Imagine for a minute that you are walking down the Main Street of the town or city you live in. But the year is 1950, maybe even 1925. How different does it look? How are people dressed? How much of it is still oddly the same?
What was life like? Even every day mundane tasks. What was it like? What was acceptable and what wasn’t permitted? What was taboo? The social norms?
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these things in my years of historical research. I am a firm believer that you cannot fully understand history without first understanding the context in which those people lived.
In a way, historians and researchers get to be time travelers. Our research takes us along a journey into a series of yesterdays. We get to look around, see what life was like and then bring it back to the present to share with everyone.
Jess Hansen 