Reply #32: This Tells You the Way Things Really Were

[Hidden Stillness]

Many people of that generation saved Life Magazine issues commemorating various historical incidents or news events, (my Mom had many, and I used to read the magazine sometimes as a kid--it was a great magazine), and it reminds you again, even after a generation or more of corporate media propaganda, how loved the President and Jackie Kennedy were, that there were millions of families who saved newspapers and magazines from that week--the assassination, the funeral, the murder of Oswald, special issues on the Kennedy Presidency and "Camelot," etc. A few years after my beloved Mom died, I happened to find a group of Life Magazines, and there were several on the terrible Kennedy assassination and aftermath, and even that issue from, I think it was 1969, when Life printed that incredible, very somber issue listing the names and pictures of every soldier who had died in Viet Nam up to that point. (That was the source of "Nightline" 's special program a while ago, so protested against by Sinclair and etc., listing the names and pictures of the Iraq war dead.)

Other kinds of paperwork can become valuable artifacts of an era, and really tell you what life was like. I remember when my Uncle died--who also never threw anything away--family members went through some of these personal papers, and found a fascinating, documented trail, during World War II, of trying, for four years, to get a replacement part for a tractor on their farm. Even though farming was designated an "essential" job or industry, you still could not get this needed part, because of the war effort, and everything being needed for the troops. There was application after application, proof that the part was needed, the request being routed through several government agencies for approval--and never approved. The materiels were needed for the war. Finally, at the end, as the war wound down, it was approved. Otherwise, people either just had to repair vehicles over and over, or use some other means to accomplish what they wanted. It was a fabulous, first-hand source on these things, as lived. They never, by the way, complained. We used to be all in this together.

Sometimes, going through the papers, books, magazines and newspapers of a loved person who has died, is wrenching, and wonderful. You get to know them yet again, and it is almost like experiencing some of these things with them--not to mention the primary-source historical value of many of these things they saved.