Over the weekend I happened to catch part of the This American Life program on National Public Radio. This weekend's program was called "Accidental Documentaries." During the program, host Ira Glass played excerpts of audio tapes from a variety of sources, including one found in a Salvation Army thrift store.
The recordings were rich with family stories, many obviously were never intended for the national audience delivered by NPR. They were riveting, if in a voyeuristic sense.
There was a time when I was deep into audio recording myself. Although I started using audiotape as a means of identifying radio stations, I soon expanded it to incorporate my music collection. It was a short hop to recording family events and conversations.
Although most of those recordings have been lost, I still managed to come up a few earlier this summer while working on my own family history. Included were tapes of my children at very young ages, snippets of phone conversations and radio station appearances and a complete cassette from my mother-in-law from back in the day when swapping tapes between out-of-town relatives was in vogue.
At one point, I bought a box of reels of tape at a garage sale with the intent of recording over them. Upon checking, however, I realized there were hours of giddy conversations among teenage girls from the 1970s, the golden age of mass reel-to-reel recording. I started to save parts of these conversations but soon realized I lacked the family context to make them relevant. How I wished I could have returned them to the rightful owner.
What about you? Do you have any "Accidental Documentaries" tucked away somewhere? Even if you don't, your relatives might. It's worth checking.
Larry Lehmer is a personal biographer who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or e-mail him.
Flickr photo courtesy of Status Frustration.
Larry, I've got a hilarious cassette tape of my brother from when he was about 12 years old. He was home alone, and shut himself in his closet, and started the recorder. He explained that he was trying to determine if he could record the beating of his own heart with just the recorder - no stethoscope. He realizes within just a few moments that he has somehow locked himself in the closet, and the rest of the 15 minute tape is the half-panicked narration of his attempts to open the door and reassure himself that "someone will be along soon" to let him out. The tape ends when you faintly hear the sound of our big wooden front door opening and slamming shut, and he starts pounding on the closet door and shouting "HEY!! HELLLOOOO!!!" to whoever's now in the house. It's quite the family treasure, actually. :)
Posted by: Janet | July 16, 2007 at 10:03 AM
Years ago, a teenager I didn't know had a class assignment. He sat down with my grandmother and video taped as he asked her questions. I had no idea it existed until my aunt gave it to me recently. Now to find a video player that will work. What a treasure.
Karen
Posted by: Karen L. Alaniz | July 16, 2007 at 04:27 PM
Great story, Janet. I've heard of skeletons in the closet but tape-recording-brother-in-a-closet is a first for me.
What a treat, Karen. If you can't find a video player you can probably find a place that will convert it to a digital file and put it on a DVD, if that helps.
Posted by: Larry Lehmer | July 17, 2007 at 06:32 AM