The oldest person you met, not by age but by their time of birth. And by "met", I mean consciously, not your 101-yrar-old granny who towered over your crib.
I think the oldest one was the old guy who loved a few houses down from my granny's. His name was Aschenbrenner, and I was somewhere around 6-8 when my grandmother told me, after having a short chat with him on the street, that he was 90 years old, or thereabouts. Assuming I was 8 and he 90, Aschenbrenner was born in 1884. Aschenbrenner was an adult before the first motorcars hit the roads. Maybe Aschenbrenner met some old guy aged 90 when he was eight years old. That guy would as a kid celebrated the Prussian victories over Napoleon at Waterloo, and as an older man see the unification of Germany.
My grandmother herself was vintage 1895, and used to tell me many stories from her childhood and youth, as well as of WW1 and her marriage soon after, and the 1920s. I'm so grateful to have heard stories from what now is more than 100 years ago. And it makes me feel old that the equivalent of my granny recalling rejected suitors in 1918 is today's equivalent of a granny telling her grandchildren about 1953.
I think the oldest one was the old guy who loved a few houses down from my granny's. His name was Aschenbrenner, and I was somewhere around 6-8 when my grandmother told me, after having a short chat with him on the street, that he was 90 years old, or thereabouts. Assuming I was 8 and he 90, Aschenbrenner was born in 1884. Aschenbrenner was an adult before the first motorcars hit the roads. Maybe Aschenbrenner met some old guy aged 90 when he was eight years old. That guy would as a kid celebrated the Prussian victories over Napoleon at Waterloo, and as an older man see the unification of Germany.
My grandmother herself was vintage 1895, and used to tell me many stories from her childhood and youth, as well as of WW1 and her marriage soon after, and the 1920s. I'm so grateful to have heard stories from what now is more than 100 years ago. And it makes me feel old that the equivalent of my granny recalling rejected suitors in 1918 is today's equivalent of a granny telling her grandchildren about 1953.
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