Ask your grandparents about the year they were your age. Those stories don’t come with a backup.

Living memory has a short shelf life. The texture of an ordinary year, what things cost, what people were afraid of, what a Saturday looked like, exists only in the people who were there for it. When they go, those details go with them in a way no archive replaces. Most older people are waiting to be asked.

Ask one specific question instead of a general one, such as what they did the summer they were seventeen. Record it on your phone if they are willing. Even a short answer becomes something you will be very glad to have.