The Fascinating Power Of Human Wormholes

One of the most mind-blowing experiences of my life happened on a porch in East Austin. I had brought George Raveling, then 80, to visit with Richard Overton, then 111.

It struck me as ​these two kind and wise men​ chatted that I was in a sort of human wormhole.

When George was born in 1937 (he writes about this in his beautiful new book ​What You’re Made For​ that I was lucky enough to play a small part in getting published), the Golden Gate Bridge had just opened, the Great Depression ravaged America and Pablo Picasso was putting the finishing touches on his haunting, heartbreaking anti-war mural, “Guernica” as Europe plunged itself back into violence.

When Richard Overton was born in 1906, just a few miles down the road from my ranch, Theodore Roosevelt was president. As a child in Texas, he remembered seeing Civil War veterans walking around. Not many, but they were there — men who had fought for a Confederacy that had enslaved his ancestors. When he was a kid, Henry L. Riggs, a veteran of the Black Hawk War, was still alive. Riggs was born in 1812. And when Riggs was born, Conrad Heyer — a Revolutionary War veteran and the earliest-born person to ever be photographed — was still alive.

It’s easy to forget how little time separates us from what we think of as “history.” Richard plus two other…