"Talk to a clear-head­ed 107-year-old today, and you could expect to hear sto­ries of ado­les­cence in the Great Depres­sion, or - if you're lucky - the Jazz Age seen through a child's eyes. It's no com­mon expe­ri­ence to have been formed by the age of radio and live deep into the age of the smart­phone, but arguably, Michael Fitz­patrick lived through even greater civ­i­liza­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion. Born in Ire­land in 1858, he sat for the inter­view above 107 years lat­er in 1965, which was broad­cast on tele­vi­sion."
"The contrast between the world into which Fitz­patrick was born and the one in which he even­tu­al­ly found him­self is made stark­er by his being a son of the land. A life­long farmer, he can hon­est­ly reply, when asked to name the biggest change he's seen, "Machin­ery." Not all of his answers come across quite so clear­ly, owing to his thick dialect that must sure­ly have gone extinct by now, even in rur­al Ire­land. Luck­i­ly, the video comes with sub­ti­tles, mak­ing it eas­i­er to under­stand what he has to say about the advent of the "mow­ing machine" and his mem­o­ries of the Bodyke evic­tions of the eigh­teen-eight­ies, when mêlées broke out over a local land­lord's attempt to oust his des­ti­tute ten­ants."
Michael Fitzpatrick was born in Ireland in 1858 and was recorded at age 107 in 1965 for a television broadcast. He experienced eras from pre-automobile rural life to a world with widespread television, automobiles, jetliners, and rockets. He worked as a lifelong farmer and identified machinery as the biggest change he witnessed. His thick regional dialect sometimes required subtitles to be understood. He recounted the arrival of the mowing machine and remembered the Bodyke evictions of the 1880s, when melees erupted over a landlord trying to oust destitute tenants.
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