The dance of time

Ah, history. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Or, one girl's recital is another girl's "Your hair looked like that?!?"

When I was growing up, I was a dancer. Well, a "dancer." I did what most little girls did, and I danced. Tap and ballet, then jazz, and much later, pointe and modern. This is how I spent 17 of my formative years. And of course at the end of every year, there was a recital. Choreography, costumes, feathers, sequins... and lots of hairspray.

I've had a few projects this summer, all documenting my years of recitals. It began when I wanted to make a CD of the songs I had on tape (At one of my studios, the teachers would tape your recital music for you, so you could practice at home. I now have 5 60- and 90-minute tapes' worth of music from recitals and various other performances); that somehow led to wanting to take pictures of all of my costumes. And I also finally got around to a project I've been meaning to do for years: transfer all of the VHS tapes I have of recitals and other performances to DVD.

So as I'm watching these performances, I'm looking at the backstage footage of people before the shows. The more recent performances barely registered in my mind, other than things like "Oh, I remember her" and the like. But the older shows.... those are funny. I see the adults from 1988, and I think to myself, "OH MY GOD! LOOK AT THAT HAIR!!!!! HER HEAD EXPLODED!!!!" or "MAN PERM!!!!" And footage of people in rehearsals? "FRENCH-CUT LEOTARDS!!!!! AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! WHAT WERE WE THINKING?!?!?!?" (And to top it off, or maybe to bottom it off, they were worn over bike shorts, usually cotton, not the spandex ones. Because a French-cut leotard over *spandex* bike shorts would just be ridiculous. French-cut leotards over bike shorts...what were we thinking?!?! Oh, fashions.)

Oh, history. Oh, fashions. Ugh, those fashions. Not so fashionable anymore. But it's all History now, and a nice little time capsule. An anthropological look at hairstyles and dance attire styles of the late 1980s and early 1990s. One person's "style" is another person's "What were you thinking?!?!", even if it's the same person, just decades apart. (But isn't that the way it always goes when you look back at yourself, years later? Think of your prom pictures, your graduation pictures, your elementary school pictures, pictures of you at parties with your friends.... Years later, they're almost always an embarrassment.)

(And let's not even go into the music of the times -- a tap dance to Bell Biv Devoe?!? a jazz number to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. EMF. the theme to 21 Jump Street??? Not to say I don't love those dances, but 20-some years later, the music choice makes me laugh. Or giggle with nostalgia.)

Yeah, we thought stuff like this
looked good. 

Oral Historian/Detective

One thing I enjoy about transcribing oral histories is that I feel like a detective at times. The interviewees talk, telling stories about their lives, naming people and places they remember. Sometimes, though, it's hard to understand what they say. Or even if I can understand what they say, sometimes I'm not sure of spelling. This is especially true for someone like me, who doesn't know a lot of the people and places that most of the speakers talk about. Was that family the Hoffs, or the Houghs? The Andersons, or the Andersens? Bartlett or Bartlet? Or maybe the interviewee doesn't remember a particular name ("What was the name of that one family...The father was a mechanic...The Ro-somethings"). That's when I put on my detective's cap.

Since I know where most of the interviewees were living at the time their stories take place (and since I know when most of the stories take place), I can jump right to the census* for that location. (Luckily, it was a small area at the time!) From there, I start scrolling through the pages, especially if I'm looking for a close neighbor of the interviewee. When I find the name, ya-hoo! I do a little victory dance. (Sometimes, though, the victory dance is delayed a bit, as I pull out more detective skills -- the art of deciphering handwriting!)

Sometimes I have really big victories. There have been quite a few times that an interviewee has talked about a particular person and an occupation or business, but either I couldn't understand the name that was given, or I wasn't sure of spelling. But when I found Elizabeth Beam, for example, who was listed on the census as "Proprietor, Beauty Shop" when the speaker was talking about where she got her hair done as a young woman, I was pretty sure I had the right person. Victory dance! Another time was when a speaker mentioned a family that had a garage, and, using other clues from the interview, I was able to find the father on the census, listed as "mechanic." Victory dance!

Other times require more computer-based detective work: the Soundex. No idea how to spell a name, or can't find anything on your own? Soundex finds names (in theory) that sound like what you're looking for. I've had a couple of wins that were generated by Soundex. Victory dance!

I love playing detective while transcribing the oral histories. It's a lot of work, especially when you don't have the connection to the people and area like some others do (I know there are other people who just know, right off the bat, whether the speaker was talking about the Hoffs or the Houghs, for example. Or knew that Elizabeth Beam was the one who did hair, or knew that that particular family's name was Romano, or that that family was Terhune, not Terhuen, or whatever other spelling I was looking for, or would know if the one family I still can't figure out was Bertelson, Bertelsen, or Bertleson.). But when you get all of the questionable names and places accounted for, boy, you feel like you've won. Victory dance!

*Yes, I do realize that the census isn't always 100% accurate. I'll double- or triple-check with other censuses to see if the spelling stayed consistent throughout the decades; other times, or if the spelling varies, I'll look for other documents--an obituary, a family tree online, a newspaper article, a birth announcement, a yearbook--to try to figure out what was most likely the correct spelling. For example, the Romanos, who at times look like Romaros; or the Ballous, who sometimes look like Ballons. I keep cross-checking until I'm pretty sure I have the correct spelling, or until I hit it lucky, like I did with the Ballous, and found a family tree online that even had a note that one of the "Ballon" transcriptions should have read "Ballou." Thank you, genealogists!  (Victory dance!)

We make history, too

As I've said before, logically I know that things we do today will be history to someone in the future. One day, someone might research that thing they used back in the 1990s and early 2000s called "The Internet." Even looking back *now* on shows like Saved by the Bell from the early 1990s or Third Watch from the early 2000s and seeing the MASSIVE BOX Zack Morris or Doc Parker held to their ears and called "a phone" is hysterical. But sometimes it's nice to get a little reminder that our parents or our grandparents were A Part of History that we can see now.

Last summer, my family and I went to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Obviously, this museum has a lot of history -- old fighter planes, jet packs, an Air Force One, etc. -- but it was the more recent history that made me take notice. (And okay, Air Force One was pretty cool. It was actually the reason I went.)

The Airpark, the lot across the street from the main museum, has an Air Force One, a Concorde, and the first Boeing 747 built. I'd heard stories before from my mom about her dad working at Boeing, on the assembly line when the first 747 was built, and something about him crawling into the wing as part of his job, but when we actually saw a 747 (the first 747), and most likely one of the actual planes he worked on, and saw the little window in the wing (which I didn't even know they had), it kind of hit home. I mean, there are small windows (Okay, I don't know how small they are in real life/real proportions, but compared to the rest of the plane, they're tiny.) in the wing and my grandfather might have actually been in that very window. Wow. History, and my family. My little, nondescript family, and we might have been part of something on display in a major museum! See? History doesn't have to be hundreds of years old to be considered "history." And your very own family can be a part of history, too! (Because, I mean, really, if my family can be part of history, anyone's family can be!)

The wing of a 747, complete with windows.
Franklin H.R. might have looked out that very window.

(I also think it's kind of nifty that my family still lives in the area of the Everett Boeing plant. My grandfather worked on the Boeing planes in Everett 40+ ago, and now, Boeing still test runs planes over our house. It's *sort of* like we've kept it in the family: from my grandfather working on 747s to me watching 787s. He worked on the first 747s, and I've seen so many 787s fly over the neighborhood, years before they were ever being sold, almost as if I were part of the test run myself.)