Dying young in old-time Phoenix


I've been saying, "It's too late for me to die young!" for a long time now, and of course that gets me to thinking about old-time Phoenix, and what dying young would have meant.

Let's time-travel back to 1896. Of course people didn't live as long then as they do now, but based on the chart at the top of this post, it looks like at 64 you wouldn't get lumped in with the "died of old age" crowd. If I'm reading the chart right? I don't know what they write on death certificates nowadays, but my best guess is heart failure, or something like that, not just "old age". One of my favorite quotes is "this man died from living too much!"

Anyway, in spite of the modern annoyances today such as cell phones and robot-calls, you really had a better chance of death back then from many things that today we don't even think about, like having the flu. There were risks of course, and I'm often amused by old-timers who remember the day before something like seat belts were invented, and they did just fine, anyway. Of course the people who died can't say anything. Their voices were silenced, they died young.

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