I'm old enough to remember my father's grandmother. Born in Guilford County, North Carolina in 1880. She passed away in 1979. I was five. Many years later it finally dawned on me that I had met someone in my family who knew veterans from the Civil War, and had lived to see not just the first powered air flight but also man on the moon.
"The old days" aren't really that far away from us.
Just about anyone born in 1980 ran into someone from the 1800s, and people who were born before 1980, well, think about the old people you met or who held you or who yelled at you when you were a kid.