When and where?

[MAJA]

With the high fuel prices fueling increasing frustrations and attacks on this board (which I am also guilty of), hopefully heres a topic/question to ease our tensions here.

Just for fun, if you could chose to live at any time in history, when and where would you chose to live, and why? And what would your occupation be?

I would chose my dads generation, growing up in rural Texas during the great depression, serving in WWII, and then settling back in rural Texas in the late fourties, fifties and sixties. I would have a small service station, changing oil, fixing flats, and pumping gas 6am to 6 pm. Then go to my small farm, raising farm animals and drinking ice tea, as the sun sets each day. I would go to every Marilyn Monroe movie, complain about Eisenhower being a Republican but knowing he's ok as he is a veteran. And I would keep my '55 Chevy Belair and Chevy Apache pickup in pristine shape.

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by eljefino:
You have the benefit of hindsight, seeing everything turned out more or less okay. I bet there were several periods of time during the decades you mention where pessimism about the future was rampant (to understate). That generation overcame them all though.

Hopefully minimizing terrorism and warfare, finding alternative fuels and efficiently using our resources presents a challenge that we as a society can overcome and be proud of. So my vote (I'm 28) is right here and now.

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You have a good attitude. People who spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror run off the road a lot.

So far, being retired in the early part of the 21st century is by far the best time for me.

 

[MAJA]

Jeeeeez, I try to add a little retrospective thinking, to get away from the intense debates/arguments of recents threads on todays problems, and what do I get? Arguments/comments about "living in the past", and accused of having "hindsight" in reference to the way things turned out good opposed to the worries that were evident.

I now ask the moderators to "lock" this thread, as I feel it is now worthless from its original intent.

 

[eljefino]

PS, I still vote for "now", or within the last 10 years, since the internet is making information so dang easy to share. I've learned several hobbies, including auto mechanics, that I probably would have not gotten into, sheltered by my parents in suburbia. I've found like-minded folks that are 1 in 1000 to one in a million that have allowed me to clarify my own philosophies and learn new things. I get 10 minutes here, 30 minute there of learning new things. To have to travel across town to a library and gain access when it was open stifles my "spontaneous education".

If I hadn't married and settled down, perhaps I'd like to be a roughneck/laborer on an oil platform, getting all kinds of overtime.

Am the sort who wouldn't mind a lengthy shift with lengthy time off, getting transported to exotic and/or very dreary places. The cyclical boom/busts wouldn't bother me as my attention span would move me on to something else. I don't know much about the technology of oil production but I bet there's a position of moving heavy stuff and getting sludge on everything that was a stinker 75 years ago and still is today. So for the original question of "when" that's up in the air...

[ April 14, 2005, 01:33 PM: Message edited by: eljefino ]

 

[TooManyWheels]

quote:

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I now ask the moderators to "lock" this thread, as I feel it is now worthless from its original intent.

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There is no such thing as an idyllic time, free from worry, troubles, etc. You can't have a real discussion of the merits of various times without looking at the bad that came with the good, and you didn't specify that you only wanted the fantasy perspective.

 

[Schmoe]

Chill out dude. Everybody has their own ideas and opinons here.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

I would have liked to live in Jerusalem about 2000 years ago.

 

[k1xv]

I would have liked to have lived in 18th Dynasty Egypt (approx. 1265 BC) in the days of Ramses II and been involved in the construction of temples, tombs and monuments in that ancient age.

The Egyptologists still are not sure how those people were able to move stone objects that weighed up to a hundred tons over hundreds of miles.

I have been to Egypt three times in my life and it is always a source of fascination and wonder.

 

[Al]

I feel that I lived in the best years of this country. I was born in 1946 and things didn't go totally to **** until about 1985

 

[andrews]

Maja,
I understand your frustration. Sometimes people just like to throw a wrench into the whole concept of imagination. In the spirit of which your question was asked...I'll try and answer. I would like to have lived in a time when the early west was being explored. Perhaps during the time period from 1803 (Lewis and Clark) till about the 1840's (Fremont). I would enjoy being an explorer/trailblazer. It would have been so exciting to see our wild lands before any real white settlement occured. Finding trails and discovering routes, mapping, recording, dealing with the indians and wildlife, and all of the other things common for an explorer to do. I really believe that I could have lived a happy life doing that.

 

[MarkC]

I would like to have been there at the beginning, whether it was when the Earth cooled, the life began evolving(whether 'intelligently designed' or not)or was spoken into existence as is in 6 days. I'd like to see for myself.
And I'd like to see a live woolly Mammoth.

 

[eljefino]

You have the benefit of hindsight, seeing everything turned out more or less okay. I bet there were several periods of time during the decades you mention where pessimism about the future was rampant (to understate). That generation overcame them all though.

Hopefully minimizing terrorism and warfare, finding alternative fuels and efficiently using our resources presents a challenge that we as a society can overcome and be proud of. So my vote (I'm 28) is right here and now.

 

[TooManyWheels]

My parents are of the same age as Maja's and they would tell you that the depression, WWII, the Cuban missile crisis and the threat of the Soviet Union were not pleasant events to live through. Two anectdotes - As a result of the depression my Dad made sure that everyone in our family always had enough coats, something he apparently suffered from. Similarly, I have known people who will never eat another bean as a result of being forced to exist on little else during that time.

Like Jefino, I vote for the present. We are going through the fastest rate of change that has ever been experienced. If you are the type of person who is interested in the ride to the future rather than being stuck in the past, then it should be an interesting trip. This doesn't mean it will be fun, it may be very much the opposite, but it should be interesting.

Future lifetimes should be even more interesting.

[ April 14, 2005, 12:33 PM: Message edited by: TooManyWheels ]

 

[Schmoe]

I would choose to be at the garage when Bill Gates started his computer company and be his buddy. The rest, as they say, is history.
I remember all to well...stop, duck and cover, when I was growing up. No fun at all. But besides the above ideal time, being an engineer at NASA during Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs would have been it for me.

 

[Pick]

I would like to go back to just after High School graduation. I would come down to Florida, from Ohio and scarf up as much land as I could afford. Disney payed an average of $200 an acre when they aquired land for the Orlando operation. It is probably worth over 100 times that now.

 

[Schmoe]

While he was chasing you??

 

[MarkC]

Nah, I wouldn't provoke a mammoth, but I'd keep an eye out for Smilodon...

 

[tom slick]

I'd be a flight test engineer or pilot in the 1960's and 1970's. I think they were on the cutting edge back then. they still are but back then they were a bit more "cowboy", and not so timid / scientific. they just had to fly it to see what it would do.

I think being involved in formula 1 and lemans type racing in the 60's would be great too!