Is Everett True my spirit animal?
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2024
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Everett True Comics
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A place to appreciate the twentieth century comic character Everett True of "The Outbursts of Everett True." Feel free to check out the sticky.
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In the early 1900s a sixteen boy year in rural America knew how to drive, to shoot, and to run the entire farm. If he wanted to set out west to make his own way there was a good chance his parents already viewed him as a man capable.
A sixteen year old in the city didn't know how to live in the city or the boonies. They knew nothing of firearms or why the rural kid needs one.
All that's changed is a lot more people now live in cities.
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I mean, it isn't like there aren't a shit ton of us that knew people that were adults then.
And, yeah, at that time, most 16 year olds were being expected to take on adult roles. In rural areas, especially farm areas, everything the previous comment said was absolutely true. You might run into a later gate into adulthood in some ways in cities, but even there, 16 was the cusp of adulthood in many ways.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with whether or not a 16yo having the ability to buy a firearm is acceptable now, or whether it should have been then. But I can absolutely guarantee that boys/young men of the era would have been handling adult responsibilities often, and outside of cities, firearm usage would have been common for hunting, and varmint control for sure. Hell, my grandfather's sisters were able to hunt before 16, and bring home game. They often had more time to do so in the ages where they weren't big enough for the heavier work, but still old enough/big enough to be put to work doing something.
I was as much of a specialist in geriatric care as you can be in my old job, and the men if that generation were quite familiar with firearm usage. Safety rules weren't exactly the same as now, but they were well aware of them long before 16 because being deemed mature enough to handle a firearm was a pretty big deal. Your dad taking you hunting the first time was a fairly major rite of passage.
Seriously, it hasn't been that long since the adults and young adults of that era were alive. Pretty much any gen-x era person had family that were born or alive in the 1900-1920 years. All of my grandparents were, and the three great grandparents that were alive when I was born were adults then. We aren't that far removed from the era.
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The cartoon is written by a city slicker, and the guy you're replying to addressed that.
I said that. That it could be different in cities, and the comment chain is about that difference.
Edit: really, go back to the comment that started this chain. It leads off by saying that rural people at that age had a very different lived experience.
I'm saying I had the opportunity to talk to people that either were adults then, or were raised by people that came of age then, and that lived experience outside of cities is a different context from the cartoon's.
Dude, I grew up on the edge of a town that was essentially built by farmers well before this cartoon. I lived in a city as a young man and worked in one off and on after that. The difference today in how kids learn skills between city and country is almost as big as what used to be there. School programs equalize things some, but a farm kid today is very likely to have had to kill a feral hog, or a coyote, or a fox that was causing problems. Likely well before 16. I personally know boys today that are driving farm trucks as soon as they can reach the pedals. Most of the kids at my high school could drive, shoot, help a cow give birth, whatever it took. I could, and I wasn't even a farm boy, I just had family that was.
And that was less than 40 years ago.
You don't have to trust a much older cartoon to guide your knowledge of the era. You can trust living human beings.
You're right. Rural kids, and some lucky city kids are taught how to use firearms at a young age, and are perfectly capable of being responsible with them. Obviously it depends on the kid too, but it's not uncommon for kids in the country to get their own .22 at around 12 years old.
Yup, even today, rural life is massively different than city life, and not just as regards firearms. Man, I was shooting 22s, heavily supervised, at ten. And I'd had rudimentary safety drilled into me via air rifles before that.
I'm not really sure why people are so het up over the idea that a city scene, published in a city paper might not be congruent with the rest of the country at a time when the city vs rural population divide wasn't as massive, but the lifestyle was.
Do people really not listen to older generations now? I mean, kids never did lol, but as adults, there's still people alive that were born to parents from the exact era this was printed. This isn't some long lost history, it's still part and parcel of at least one generation's living memory.
People don't even listen to their own generation, unless they like what they're hearing.
I'm sorry, I wasn't listening because my ears were anus deep in my own rear.
But, yeah, that's the damn truth, unfortunately.
And you're right about it still taking place today too. I had an air rifle at 10 years old, and my own .22 long rifle at 12. My friends and I used to go varmint hunting by ourselves on my friend's grandpa's cattle ranch when we were around 14. He would pay us a quarter for each ground squirrel we shot. It was a lot of fun.