41 ms·

Farmer born in 1842 talks about life and change (1929) [video]

270 points by SQL2219 5y ago

ca98am79 5y ago
I remember talking with my grandparents and they mentioned how when they were younger they remembered how it was a hot debate at the time as to whether or not toilets should go inside of a house.
weikju 5y ago
Related, "107 Year Old Irish Farmer Reflects on Change, 1965" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIMIv8perM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIMIv8perM
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  On the Bodyke Evictions: https://books.google.com/books?id=thw_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA150#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=thw_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA150#v=on... https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/bodyke_evictions/orators_agitators.htm https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/bodyke_evi...
- cfn 5y ago
  Turn on subtitles, thankfully they are quite good.
silisili 5y ago
The accent and way of speaking/word choice is fascinating to me. Interesting how different it is today, what just 4 generations later.
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  Colloquial language changes rapidly. Ask anyone in India. Many modern words don't have a Indian equivalent.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    Before the written word dominates, language changes much faster.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Also with mass / telecommunications. If all you need is to be intelligible to the (same, small group of) people you see every day, then a local, short-lived argot will suffice. If you're talking to people in the next village, town, state, country, continent, and/or planet over, regularly, you're going to need a more stable form of spoken comms, and coordinated evolution is more challenging. Much as small island populations tend to evolve and diverge more rapidly than large continental ones.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  If he was born in 1842 and one uses 20 years per generation, it's more like 7-8 generations.
  - silisili 5y ago
    Fair point. I probably should have used his formative years...1850s, instead of 1920s.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    You can’t just drop the lower bound. For example, on my fathers side, people born in 1850 are only four generations away. While my mothers side it’s nearly 6. My wife’s family is closer to eight or nine.
- SwiftyBug 5y ago
  Yes! It sounds like something straight out from a movie. It sounds scripted. It's fascinating that people just spoke like that, I don't know, with more... soul?
  - fiestaman 5y ago
    It probably is scripted to an extent. Someone linked to outtakes where it's clear they had the subject say the same line multiple times, so it's clear the conversation wasn't entirely off-the-cuff.
- edwinyzh 5y ago
  Hi, as someone who has a very limited knowledge in the English language, I'd be very curious to see the old farm's talk be rewritten with modern way of speaking/word choice? I'll appreciate it!
  - schoen 5y ago
    Hi Edwin, I tried to rewrite it below in what I think would be a modern colloquial way. (This is a difficult question because some things might be different based on region or social class, not just because of the time when it was recorded.) Quite a few years ago, I'd rather not say exactly how many, but, well, I was born in the first half of last century, so you can guess how old I am. And now I'm in the, eh, pretty far along in the next century. Oh yeah. We live in a world of change. The trees are just like they were when I was a boy, only bigger. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But when I was a boy, we didn't have the telegraph and we didn't have a telephone. Of course, none of the electric lights, or any of the other stuff that's popped up to annoy us, or help us. The good old days had a lot of good things, you guys shouldn't think you're somehow living in the best time in the history of the world. We're safe, but it's no better than what our parents had, and I don't think it's much better than what our grandchildren will have. Yep, that's Hudson over there. Nice little city. Well, I remember very well, looking out my window. I'd see anywhere from 10 to 20, almost never less than 10, sailboats on the river. Now I don't see more than one every three months. Very few steamboats. Whenever anybody went to New York then, if they wanted to go the modern way, they'd take a steamboat. If they wanted to go cheap, they'd go on one of those river sloops. Do you know what work is? You don't? Well, work's doing something you have to do. When you're doing something you want to do, like to do, that's play. And now I exercise a little, but I don't call it work. I don't call this work. This is play. You see how nice that is?
    - _moof 5y ago
      Very, very difficult question. I tried to do a more drastic rewrite and got stumped. A lot of what makes him sound old is the subject matter. I don't think I've heard the word "steamboat" more than two or three times in my whole life. Another thing that made it tricky is that a lot of what he says sounds totally normal for modern American English, it's just a little... poetic? The bit about fathers and grandchildren would fit right into a modern speech or essay, for example. I might find it odd coming from a friend in casual conversation though. There's something about the way he sees his place in the world too. He's a part of it, not a separate thing in it, if that makes sense. That perspective is something that I think has become rare. Great question. Made me think quite a bit about how context-dependent language is, and the myriad ways just a few sentences can communicate so much more than their literal meaning.
laGrenouille 5y ago
This is fascinating. Does anyone know the original source of the material?
- haunter 5y ago
  >Filmed on July 13, 1929. >87 year old farmer in garden describes work versus play, describes changes that have occurred, and describes travel by automobile versus stagecoach. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r...
technological 5y ago
I don’t know if it’s only me but while growing up I was pretty excited about the future and technology advances but life back then was simple. Small things used to give lot of happiness, even though we did not had so many luxuries but was very content with what we had and that hope that future will be bright was enough to motivate you . However now thinking about the future makes me sad and how most of us (or may be just me) forgot that we have one life and it’s so precious.
- silisili 5y ago
  Similar thought here. I don't know if it was the era or being relatively poor, but the big change in my life was giftgiving. You used to get a book or sweater or doodad and be wowed and thankful. As an adult it seems everyone has Amazon and everything they want, so what's to do but trade boring gift cards we don't need. How exciting. I will say one thing I noticed and dislike about myself is how impatient and 'privileged' I've become. I mean, we used to order from Sears or Penney's catalogues as a kid and that stuff took weeks to arrive, and we were thrilled. Today it's all instant gratification. Amazon is a day late and we(I) act perturbed. I like to watch this Louis CK clip, it really puts me back in place...for a while. https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4 https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4
  - Swizec 5y ago
    > As an adult it seems everyone has Amazon and everything they want, so what's to do but trade boring gift cards we don't need. How exciting. From one terrible gift-giver to another: Once you are no longer poor and the people around you also aren't poor and can afford the things they want, gift-giving becomes about knowing the person. What have they always wanted or needed, but wouldn't get for themselves? When you distill gifts to a monetary exchange they lose all value. Know the person, show you care, share that you thought about them, that you put effort into their gift. Then gifts become magical and amazing once more. Your mom appreciates a $600 weekend getaway with her son/daughter infinitely more than a $600 fancy bluetooth speaker. As Ted Lasso said in a recent episode – the effort is the gift.
    - 5y ago
melling 5y ago
Someone born this year will likely be able to reflect back in 130 years about how primitive the early 21st century was compared to 2150.
- bredren 5y ago
  At the very least, we will have an accurate inference and convincing portrayal of a person’s reflections on life in 2150–whether they are still “alive” or not.
  - echelon 5y ago
    Lifespans will probably double, or maybe triple, by that point. Once we get comfortable with human cloning, we can create headless human clones and remove any HLA immune triggers. You could do organ, or better, head transplants. A young immune system plus some drugs and a person could be rejuvenated and made young again. From there it's a hop, skip, and a jump to full BCI and brain uploads. Immortality.
- scruple 5y ago
  My son will be born any day now. My great aunt is 96, born in 1925, I believe. I intend to get them together, within the first few months. She's (slowly) losing her mental faculties but has agreed to some candid interviews for the kids. We've already got a bunch of great pictures and videos of her with our 2 year olds. It's interesting to think that these people who might be 130 in 2150 could have a direct connection back to the 1920s.
- cm2187 5y ago
  I am not sure "primitive" is the right word. Compared to rural america of the XIX century perhaps. But compared to major cities in Europe, I don't think that our architecture or music are any less primitive than Haussmannian architecture, and Rossini's music. The language has certainly deteriorated. We have more technologies, we have more, cheaper stuff. But we not particularly more sophisticated.
- dctoedt 5y ago
  Can't remember where I read this (David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest?), but in the 1930s, a nonagenarian Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) told a young lawyer, "young man, you are speaking to a man who once spoke to a veteran of the Revolution"; IIRC, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, the now-middle-aged lawyer spoke with Halberstam.
coldcode 5y ago
I remember sitting next to an elderly woman on a plane whose father came west in a covered wagon, and his daughter was flying in a jet.
- koolba 5y ago
  What year did this happen?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Presumably the father went West after the Civil War so maybe 1870s/1880s. So the woman was probably born around that time. (Young kids did travel out West on wagon trains though so could have been earlier.) Jet travel probably indicates at least 1960s but I'm guessing "elderly" means quite elderly so probably some time later.
    - flavius29663 5y ago
      Thw father might have been going west as a child, for all we know
      - ghaff 5y ago
        True. And that would make the timelines much easier.
      - slv77 5y ago
        And married a younger women and had kids later.
  - Merad 5y ago
    It's interesting to think about the possibilities... On one hand, wagon travel to the west didn't totally die off until the late 1890s, so the woman could easily be part of the greatest generation (WW2 generation) and the encounter could've happened quite recently. OTOH the earliest the encounter could've happened would be the end of the 1950s, and if it did happen that early that makes it plausible that her father traveled west at the peak of the Oregon Trail in the late 1840s to 1850s. It's mind blowing how much we've advanced in such a short time.
newaccount2021 5y ago
the perfect life is his + a small smattering of modern conveniences and decent access to medicine he seems physically robust for his age, probably eats food he grows without calling it "fair trade organic", get news once a month...
k__ 5y ago
I was born in the 80s, but somehow my life didn't feel like much change happened, because the one constant of my life was to learn new things every few years.
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  The changes over the past 50 years are definitely less than in the prior 50 years (and the 50 years before that).
  - contingencies 5y ago
    Strongly disagree. The internet has totally replaced most previous industries. No aspect of daily ritual, be it education, work, play, language or chore is untouched and global media has altered the status quo for culture and commerce. Most of that in the last 20 years. The farmer in this piece saw the beginnings of the industrial revolution. That had huge implications but it took a lot of time for those implications to reach the corners of the earth. These days, ideas and technology spread and compound much more rapidly. Re: Last 20 years, I used to travel in the early noughties before mobile phones were everywhere and none of them had cameras. Wikipedia had barely begun, Google Maps didn't exist, many countries were without ATMs or card connectivity, I even carried TCs once. You you had to pay internet cafes for sporadic internet access. Now I can pay cashless in most places, there's crypto, mobile signals everywhere and global roaming data is a thing. I once got lost in rural India in ~2011, pulled out a laptop with mobile data, a satellite map and a 3D digital elevation model. That's ... superhuman by 1960 standards. And then there's machine translation/video conferencing/libgen/cloud services.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Yeah 1920-1970 saw lots of changes as well--perhaps as many net as 1970-2020. But if we talk about 20-25 years, I can guarantee you that dropping any reasonably plugged in person--of whatever age--from today into 1995 and tell them to do a job, shop for things, get information about something, etc. and it will be a pretty unsettling and frustrating experience. Certainly more so than the shift from 1970-1995.
user982 5y ago
"Do you know what work is? You don't? Why, work's doing something you have to do. When you're doing something that you want to do, like to do, that's play."
- gigglesupstairs 5y ago
  That’s just such a beautiful and innocent observation, I can’t even..
- tmm84 5y ago
  I've heard this so much from my grandmother, who is turning 90 this month in fact. That's 1920s but that kind of thinking was still around. I remember when I was really young how my great grandmother used to talk and act. She was super funny sometimes.
deleted 5y ago
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pwenzel 5y ago
Are there any videos like this of indigenous people from this time frame?
franciscop 5y ago
"I would see anywhere from 10 to 20, hardly ever less than 10, sailing vessels down the (Hudson) river. Now I don't see more than one in three months. Very few steamboats. Everyone went to New York then, if they wanted to go in the new style why, they take a steamboat. If they want to go cheap they go on one our river sloops." One of the most incredible things to note here is that this was around the time planes were being invented, the first commercial airplane trip was just made few years earlier, and this a fairly rural interview of an elder so it's sane to think this person has never even seen an airplane.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  Commercial passenger airline service already existed when this was shot. He lived quite near New York, just upstate a bit. We gather that from him seeing all of the river traffic to the city. He didn't seem phased at all by the motion picture camera and sound equipment. It's very likely that he had seen an airplane before. Not germane to what he said, but likely.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - anovikov 5y ago
    In 1929, seeing plane in the air was commonplace in almost every country let alone New York state. Maybe not commercial passenger planes (they were still a rarity), but mail planes were complete commonplace. Also, cropdusters. Also, barnstormers visited literally every village once a year or so. My grand-grandmother told me that she first saw a plane in the air in 1914 when WWI started (she lived with her parents in what is now easternmost Belarus). When the war and the Revolution ended, they became somewhat of a rarity for the next decade or so, but not extreme rarity.
- nkurz 5y ago
  Coincidentally, the original source has a longer version of the interview where he goes on to talk about railroads and airplanes immediately after the segment about the sailing vessels: "Now the railroad is slow. Just now, this afternoon, going right up over here, I saw I guess a dozen aeroplanes..." https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r... (at 5:33)
mgkimsal 5y ago
Not directly related to the farmer, but I was reminded of this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CCFObSEAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CCFObSEAU The guest, as a child in 1865, witnessed Lincoln being shot in Ford's Theatre, and was on a TV show in 1956.
FpUser 5y ago
Very interesting channel. Invokes a bit of emotions. Thanks for the link.
grungegun 5y ago
Is there a reference for this to verify that this isn't just some historical reenactment? I'm trying to be more careful after I was once pranked by a friend who showed me a black and white video, claiming it was real, of people playing ping pong with nunchucks. I believed him at the time, but it was an ad campaign that someone on youtube had reposted to make it seems legit.
- haunter 5y ago
  Should be real Googled around and an earlier upload w/o the subtitles have the "MIRC @ SC.EDU" watermark https://youtu.be/RS27u6IqWt0 https://youtu.be/RS27u6IqWt0 It's the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/mirc/index.php https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_librar... I can't access the library catalog tho for some reason. Trying to find it in the online collection.
- haunter 5y ago
  Found it, starts at 1:13 >Filmed on July 13, 1929. >87 year old farmer in garden describes work versus play, describes changes that have occurred, and describes travel by automobile versus stagecoach. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r...
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > I was once pranked by a friend Related to this, news used to be somewhat accurate before 2000, with most reporters talking to 2 sources, though journalists were writers and not experts. However, the MSM has been outright lying to the American public for years, though cnn.com started being half-truthful since about Sept. 1, 2021. Virtually every major story on their homepage between Sept. 1, 2020 and Sept. 1, 2021 has been retracted or contradicted by their own later stories. It's identical to Orwell's "1984." The NY Times just deleted dozens of "article placements" paid for by the CCP, but note the entire US news media was bribed by the CCP either with ads, paid stories or paid junkets to Beijing for years.
syspec 5y ago
Not to extract too much from the sample size of 1, but at the time this was filmed this farmer was 87 years old. He seems to be in really impressive health.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  An alternative perspective on "high mortality" is "strong selection pressure". About half of all children born died before reaching the age of 20, and that mortality fell off tremendously with the 1st, 5th, and 10th years. This chart gives life expectancy by age (rather than mortality), but you can largely infer the latter. Range is 1700--2013, though for most ages data are from 1850 onwards. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-b...
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Still seems problematic to use 'life expectancy' at all to me, since the at birth and early years lines are still affected. Wouldn't it be better to show something like 'probability of living another ten years' (at birth/each of x years old)? I'm no statistician.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      The age-adjusted concept is "life expectancy at year n". That is precisely equivalent to "additional years of survival at year n plus year n". The alternative notion I'd suggest is "anticipated mortality at year n for those born in year m". The latter would show a typical "bathtub" mortality curve, high initially, then lower, then climbing in late age. Note too that the image I'd posted is literally a representation of survivorship bias: the longer an individual has survived, the longer they're likely to continue to survive.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        > That is precisely equivalent to "additional years of survival at year n plus year n". But that's (minus n) not what I suggested; it's not equivalent to the probability of living another ten years (say). E.g. the life expectancy of five year olds (plus that they are five years old) is not sufficient information to determine how many of them (the probability one) will live to fifteen.
anonymousiam 5y ago
My father put together a (vacuum tube) Heathkit tape recorder in the late 1950s and made recordings of my great grandparents (on both sides) in 1959 and 1960. They talked about their lives growing up, how they met, and some of the hardships they endured. They were probably 35-40 years younger than the gentleman in the video, but they also described a time before automobiles, electricity, radio, and telephones were commonplace. I converted those recordings to MP3 about 15 years ago. It's amazing how far we've come in such a short time.
- sydthrowaway 5y ago
  What will be the future I wonder.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    Thunderdome.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    Technocracy. We'll all live in small flats, every move monitored, resources 'correctly' allocated, quarterly 'health' shots, no cars, we'll see very little nature. My, how far we've come...
    - 6502nerdface 5y ago
      Hey man it's that or Thunderdome.
    - narrator 5y ago
      Since we are dystopia larping: The future will be miserable, unless you live in China. In China, the future will arrive as planned as China will once again become the middle kingdom and be bestowed with the mandate of heaven. In the west, the 200 years of western industrial society will be regarded as a mistake that must be payed for dearly with carbon credits. ;)
    - swayvil 5y ago
dehrmann 5y ago
Surprised he didn't mention how tractors changed farming.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
uyt 5y ago
Not that I am questioning it, but how do you prove the authenticity of these sorts of videos? Could just hire an actor with a good accent and do some post processing.
- habibur 5y ago
  Should have history of it getting preserved over 100 years. Others watched it 40 or say 80 years back.
- christophilus 5y ago
  As someone else mentioned, it can be found in the USC (South Carolina) archives[0]. That university has a decent historical library, too. If you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a visit. [0] https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r...
  - OJFord 5y ago
    But that's just saying 'trust that someone else did' isn't it? I take the question to be, say USC discovers (thinks it's discovered) a new similar recording, what can it do to verify authenticity.
    - bdz 5y ago
      If it's from the US then it was shot on a Kodak nitrate film, they can verify the stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motion_picture_film_stocks#Early_nitrate_films_(1916%E2%80%931941) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motion_picture_film_st...
- csours 5y ago
  Even if was recorded at the time it claims to have been, it could still be an actor. The film reel companies were not above such things. It is very hard for me to take this at face value.
loughnane 5y ago
A few years ago I sat down with my father to just talk for a few hours about his life. I videorecorded the whole conversation. He’s got some years left but it feels good knowing I have it. It’s the sort of thing that’s value will become more and more clear as time goes on. Highly recommend
- hesdeadjim 5y ago
  This is a wonderful idea. My father is almost 70, but with his medical conditions every year I wonder if it will be his last.
tartoran 5y ago
The sound is very good for the 1930s!!
pooryorick 5y ago
He says, "well it's great", but the subtititles say, "we're safe". That itself could be interpreted as an interesting window into the mindset of our own society at the moment. People are absorbed in thoughts about turmoil and danger, and preoccupied with safe spaces, bullying, offense, and disgust. Yada yada, special snowflakes, something something.

270 points by SQL2219 5y ago

I remember talking with my grandparents and they mentioned how when they were younger they remembered how it was a hot debate at the time as to whether or not toilets should go inside of a house.

weikju 5y ago

Related, "107 Year Old Irish Farmer Reflects on Change, 1965" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIMIv8perM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIMIv8perM

dredmorbius 5y ago
On the Bodyke Evictions: https://books.google.com/books?id=thw_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA150#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=thw_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA150#v=on... https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/bodyke_evictions/orators_agitators.htm https://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/bodyke_evi...
cfn 5y ago
Turn on subtitles, thankfully they are quite good.

silisili 5y ago

The accent and way of speaking/word choice is fascinating to me. Interesting how different it is today, what just 4 generations later.

nine_zeros 5y ago
Colloquial language changes rapidly. Ask anyone in India. Many modern words don't have a Indian equivalent.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Before the written word dominates, language changes much faster.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Also with mass / telecommunications. If all you need is to be intelligible to the (same, small group of) people you see every day, then a local, short-lived argot will suffice. If you're talking to people in the next village, town, state, country, continent, and/or planet over, regularly, you're going to need a more stable form of spoken comms, and coordinated evolution is more challenging. Much as small island populations tend to evolve and diverge more rapidly than large continental ones.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
If he was born in 1842 and one uses 20 years per generation, it's more like 7-8 generations.
- silisili 5y ago
  Fair point. I probably should have used his formative years...1850s, instead of 1920s.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  You can’t just drop the lower bound. For example, on my fathers side, people born in 1850 are only four generations away. While my mothers side it’s nearly 6. My wife’s family is closer to eight or nine.
SwiftyBug 5y ago
Yes! It sounds like something straight out from a movie. It sounds scripted. It's fascinating that people just spoke like that, I don't know, with more... soul?
- fiestaman 5y ago
  It probably is scripted to an extent. Someone linked to outtakes where it's clear they had the subject say the same line multiple times, so it's clear the conversation wasn't entirely off-the-cuff.
edwinyzh 5y ago
Hi, as someone who has a very limited knowledge in the English language, I'd be very curious to see the old farm's talk be rewritten with modern way of speaking/word choice? I'll appreciate it!
- schoen 5y ago
  Hi Edwin, I tried to rewrite it below in what I think would be a modern colloquial way. (This is a difficult question because some things might be different based on region or social class, not just because of the time when it was recorded.) Quite a few years ago, I'd rather not say exactly how many, but, well, I was born in the first half of last century, so you can guess how old I am. And now I'm in the, eh, pretty far along in the next century. Oh yeah. We live in a world of change. The trees are just like they were when I was a boy, only bigger. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But when I was a boy, we didn't have the telegraph and we didn't have a telephone. Of course, none of the electric lights, or any of the other stuff that's popped up to annoy us, or help us. The good old days had a lot of good things, you guys shouldn't think you're somehow living in the best time in the history of the world. We're safe, but it's no better than what our parents had, and I don't think it's much better than what our grandchildren will have. Yep, that's Hudson over there. Nice little city. Well, I remember very well, looking out my window. I'd see anywhere from 10 to 20, almost never less than 10, sailboats on the river. Now I don't see more than one every three months. Very few steamboats. Whenever anybody went to New York then, if they wanted to go the modern way, they'd take a steamboat. If they wanted to go cheap, they'd go on one of those river sloops. Do you know what work is? You don't? Well, work's doing something you have to do. When you're doing something you want to do, like to do, that's play. And now I exercise a little, but I don't call it work. I don't call this work. This is play. You see how nice that is?
  - _moof 5y ago
    Very, very difficult question. I tried to do a more drastic rewrite and got stumped. A lot of what makes him sound old is the subject matter. I don't think I've heard the word "steamboat" more than two or three times in my whole life. Another thing that made it tricky is that a lot of what he says sounds totally normal for modern American English, it's just a little... poetic? The bit about fathers and grandchildren would fit right into a modern speech or essay, for example. I might find it odd coming from a friend in casual conversation though. There's something about the way he sees his place in the world too. He's a part of it, not a separate thing in it, if that makes sense. That perspective is something that I think has become rare. Great question. Made me think quite a bit about how context-dependent language is, and the myriad ways just a few sentences can communicate so much more than their literal meaning.

laGrenouille 5y ago

This is fascinating. Does anyone know the original source of the material?

haunter 5y ago
>Filmed on July 13, 1929. >87 year old farmer in garden describes work versus play, describes changes that have occurred, and describes travel by automobile versus stagecoach. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r...

technological 5y ago

I don’t know if it’s only me but while growing up I was pretty excited about the future and technology advances but life back then was simple. Small things used to give lot of happiness, even though we did not had so many luxuries but was very content with what we had and that hope that future will be bright was enough to motivate you . However now thinking about the future makes me sad and how most of us (or may be just me) forgot that we have one life and it’s so precious.

silisili 5y ago
Similar thought here. I don't know if it was the era or being relatively poor, but the big change in my life was giftgiving. You used to get a book or sweater or doodad and be wowed and thankful. As an adult it seems everyone has Amazon and everything they want, so what's to do but trade boring gift cards we don't need. How exciting. I will say one thing I noticed and dislike about myself is how impatient and 'privileged' I've become. I mean, we used to order from Sears or Penney's catalogues as a kid and that stuff took weeks to arrive, and we were thrilled. Today it's all instant gratification. Amazon is a day late and we(I) act perturbed. I like to watch this Louis CK clip, it really puts me back in place...for a while. https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4 https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4
- Swizec 5y ago
  > As an adult it seems everyone has Amazon and everything they want, so what's to do but trade boring gift cards we don't need. How exciting. From one terrible gift-giver to another: Once you are no longer poor and the people around you also aren't poor and can afford the things they want, gift-giving becomes about knowing the person. What have they always wanted or needed, but wouldn't get for themselves? When you distill gifts to a monetary exchange they lose all value. Know the person, show you care, share that you thought about them, that you put effort into their gift. Then gifts become magical and amazing once more. Your mom appreciates a $600 weekend getaway with her son/daughter infinitely more than a $600 fancy bluetooth speaker. As Ted Lasso said in a recent episode – the effort is the gift.
  - 5y ago

melling 5y ago

Someone born this year will likely be able to reflect back in 130 years about how primitive the early 21st century was compared to 2150.

bredren 5y ago
At the very least, we will have an accurate inference and convincing portrayal of a person’s reflections on life in 2150–whether they are still “alive” or not.
- echelon 5y ago
  Lifespans will probably double, or maybe triple, by that point. Once we get comfortable with human cloning, we can create headless human clones and remove any HLA immune triggers. You could do organ, or better, head transplants. A young immune system plus some drugs and a person could be rejuvenated and made young again. From there it's a hop, skip, and a jump to full BCI and brain uploads. Immortality.
scruple 5y ago
My son will be born any day now. My great aunt is 96, born in 1925, I believe. I intend to get them together, within the first few months. She's (slowly) losing her mental faculties but has agreed to some candid interviews for the kids. We've already got a bunch of great pictures and videos of her with our 2 year olds. It's interesting to think that these people who might be 130 in 2150 could have a direct connection back to the 1920s.
cm2187 5y ago
I am not sure "primitive" is the right word. Compared to rural america of the XIX century perhaps. But compared to major cities in Europe, I don't think that our architecture or music are any less primitive than Haussmannian architecture, and Rossini's music. The language has certainly deteriorated. We have more technologies, we have more, cheaper stuff. But we not particularly more sophisticated.
dctoedt 5y ago
Can't remember where I read this (David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest?), but in the 1930s, a nonagenarian Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935) told a young lawyer, "young man, you are speaking to a man who once spoke to a veteran of the Revolution"; IIRC, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, the now-middle-aged lawyer spoke with Halberstam.

coldcode 5y ago

I remember sitting next to an elderly woman on a plane whose father came west in a covered wagon, and his daughter was flying in a jet.

koolba 5y ago
What year did this happen?
- ghaff 5y ago
  Presumably the father went West after the Civil War so maybe 1870s/1880s. So the woman was probably born around that time. (Young kids did travel out West on wagon trains though so could have been earlier.) Jet travel probably indicates at least 1960s but I'm guessing "elderly" means quite elderly so probably some time later.
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    Thw father might have been going west as a child, for all we know
    - ghaff 5y ago
      True. And that would make the timelines much easier.
    - slv77 5y ago
      And married a younger women and had kids later.
- Merad 5y ago
  It's interesting to think about the possibilities... On one hand, wagon travel to the west didn't totally die off until the late 1890s, so the woman could easily be part of the greatest generation (WW2 generation) and the encounter could've happened quite recently. OTOH the earliest the encounter could've happened would be the end of the 1950s, and if it did happen that early that makes it plausible that her father traveled west at the peak of the Oregon Trail in the late 1840s to 1850s. It's mind blowing how much we've advanced in such a short time.

newaccount2021 5y ago

the perfect life is his + a small smattering of modern conveniences and decent access to medicine he seems physically robust for his age, probably eats food he grows without calling it "fair trade organic", get news once a month...

k__ 5y ago

I was born in the 80s, but somehow my life didn't feel like much change happened, because the one constant of my life was to learn new things every few years.

jeffreyrogers 5y ago
The changes over the past 50 years are definitely less than in the prior 50 years (and the 50 years before that).
- contingencies 5y ago
  Strongly disagree. The internet has totally replaced most previous industries. No aspect of daily ritual, be it education, work, play, language or chore is untouched and global media has altered the status quo for culture and commerce. Most of that in the last 20 years. The farmer in this piece saw the beginnings of the industrial revolution. That had huge implications but it took a lot of time for those implications to reach the corners of the earth. These days, ideas and technology spread and compound much more rapidly. Re: Last 20 years, I used to travel in the early noughties before mobile phones were everywhere and none of them had cameras. Wikipedia had barely begun, Google Maps didn't exist, many countries were without ATMs or card connectivity, I even carried TCs once. You you had to pay internet cafes for sporadic internet access. Now I can pay cashless in most places, there's crypto, mobile signals everywhere and global roaming data is a thing. I once got lost in rural India in ~2011, pulled out a laptop with mobile data, a satellite map and a 3D digital elevation model. That's ... superhuman by 1960 standards. And then there's machine translation/video conferencing/libgen/cloud services.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yeah 1920-1970 saw lots of changes as well--perhaps as many net as 1970-2020. But if we talk about 20-25 years, I can guarantee you that dropping any reasonably plugged in person--of whatever age--from today into 1995 and tell them to do a job, shop for things, get information about something, etc. and it will be a pretty unsettling and frustrating experience. Certainly more so than the shift from 1970-1995.

user982 5y ago

"Do you know what work is? You don't? Why, work's doing something you have to do. When you're doing something that you want to do, like to do, that's play."

gigglesupstairs 5y ago
That’s just such a beautiful and innocent observation, I can’t even..
tmm84 5y ago
I've heard this so much from my grandmother, who is turning 90 this month in fact. That's 1920s but that kind of thinking was still around. I remember when I was really young how my great grandmother used to talk and act. She was super funny sometimes.

deleted 5y ago

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pwenzel 5y ago

Are there any videos like this of indigenous people from this time frame?

franciscop 5y ago

"I would see anywhere from 10 to 20, hardly ever less than 10, sailing vessels down the (Hudson) river. Now I don't see more than one in three months. Very few steamboats. Everyone went to New York then, if they wanted to go in the new style why, they take a steamboat. If they want to go cheap they go on one our river sloops." One of the most incredible things to note here is that this was around the time planes were being invented, the first commercial airplane trip was just made few years earlier, and this a fairly rural interview of an elder so it's sane to think this person has never even seen an airplane.

drewcoo 5y ago
Commercial passenger airline service already existed when this was shot. He lived quite near New York, just upstate a bit. We gather that from him seeing all of the river traffic to the city. He didn't seem phased at all by the motion picture camera and sound equipment. It's very likely that he had seen an airplane before. Not germane to what he said, but likely.
- deleted 5y ago
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- anovikov 5y ago
  In 1929, seeing plane in the air was commonplace in almost every country let alone New York state. Maybe not commercial passenger planes (they were still a rarity), but mail planes were complete commonplace. Also, cropdusters. Also, barnstormers visited literally every village once a year or so. My grand-grandmother told me that she first saw a plane in the air in 1914 when WWI started (she lived with her parents in what is now easternmost Belarus). When the war and the Revolution ended, they became somewhat of a rarity for the next decade or so, but not extreme rarity.
nkurz 5y ago
Coincidentally, the original source has a longer version of the interview where he goes on to talk about railroads and airplanes immediately after the segment about the sailing vessels: "Now the railroad is slow. Just now, this afternoon, going right up over here, I saw I guess a dozen aeroplanes..." https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r... (at 5:33)

mgkimsal 5y ago

Not directly related to the farmer, but I was reminded of this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CCFObSEAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4CCFObSEAU The guest, as a child in 1865, witnessed Lincoln being shot in Ford's Theatre, and was on a TV show in 1956.

FpUser 5y ago

Very interesting channel. Invokes a bit of emotions. Thanks for the link.

grungegun 5y ago

Is there a reference for this to verify that this isn't just some historical reenactment? I'm trying to be more careful after I was once pranked by a friend who showed me a black and white video, claiming it was real, of people playing ping pong with nunchucks. I believed him at the time, but it was an ad campaign that someone on youtube had reposted to make it seems legit.

haunter 5y ago
Should be real Googled around and an earlier upload w/o the subtitles have the "MIRC @ SC.EDU" watermark https://youtu.be/RS27u6IqWt0 https://youtu.be/RS27u6IqWt0 It's the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/mirc/index.php https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_librar... I can't access the library catalog tho for some reason. Trying to find it in the online collection.
haunter 5y ago
Found it, starts at 1:13 >Filmed on July 13, 1929. >87 year old farmer in garden describes work versus play, describes changes that have occurred, and describes travel by automobile versus stagecoach. https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r...
redis_mlc 5y ago
> I was once pranked by a friend Related to this, news used to be somewhat accurate before 2000, with most reporters talking to 2 sources, though journalists were writers and not experts. However, the MSM has been outright lying to the American public for years, though cnn.com started being half-truthful since about Sept. 1, 2021. Virtually every major story on their homepage between Sept. 1, 2020 and Sept. 1, 2021 has been retracted or contradicted by their own later stories. It's identical to Orwell's "1984." The NY Times just deleted dozens of "article placements" paid for by the CCP, but note the entire US news media was bribed by the CCP either with ads, paid stories or paid junkets to Beijing for years.

syspec 5y ago

Not to extract too much from the sample size of 1, but at the time this was filmed this farmer was 87 years old. He seems to be in really impressive health.

dredmorbius 5y ago
An alternative perspective on "high mortality" is "strong selection pressure". About half of all children born died before reaching the age of 20, and that mortality fell off tremendously with the 1st, 5th, and 10th years. This chart gives life expectancy by age (rather than mortality), but you can largely infer the latter. Range is 1700--2013, though for most ages data are from 1850 onwards. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-by-age-in-the-UK-1700-to-2013.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-b...
- OJFord 5y ago
  Still seems problematic to use 'life expectancy' at all to me, since the at birth and early years lines are still affected. Wouldn't it be better to show something like 'probability of living another ten years' (at birth/each of x years old)? I'm no statistician.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    The age-adjusted concept is "life expectancy at year n". That is precisely equivalent to "additional years of survival at year n plus year n". The alternative notion I'd suggest is "anticipated mortality at year n for those born in year m". The latter would show a typical "bathtub" mortality curve, high initially, then lower, then climbing in late age. Note too that the image I'd posted is literally a representation of survivorship bias: the longer an individual has survived, the longer they're likely to continue to survive.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      > That is precisely equivalent to "additional years of survival at year n plus year n". But that's (minus n) not what I suggested; it's not equivalent to the probability of living another ten years (say). E.g. the life expectancy of five year olds (plus that they are five years old) is not sufficient information to determine how many of them (the probability one) will live to fifteen.

anonymousiam 5y ago

My father put together a (vacuum tube) Heathkit tape recorder in the late 1950s and made recordings of my great grandparents (on both sides) in 1959 and 1960. They talked about their lives growing up, how they met, and some of the hardships they endured. They were probably 35-40 years younger than the gentleman in the video, but they also described a time before automobiles, electricity, radio, and telephones were commonplace. I converted those recordings to MP3 about 15 years ago. It's amazing how far we've come in such a short time.

sydthrowaway 5y ago
What will be the future I wonder.
- christophilus 5y ago
  Thunderdome.
- verisimi 5y ago
  Technocracy. We'll all live in small flats, every move monitored, resources 'correctly' allocated, quarterly 'health' shots, no cars, we'll see very little nature. My, how far we've come...
  - 6502nerdface 5y ago
    Hey man it's that or Thunderdome.
  - narrator 5y ago
    Since we are dystopia larping: The future will be miserable, unless you live in China. In China, the future will arrive as planned as China will once again become the middle kingdom and be bestowed with the mandate of heaven. In the west, the 200 years of western industrial society will be regarded as a mistake that must be payed for dearly with carbon credits. ;)
  - swayvil 5y ago

dehrmann 5y ago

Surprised he didn't mention how tractors changed farming.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

uyt 5y ago

Not that I am questioning it, but how do you prove the authenticity of these sorts of videos? Could just hire an actor with a good accent and do some post processing.

habibur 5y ago
Should have history of it getting preserved over 100 years. Others watched it 40 or say 80 years back.
christophilus 5y ago
As someone else mentioned, it can be found in the USC (South Carolina) archives[0]. That university has a decent historical library, too. If you’re ever in the area, it’s worth a visit. [0] https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/rec/2 https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/5313/r...
- OJFord 5y ago
  But that's just saying 'trust that someone else did' isn't it? I take the question to be, say USC discovers (thinks it's discovered) a new similar recording, what can it do to verify authenticity.
  - bdz 5y ago
    If it's from the US then it was shot on a Kodak nitrate film, they can verify the stock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motion_picture_film_stocks#Early_nitrate_films_(1916%E2%80%931941) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motion_picture_film_st...
csours 5y ago
Even if was recorded at the time it claims to have been, it could still be an actor. The film reel companies were not above such things. It is very hard for me to take this at face value.

loughnane 5y ago

A few years ago I sat down with my father to just talk for a few hours about his life. I videorecorded the whole conversation. He’s got some years left but it feels good knowing I have it. It’s the sort of thing that’s value will become more and more clear as time goes on. Highly recommend

hesdeadjim 5y ago
This is a wonderful idea. My father is almost 70, but with his medical conditions every year I wonder if it will be his last.

tartoran 5y ago

The sound is very good for the 1930s!!

pooryorick 5y ago

He says, "well it's great", but the subtititles say, "we're safe". That itself could be interpreted as an interesting window into the mindset of our own society at the moment. People are absorbed in thoughts about turmoil and danger, and preoccupied with safe spaces, bullying, offense, and disgust. Yada yada, special snowflakes, something something.