If You Had A Time Machine??

Well, if I went way back to the middle ages or some such as long as I was at the top of the food chain would suit otherwise forget it.

I think I would like the Edwardian era but with the proviso as above.

 

I would pull up and head back to the '30's------------Something about The Walton's has always struck my fancy

Or to the '40's and the glamour of war

I would want to live on a farm----no electricity/central air or heat with no sense of hurry----just layed back with my wifey and kids-----------I'd like that kind of life

 

The last half of the 20th century was the best times the working class has ever seen.

 

I like it right now! I have clothes on my back; food on my table, and money in the bank.

It wasn't so in the 30's or 40's. Yes we had a simpler life in those years, except during the war years, with bombs dropping virtually every day for 5 years.

The 50's started an improvement. I think if I had to choose an era, it would have to be the 60's. Ministry improved, missions grew, and we even got paid as pastors. Why we began to feel like baptists rather than Plymouth Brethren in disguise.

I see opportunities to-day that didn't exist back then. We just have to learn to live one day at a time and each moment as if it is our last.

Cheers,

Jim

 

I just want to back up to about 1985 and tell the 23 year old me a few things.

 

I'd go back to around 1820, but you said the last 100 years.

So I'd pick right now. I don't want to relive any of my years. I'm too curious about the future to want to go back to what I already know happened.

Although if I could go back to moments, I'd love to go back to the moment my first child was born and relive the amazement of so much depth, meaning, hope, and joy all wrapped up in the very first glance given me of that tiny little screaming beauty of a miracle.

 

In 1820 there is a good chance we would be indentured servants.

I want running water, hot showers and flushing toilets.

 

I'd want to be the wife of someone that was then considered respectable and in good societal standing, but not too pretentious or too very poor. Just enough to occasionally go to a dance, be called on with an invitation to spend a fortnight across town at the home of a rich uncle, and be properly chagrined should one of my daughters disgrace herself by speaking too presumptuously concerning her high regards for a person of the opposite sex.

Actually, now that I think of it, I really just want to be in that time frame so my daughters won't feel it's normal to look a guy in the eye or speak too frankly unless she's prepared to marry him. LOL (four of my children are daughters, it can drive a momma crazy to think of!)

 

If you lived back in the 60s and didn't have microwaves, cell phones, or computers, you didn't miss it. Every day you ever live the world is modern if you know what I am saying.

I liked the 60s because I was young, lived on the beach and went surfing nearly everyday, and the music was fantastic. But it wasn't all good, there were lots of social problems in the country, racism, the anti-war demonstrations. There was the cold war with Russia and China.

Cars were awesome then, it was the age of the power cars. You'd see a fellow with a Mustang burn rubber for a quarter mile.

We rode our bikes and never wore a helmet. There was no such thing as political correctness either.

So, I'd go back to the 60's.

 

I started to think some time ago that I must have been born about 20 years too late. If I had been born in the late 30's, I would have missed the hot war in Korea, had military service done before Vietnam, worked in developing technologies, and had a television when westerns were the biggest thing. I think it must have been great to come home from 'modern' weapons systems, communications, or computers the size of a big room to go back a century, more or less, to Wagon Train, Wyatt Earp, Law Man, et al. Besides that, going back in time and knowing where land values would skyrocket, about IBM, later Microsoft and Yahoo, it wouldn't be hard to have a 6 or 7 figure nestegg.

But as for going way back in time, like centuries, that shouldn't enter anyones wishes. It's too likely you would end up on a torture table, being branded and having your joint separated, with 'inquisitors' getting their fun with your refusal to admit you're not a witch or you won't say that your innocent neighbor is. Or be on a ship boarded by pirates who would do the same things, or worse, to you if you weren't mercifully killed before that. Or be put in a pillory with people throwing rotten eggs into your face, or being beaten in a whipping post, being dunked into icy water, all because you said a wrong word at the wrong time or, like christening a baby was not a 'real' baptism,...

 

My father made it pretty clear to me that the "Good Old Days" weren't that good.

He lived through the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the massive and brutal World War II in the 1940s, the post-WWII economic hardship caused by a sudden shift of personnel back into the workforce, the constant thread of nuclear annihilation, the Red Scare, segregation (not to mention the KKK in our area of Texas) in the 1950s, the social and political turmoil of the 1960s, the disillusionment of the 1970s (the Presidency, social institutions, etc.), the energy crisis and the near failure of the economy at the end of the decade.

In contrast, the 1980s and 1990s weren't that bad for the country, although many things that happened in that era have set the stage for today's troubles.

That DOES sound odd.

I think I'd like to go back to the 1980s and give myself some religious, moral, social and career guidance. Otherwise, I'm fine here and now.

 

Just lay back and starve!

You would have to work all the daylight hours and more just to keep food on the table and make a little money to buy the things you can't make!

 

I know it may sound strange, given the hardships, but I would love to have lived in the Depression-WWII era.

Other than that, I think I'd have been happy just about any time up until the 90's. That's when society all started to go downhill for me.

I was raised by people of that era and between that and a steady diet of old radio shows, I feel like a have a pretty good handle on the culture.

Besides, it would be nice to be able to wear my hat and not have everybody think I just jumped on the Indiana Jones fad.

I like the fact that women were ladies (or at least had the good sense to pretend that they were in public), boyhood didn't extend into a man's thirties, that people weren't so addicted to media and technology, and that I wouldn't have to shield my wife and children from profanity and inappropriate sex jokes from the Jack Benny Program (although Bob Hope was a little risque). The worst thing on his show was the occasional joke about Phil's drinking or Rochester's gambling. Movies and music were both fantastic.

 

It's actually not as hard as you would think. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it's not all that much different.

When I was a kid, my paternal granparents didn't have running water and when I would spend the summers with them, I would stay in the "old house", a cabin dating back to the twenties that had no electricity and if the wind blew the tarp off the roof, a hole in the roof.

 

The time in history I chose that far back was an amazing one for human equality. It would have been an honor to have been a part of that.

 

The thing for women is that technology really is their friend....dying in childbirth or post due to peurpura fever, losing children in the tender years, all that housework with the washing and boiling the water, the wood burning stove.....romantic sounding but very labour intensive.

Yeah, a simplier age (those gone by, with less regulations etc), but the regulations have come about because of the injustices that occured because of the lack of them.

The ghastly social structures of women being very 2nd class, economic inequalities, colour,religion and race. And of course the hideous spectre of human slavery. These still exist today but tend not to be enshrined as though it is a good thing.

I am very happy tobe living here and now and being able to conribute my sixpenny worth on the internet to folk from around the globe.:love2: