“When I was a child, my family would travel” around the country in the station wagon a few summers in a row, two weeks at a time. I know Mom fretted some that I was too young and the trips would be wasted on me, but I have a considerable number of specific memories about those trips.
I am not all that clear about which year we went where, or even where all we got to on a given trip. I know there was a trip east/northeast, and a trip west, and a trip south. Each trip covered a whole lot of ground.
I remember visiting a southern town on the Mississippi River sometime between 1958 and 1963 I would guess. I believe it was Vicksburg. We took a tour of a beautiful, fine southern mansion. I remember the tour guide pointing out the never repaired holes in the exterior walls put there by Northern gunboats on the river. I remember that I, being a very young child, felt fear because there seemed to be so much anger/hatred/resentment/something in her voice that indicated she was still holding a grudge against that Northern aggression.
That was just under 100 years after the Civil War. From my perspective at the time, the Civil War was forever ago!!! That the woman would still harbor antagonism against Northerners was astonishing to me. Today I understand that 100 years is just not that long. If you are speaking to a person over the age of 50, he or she was raised by someone who is almost certainly over the age of 70, and that person was raised by someone over the age of 90, well, you see where this is going. And those numbers are conservative.
You could easily be speaking to someone who spent many hours talking to a grandparent about times that are 100 years prior to your conversation.
Memories are long. Want proof?