Oral histories are fascinating things. Stories of people who lived through history, even if "history" is just a city emerging from homesteads.
I've lived in this area all my life, yet I still feel like a newcomer in the Heritage Association, since, well, most of the people there are old enough to be my grandparents. It's really interesting to me, then, when I get to transcribe some of the oral histories that people have done for our group. I've been learning so much about what our city was like when it was just five-acre plots and lots of tree stumps. And the little personal stories make the oral histories even better -- like that someone's father couldn't dance (You could almost hear her blush as she described it), or a crush someone had in elementary school, or the neighborhood's first car, or troubles with cows. Plus, when you start listening to a number of the interviews, it's fascinating to hear how they all connect to each other -- one person's father was the school bus driver who drove another interviewee to school, which is the same school yet another interviewee went to a few years earlier. The history of the area is great; the family stories are greater.
It's also fun to hear the real-life accounts of historical events. Rather than the history book version of places and dates, you get to hear the personal details, personal names, and how events affected real people. Our region had an electric trolley in the 1920s and 1930s, and it's fine to read about it, but to get to hear people reminisce about the trips to school via the trolley and a particular resident bringing apples to the conductor when the trains stopped... that's when history gets fun.
And the really amazing things is that people are just reminiscing. Things that they took for granted as they lived their lives are now the same things that I, decades later, get so giddy hearing about. When people were living through the Depression, did they ever think that in 2012, someone whose parents hadn't even been born yet would listen to their stories and think, "Wow, that really puts everything in context"? When they were riding the train in the '20s, did they think that one day it wouldn't be there and that some silly little girl would long for a train of her own? When they went to school every day, talking with their friends, doing their tedious classwork, did they think that someone would one day listen to their stories and think they were sweet and quaint, and want to time-travel back to that one-room school?
What stories would you tell if you did an oral history interview? What things do you take for granted now as normal, everyday chores or events that someone might find fascinating and telling of the times?
