would be gone for a few weeks and then come home. He was their chauffer as well as other duties I assume. So there was income.

I never met his father. There was a 20 or so age difference between his parents. His father had been married before but I don't think any other kids. Known of anyway.

I assume with my mother's parents it was WWII.

I agree with Holly, in the end so many things will not be what mattered.
 
My paternal grandfather was a business man, a painting contractor, a store owner. They had seven living kids when WWII started, and five of the seven kids were boys. Three of them were in the service, the other two (my dad and an uncle) were 4F but were civil service contractors at Pearl Harbor. Grandparents spent the war years worrying. Their home in my hometown still stands and is owned now by a second cousin.

One of my paternal aunts became a music teacher. She was married; they had no kids. They were both very proper. We kids called them Aunt Horseface and Uncle Fart. Aunt, poor thing, was not attractive by any stretch. The other was the mother of nine...seven girls and two boys, all of them long gone.

Maternal grandfather worked for the local newspaper (now defunct), and my grandmother was a nurse. They had five kids, two boys and three girls. One boy was of age when the war started and went off to war, went to college after the war, worked a sort of civil service job later..."sort of" being the CIA. The other wasn't of age until three years into the war, but enlisted in the Navy as soon as he was 17 (with parental consent) and was a corpsman. After the war, he went to nursing school and became a nurse anesthetist.

Maternal grandparents spent the war years worrying, too.

One maternal aunt became a nurse, the other was a housewife with two kids and an abusive, alcoholic husband. My mother worked in a glove factory and went to school part time. After my older brother and I left home, she finished an associate degree, finished the last two years of college and a master's degree in teaching. Irony here...she didn't like kids!

I adored both sets of grandparents and was convinced they got together and hung the moon just for me.

Now a younger brother and I are the only ones who remember the maternal grandparents.

Two younger brothers and two younger sisters (from another mother) and I remember our paternal grandparents.

Something my paternal grandfather used to say: "A hundred years from now, it won't matter." He was right.
 
Maywalk said:
As I was born during the Great Depression that is one reason why I have written about my life for my family and ancestors. Life really has changed over the last 90 odd years.
Click to expand...
What years were the great depression...was this the decade between 29 and '39 , Maywalk ?

Both my parents were born during those years altho' my father was 8 years older than my mother..

Both of them lived through the second world war.... my mother just barely school age and my father already a teenager when the war started..
 
None of mine made age 45, and being a late baby, they were gone long before I was born. One Grandfather shot by the German SS, his wife died shortly thereafter from harsh conditions and heartache. My mom's mom died when she was 10 giving birth. Her husband died early, some rumored that it was poison by his new and very mean wife that ended up with the farm. Certainly not easy times.

My parents were old enough to be my grandparents however and taught me how to be quite frugal as they themselves lived through their own difficult times and the depression. I think this is part of the reason I find that I can relate to older folks quite well as they had parents from similar backgrounds.
 
Michael Z said:
None of mine made age 45, and being a late baby, they were gone long before I was born. One Grandfather shot by the German SS, his wife died shortly thereafter from harsh conditions and heartache. My mom's mom died when she was 10 giving birth. Her husband died early, some rumored that it was poison by his new and very mean wife that ended up with the farm. Certainly not easy times.

My parents were old enough to be my grandparents however and taught me how to be quite frugal as they themselves lived through their own difficult times and the depression. I think this is part of the reason I find that I can relate to older folks quite well as they had parents from similar backgrounds.
Click to expand...
10 ??:eek:
 
Out of 4 grandparents, I only met one; my grandmother on my dad’s side. He was an only child. She came to visit us from England and stayed in my room for the entire 2 weeks. She was very shy and introverted. We took her to Niagara Falls and the Science Centre. She even watched our ballet dance performance. I was in grade 2. She had beautiful thick silver hair that she washed with a bar of ivory soap. She didn’t use shampoo.
She had rosey cheeks and had a nice smile.
Sometimes I feel her presence within me.
She died in 1975.
 
My father's dad is the only grandparent I knew. He lived with us and died when I was 10. I was the youngest of 4 kids. He had moved in with my family when his wife died. He rented out his old house which was just the other side of what we called the baseball field. He had purchased a large piece of property that had been a berry farm In hopes of developing it. At the time he died he had only built scattered houses for relatives before WWll broke out.

I learned from a podcast put out by the historic society that he and my dad had also built many barns and silos in the area. Some of their tools are in a small local museum. They had moved out to Long Island from Brooklyn in around 1915.
 
I didn't know my maternal grandfather. He did however leave behind some of the spruce gum he made from trees on the property. I found it in the barn and my grandmother said I could try it. Bitter!
There was a story about him not (?) going into WW1 because of the Spanish flu and if he had my mother wouldn't have been conceived therefore I wouldn't have been either. Nor my seven siblings and on and on.
My maternal grandmother was born in 1898 or thereabouts. She was a hard worker and my mother told me she never knew they were poor. She died in her nineties.
My paternal grandparents doted on me. I think I was the youngest of all their grandchildren. My grandfather was quiet and my grandmother seemed to run the household.
Yes, I think they had things to worry about back then. Real things.
I think if they came back and saw this world they would cry.
 
On reading back on our family tree, one of my father's, father's brother, married an Indian woman when their regiment was posted there. He married an Indian girl who was just 14. Apparently, the soldiers were encouraged to marry these girls because it would stop the rapes, as the men were very tense, as they put it. Anyway, when they got married her name and race was never mentioned on the wedding certificate. When any children came along, they were classed as British, even when they showed Indian traits.

Many of the soldiers attended brothels and one day the Sargeant stood in front of the regiment with an Indian woman standing next to him, he asked who had relationships with this woman and half the regiment came forward, apparently, she had syphilis and the men had to be treated. She on the other hand she was sent to an island with the other women who were also infected. and were forgotten about.
 
World War Two probably concentrated their minds…although I know both my grandfathers were in reserved occupations and never went anywhere.
Paying the rent probably..and in the case of my one grandmother deciding which chicken would be the next on the lunch table!
She kept them and was never short of eggs!
Never under any illusions about where her roast chicken lunches came from!
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top