I started first thinking about oral history when I listened to the stories of my Grandfather and Grandmother. They lived rich, vibrant lives. My grandfather was a gifted storyteller with the story becoming so much more in the pauses, the breaths, his gestures. At the time, I thought I would be too presumptuous to ask to record them. Regretfully, I didn’t. I still have their stories in my head, I repeat them and try to remember them exactly so that I can tell them to my sons someday when they are old enough.
Here’s one interesting bit of family history that was almost lost through my family as it was mistold to me. I proposed to my wife with a “family ring.” The ring was from a young girl in the family who had fallen in love with a “Carny” and was going to run off and marry him. She eventually “came to her senses” and this is the ring.
After researching it, the young girl who I was told was a cousin, is my Grandfather’s Mother, Helen Dowsey. The “Carney” was actually a chauffeur.
I first started to look at storytelling as a real artform when I read the work of Zora Neale Hurston and her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. I think Oral histories fall into this category as well. The older I get the more I like them. You can find them on the web through folks like Appalshop.
I saw recently where the Southern Foodways Alliance is conducting classes to help teach the next generation of historians how to record the oral histories of those around us.
I was always amazed at the process of Alan Lomax to go out and track down rural musicians and record their stories and songs.
As educators if we can make these connections with kids through their own families or the culture around them they seem to identify with the material better and retain it longer.
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