Q: If someone from the 1950's suddenly appeared today,

[hunter]

82. I'm thinking my grandparents made a lot of the modern world happen. They'd love it.

None of them lived into the 21st century.

Wanting nothing to do with the dairy business, one of my grandmas and her sister ran wild in 1920's Hollywood. She had friends who were homosexuals, Jewish, Black, Asian... My siblings and I met some of them when we were children. She married a handsome Army Air Corp mechanic who'd joined the Army to get the hell out of Wyoming. It wasn't his dream to be a rancher, miner, or shopkeeper. After World War II he was an engineer working in the aerospace industry. A lot of his work was secret Cold War stuff he didn't talk about, but he was immensely proud of work he did for the Apollo Project.

My other grandma was one of the few women who continued working after World War II. She was a welder. She must have been good at it, and damned tough. My other grandpa was a skinny-dipping "bohemian" in the language of the day. He was a welder too. During World War II he got beat up by the cops for protesting the internment of his Japanese neighbors. These grandparents were Pacifists but had largely rejected the religions that brought them there.

My parents are artists, very much at home in the modern world. They use cell phones, they've been enthusiastic guests at gay marriages, and their friends are cosmopolitan. They were always artists with day jobs but became full time artists when they retired. In the 'fifties my dad was a nearsighted Radar O'Reilly medical clerk at risk of serving in the Korean Conflict but he was never sent overseas.