The New Age of Much Older Age

Begin quote from page 69 of February 23rd 2015 Issue of Time magazine with baby on cover:

We live in extraordinary time, and thanks to medical and scientific advances that even a generation ago would have sounded like science fiction, our lives are getting longer. an american born today has a projected average lifespan 20 full years longer than one born in 1925, and we are, as a society, growing old. For the first time in U.S. history, the number of people over 60 exceeds those under age 15." end quote from page 69 of Feb. 23rd 2015 Time magazine.

I remember what people looked like at different ages as I grew up and older. People in the 1950s who were 40 or 45 often looked like people in their 60s or 70s do now. It was a different world then. IN the 1950s my Grandmother who was born in 1888 was 70 in 1958. She had lost all of her teeth but one or two and had to wear full plates of false teeth upper and lower. A friend of my fathers who he worked with was a French Canadian that liked to open Coke Bottles with his teeth as a form of macho. I watched him do this. The problem was most of his teeth were already gone by his then 42 years old when I was 12 and worked alongside my father and him during the summers. People who were in their 60 or even 50s often were very sick and ready to die like people often get in their 70s through 90s now. People in their 20s often died when they didn't go to the doctor and didn't know any better. Even General Contractors were dying in their late 30s and early 40s from being meat and potatoes men from a single heart attack. We lost many men I knew like this that were very vigorous and then just died suddenly from their diet and then going to sleep right after a big steak (often to never wake up ever again).

I'm trying to explain how ignorant most people were still in the 1950s compared to now. They were much tougher than people now but also much more brittle. So, they were very bright lights and suddenly they were gone by 20s, 30s and 40s. Only the best educated lived on without dying of heart attacks, strokes, cigarettes or alcohol. Most people just didn't know any better then. Cigarettes were still advertised as safe even by doctors then. Imagine that! ON TV!