Our Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had been sucking up to Adolf Hitler and came out of a session with Adolf in Munich, waving a signed treaty and claiming "Peace in our time!" I don't remember much about that, but Hitler immediately invaded Poland. I had just turned five and started going to school when war was declared. I was doing well, but there was more to come. My Father was out of work at this time, but within a couple of years he had found a job and the Great Depression was over. He'll bring us luck." A lot of responsibility on my young shoulders. Mother was quite concerned about having another mouth to feed, but my Father quite cheerfully said "Don't worry. I was born in the middle of the Great Depression, the fourth child in my family, a surprise and an accident, just like you. The unofficial religion of Scotland was and still is soccer, at whose stadia thousands enthusiastically worship each weekend, while churches stand empty. For Protestants, Presbyterian was your only option, since the Presbyterian Church of Scotland was the official national religion. Of the 3,000 people in Duntocher, about 2,800 were Roman Catholic of Irish background, the rest being Scottish Presbyterians.
Diagonally upstairs from us the neighbours were particularly quiet, he being a second story man, a burglar. We lived downstairs and our downstairs neighbours were noisy, the unruly kids being in the habit of bouncing a golf ball off our mutual brick wall for hours. But that's another story.Įach building in our subdivision accommodated four families, two upstairs, two downstairs. These were named for St Patrick, whom local tradition insists was born there into a family of Roman citizens and kidnapped by Irish pirates at the age of sixteen, in the year 405 AD.
Our home was situated at the northern edge of a subdivision, facing a stand of beech trees which were several hundred years old, a much more ancient Roman Road, then a farmer's field, beyond which wild land of gorse and heather, rising 1,800 feet above, the Old Kilpatrick Hills. Clydebank is, of course, on the banks of the River Clyde. In the year 1939, my family, the Boyds, lived in the village of Duntocher, population 3,000, just north of the industrial town of Clydebank, population 48,000. "The thought is that these individuals could voice their unhappiness with their current situation and perhaps get more attention and perhaps better service than individuals who suffered quietly.World War II, According to Me INTRODUCTION "At least one study found that older men in nursing homes who were grumpy actually lived a little longer," Carolyn says. Of course, grumpiness is not always a bad thing.
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"But in terms of our study, I'm not certain that there's a direct correlation between stress appraisals and grumpiness, although it is true that stress often makes folks irritable."Īnyone who has known an irascible old coot - or seen Grumpy Old Men, the 1993 movie in which geriatrics Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau live to fight with one another - knows that elderly guys can be pains in the neck. Grumpiness "could be seen as increasing others' stress levels," Carolyn says. But we do know that the most difficult sort of caregiving is for Alzheimer's patients, who often have personality changes like irritability or hostility - that is, grumpiness - which make them much more difficult to deal with." "I'm not certain anyone has studied this exactly. So what does the grumpiness in older men mean for other people in their lives? "Some older people continue to find sources of happiness late in life, despite dealing with family losses, declining health or a lack of resources," Carolyn Aldwyn, a gerontology professor at Oregon State University and the study's lead author, said in the university's report on the findings. About 20 percent said they were happier after they retired.īoth groups, however, agreed that good feelings about life began to decline at age 70 - for myriad reasons, including health problems, cognitive slide and the losses of loved ones. Some 80 percent said that at age 50, life became easier. The study, published in the March 2014 issue of Psychology and Aging, examined 1,315 men - mostly military veterans who participated in a 15-year survey - between the ages of 53 and 85. But around age 70, life - or at least the perception of happiness - begins to go downhill. Researchers found that as men grow older - from, say, 50 on - they have fewer obstacles and annoyances to worry about in life and, furthermore, they are more equipped to deal with adversity. The approximate moment when grumpiness kicks in for men, according to a recently released report, is around age 70.