OK, here's my contribution to the story. My grandparents were all born in 1878 or 1879. Two died before I was born, but I remember the other two well, as well as a collection of aunts and uncles born between 1897 and 1910. There was something about talking to folks who remembered life without cars, airplanes, and electronics who grew up generally without electricity or radio. I have a scrapbook an aunt kept during WWI both before and after American entry. Since one side of my family spoke German, I also got stories of the problems of German Americans during WWI. Telephone calls would be terminated by operators if they heard German being spoken on the line. My grandfather had to schedule his sales route to be in Cape Girardeaux on Sundays to be able to find a church with a German language service, as many churches were pressured into dropping German language services.
But the worst situation was that of the uncle I am named after. Gus was born in 1900 and joined the Navy in 1940. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was already at sea commanding an "armed merchantman" convoy in the South Atlantic without escorts. Merchant marine duty was the most dangerous of any military service in WWII, the survival rate was lower than for bomber crews, submariners, rangers, or paratroopers. Gus exchanged letters with family in Europe writing in German, and as a result ended up in fights when he got to Dakar the first three times. On the next voyage, his second in command took a long look at the envelop and spread the word. You see, Gus's father was born in Switzerland.
