OLD FOLKS AT HOME
	MARCH 2004

by Brendan Stormo
Photos by Brad Shifflett

Life was shorter and family life more simple a hundred years ago. The family was often centered on a business of some kind — usually a family farm. Dad worked in the fields or the shop. When the children weren't going to school, the girls helped Mom in and around the house and the boys helped around the farm or in the shop.

In our ideal picture, Grandpa and the other set of grandparents had usually died ten years before and Grandma sat by the fire making quilts and other items for the family and sharing with the young people wisdom from the past. Finally, Grandma died peacefully in her sleep after a short illness, having reached the venerable age of 59 years.

It is no secret that the world of the 21st Century imposes tremendous strains on families. A big source of that strain comes from the fact that people are living much longer.

Beginning in the 30s the country became electrified and laborsaving devices began to help keep people from working themselves to death.

Shortly afterwards, during WWII, scientists invented sulfa drugs and penicillin. These powerful breakthroughs finally gave doctors access to medicines that could actually cure illnesses like pneumonia that earlier simply killed most patients in defiance of whatever patent remedies the doctors tried to pump into them.

During the 50s, the quality of health care began to soar and, with a set of pills or a simple procedure, people began to survive attacks on their health that killed everyone in the earlier generations. Modern photography studios routinely take photographs of representatives of four or even five generations all sitting together and smiling at the camera.

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