Oral Histories from the elderly

[WinterTriangle]

I do some (non-denomenational) volunteer work once a week with elderly, mostly ill, shut-ins, or in nursing homes. In the nursing homes, I just go in and paint their nails, stuff like that. Mostly, I provide company, and listen. I go home and keep a vivid journal of everything I was told.

I've been visiting the home of a 90-year old gentleman who lost his wife a year ago, and this month, he has regalled me with stories of growing up as a sharecropper's son in OK, and they are better than anything John Steinbeck wrote. :) I just finished transcribing my notes tonight into my word processor. I was transfixed. He told me about his daddy, who had 9 children, and eaked out a living as a sharecropper. He had a small team of broken down mules to till with. One year, he borrowed some money from the "company store" to buy fertilizer. But, the crop didn't come in. So of course, he couldn't pay his bill, so they took his team. The 90-year old son told me: "that was a very sad, sad day for our family. It just about killed my Daddy."

All the stuff, like there were the 2 families in town who everyone went to for merchandise and loans, and sometimes, they paid you in "tokens", and of course, the tokens could only be used in THEIR stores. (I think there will be some "answerin' to do" based on some of the stuff I heard but have also read about, but that's another story). There were deaths from childbirth, death of children from diseases, death of men in farm accidents, etc. So much hard work, mostly. And no time to grieve, just put one foot in front of the other, day after day.

I felt like I had just listened to an audio version of The Grapes of Wrath. :eek:

The lady in the nursing home, who woulda thunk. She's late 80-something, and loves cars. The saddest day of her life was the day she had to give up driving. Then, she launches thru the entire history of every car she ever had, starting with one in the 1930's, (every detail) all the way thru her Pontiac LeMans, and her Comet. :) Every color of outside and interiors, the bucket seats, etc.....and I'm sitting there picturing these wonderful american cars in my mind while she's talking.

It is so true that you get way more than you give in these situations.

I can't wait to see who I meet later in these episodes.

[NJ Stinks]

Winter Triangle, excellent stuff in many ways! :ThmbUp: :ThmbUp:

[illinoisbred]

I had a Great Grandfather who lived well into his 90's who regaled me with stories of the Spanish-American War and the family migration from Chadbourn, N. Carolina to Volo, Illinois by covered wagon.He walked the entire way,-it took them a year and a 1/2. They couldn't get through the Cumberland Gap in winter. Funny thing was after the family got settled in Illinois he,and a brother went back to N.C. for the remainder of the family possessions-gone almost 3 years. They left N.C. because they lost their crop-strawberries. They rotted in rail cars-before the days of refrigerated cars.

[boxcar]

I do some (non-denomenational) volunteer work once a week with elderly, mostly ill, shut-ins, or in nursing homes. In the nursing homes, I just go in and paint their nails, stuff like that. Mostly, I provide company, and listen. I go home and keep a vivid journal of everything I was told.

I've been visiting the home of a 90-year old gentleman who lost his wife a year ago, and this month, he has regalled me with stories of growing up as a sharecropper's son in OK, and they are better than anything John Steinbeck wrote. :) I just finished transcribing my notes tonight into my word processor. I was transfixed. He told me about his daddy, who had 9 children, and eaked out a living as a sharecropper. He had a small team of broken down mules to till with. One year, he borrowed some money from the "company store" to buy fertilizer. But, the crop didn't come in. So of course, he couldn't pay his bill, so they took his team. The 90-year old son told me: "that was a very sad, sad day for our family. It just about killed my Daddy."

All the stuff, like there were the 2 families in town who everyone went to for merchandise and loans, and sometimes, they paid you in "tokens", and of course, the tokens could only be used in THEIR stores. (I think there will be some "answerin' to do" based on some of the stuff I heard but have also read about, but that's another story). There were deaths from childbirth, death of children from diseases, death of men in farm accidents, etc. So much hard work, mostly. And no time to grieve, just put one foot in front of the other, day after day.

I felt like I had just listened to an audio version of The Grapes of Wrath. :eek:

The lady in the nursing home, who woulda thunk. She's late 80-something, and loves cars. The saddest day of her life was the day she had to give up driving. Then, she launches thru the entire history of every car she ever had, starting with one in the 1930's, (every detail) all the way thru her Pontiac LeMans, and her Comet. :) Every color of outside and interiors, the bucket seats, etc.....and I'm sitting there picturing these wonderful american cars in my mind while she's talking.

It is so true that you get way more than you give in these situations.

I can't wait to see who I meet later in these episodes.

Excellent post. (I can't believe NJ and I are on the same page for once. :eek: :eek: )

Boxcar

[ArlJim78]

"You get way more than you give". So true in this situation.

Excellent idea to document these oral histories.

Good stuff.

[GaryG]

When I was young my great grandmother lived with us. She was born in Austin TX in 1870. Her family had a cattle ranch and ran a rooming house there. She was blind and bedridden, but her mind was as sharp as ever. I sat on her bed for hours listening to tales about the wild west. Shootouts, drunk cowboys, and the ups and down of the cattle business. Notorious gunfighter Ben Thompson lived at their rooming house when he was marshal. She said he was the kindest man she ever met, unless somebody crossed him. Wish I had written some of that stuff down. Today's younger generation doesn't seem so interested in how their ancestors lived.

[46zilzal]

I worked with geriatrics just about all my practice years and found out that one's perceptions of history get sanitized through the books and it is only in talking to those who lived it that you can get a feeling for what actually took place. I found it particularly interesting here in a different culture.

The years tend to embellish these memories, but I found it amazing to talk to vets from both WWI and WWII on what they went through and the mental images that never left them.. Loves lost, friends died, the depression and the hopelessness associated with it.

When I was about 10, I met a woman in Alabama whom they called Aunt Rose, who had actually been a slave (aged 7) during the civil war. I met her when she was about 102 and she had tales to tell of all the crap she put up with being black in the south, but, as a person who LIVED (not preached) her religious beliefs, she always talked about turning the other cheek and thought that getting rid of bitterness was one of the reasons she lived so long. No book will give you an insight into what the world was like as much as a person who interacted with it first hand.

Too often people just assume that these individuals have little to add to our culture and they are dead wrong

[BlueShoe]

When I was just a lad was invited on a weekend trip to Prescott, Arizona by my best friend and his family. My friends great grandfather, then in his late 80's or early 90's had lived in the area since childhood. All weekend he regaled us with tales of the early years. He told about many different things; politics, ranching, mining, lawmen, outlaws, and grim accounts of Apache and Yavapai raids. The old man was an absolute living historian. Often wondered if he ever wrote anything down, but rather doubt it. Too bad, he knew so much because he lived it.

[skate]

great story


And it says "If at all possible, take care of your parents", they'll be the best years of YOUR life.:cool:

[cj's dad]

My mom is nearly 88 and in a nursing home. In her moments of clarity she will recall stories re: WW2 and the Depression (she was 12-13) and her stories are mind boggling as to what her and her family went through. She speaks of her father, a shipyard worker and proud man sitting at the dining room table, crying because he could not find work. What horrible times these must have been.

[ElKabong]

in 1994 a lady I was dating (she was in the film/ media biz) had the wisdom to roll tape on my 90 yo great-aunt, who passed away 6 yrs later. A true history lesson of Dallas TX, and the great depression.

She kept her grandmother's diary of her 1870 voyage from Birmingham England to New Orleans, then a wagon trek to Forney Tx where they started a farm. In her later yrs to keep her mind sharp, she wrote dupe cy's of that diary for the next generation. Those voyages were real adventures in every sense (murders on ships, deaths of infants, etc)

[bigmack]

Even as a kid I reveled in the stories from the aged. A pile of wealth in their stories. Throughout the years I would often gravitate to some old-timer and pick their memory bank for stories.

I was @ a gathering in Del Mar recently and sat with a chap who had a boatload of grand stories. Woman I'm with comes over and says "Are you going to yap with this old man the entire evening?" I says "Sure am and having a ball doin' it"

Had an idea back 15-20 years ago to travel in a 'Bago' with a crew and videolog stories of the elder amongst us. Life got in the way and it never happened.

In the current times of Youtube & Vidcams, somebody ought to start a comprehensive log chronicling these great stories.

[HUSKER55]

I knew a black guy and a polish guy who had to fight in boxcars at night to make money to help the family survive the depression. They were 13.

During the day they swept the grain cars so the could make flour.

I met a Japanese artist who was caught in time by Pearl harbor.

Everytime I feel down I think about those people and I realize I am OK.


Thanks for reminding me.

[WinterTriangle]

Too often people just assume that these individuals have little to add to our culture and they are dead wrong

Yes. My mom is elderly, and talks about feeling "invisible" out there. :(

I had a Great Grandfather who lived well into his 90's who regaled me with stories of the Spanish-American War and the family migration from Chadbourn, N. Carolina to Volo, Illinois by covered wagon.He walked the entire way,-it took them a year and a 1/2. They couldn't get through the Cumberland Gap in winter.

When I was young my great grandmother lived with us. She was born in Austin TX in 1870. Her family had a cattle ranch and ran a rooming house there. She was blind and bedridden, but her mind was as sharp as ever. I sat on her bed for hours listening to tales about the wild west. Shootouts, drunk cowboys, and the ups and down of the cattle business.

She speaks of her father, a shipyard worker and proud man sitting at the dining room table, crying because he could not find work.

I knew a black guy and a polish guy who had to fight in boxcars at night to make money to help the family survive the depression. They were 13. During the day they swept the grain cars so the could make flour.

All these are so interesting, I just want to sit down and hear *more*. It is the stuff that novels and epic movies are made of.

Everytime I feel down I think about those people and I realize I am OK.

Keeping a grateful heart is easy when we have it so good, isn't it? ;)

In the current times of Youtube & Vidcams, somebody ought to start a comprehensive log chronicling these great stories.

That's a fantastic idea~


I think the most *interesting* experience I ever had: I was invited to parent's house for dinner by a guy I was newly dating. He really didn't tell me anything. Imagine m surprise when I sat at the dinner table and his dad had no hands or arms. He had these cool little glove-socks on his feet, and he was as proficient with his feet as we are with our hands. At first it was shocking, but after a while you just got used to seeing him doing all this stuff in his striped foot-gloves (he had a neat collection of "fun" ones, pictures on them, etc. ) and he even "talked with his hands....er......feet" a little bit like we do when we are excited about conversation.

I was the one who felt *disabled* by at first having diffiiculty encountering this :D He was totally comfortable and not at all disabled.

[cj's dad]

Today in a local watering hole I met a young man who turned 90 years of age 5 months ago. We talked and he began to reluctantly talk about his experiences in Germany during WWII. I listened without interruption for maybe 1/2 of an hour. I became so emotional several times that I had to excuse myself and go to the mens' room. He spoke of being in England prior to D-Day and then shipping out and landing at Normandy and how incredibly afraid he was as a man of 21 years of age, thinking that on this day he was going to die for his country and he said that he had no problem with dying for his fellow Americans. What a man; what a brave soul. God bless him and all who put their lives on the line every day for us.

[Greyfox]

And that is only what the elderly are telling you.
It was probably worse.
Today, if I want a meal, I toss it in the microwave and a few minutes later it is ready to eat.
Then, go downstairs, get coal start a fire, go out to the yard cut the head off a chicken, pluck it, heat it on the stove, eat it.
Veggies....better go out and get them too from the farm garden.
Of course, you spent the summer growing them.
I could go on with Today and Then.
It was even that much more worse 50 years before that.
I visisted my ancestral home in Europe, where Great- Great-Great Grandfathers carved out a living crushing corn.
In my mind's eye, I didn't want to spend 1 hour there doing what they did.
(They also had to build the stone mill that crushed that corn, adjacent to a river.)
Of course I could continue, but the bottom line is:

We have it so easy today, that we don't appreciate what our forefathers (and foremothers) went through to make it so. Not only that, in general, if we are lucky,we live a hell of a lot longer lifespan than they did. We play the races, bitch, yell about the economy, and go home and have a beer. (Of course they had to make their own hootch if that was their disposition.)
Then we flip on the computer, punch out a few words here, insult each other or backslap, and feel good about ourselves.

The bottom line is: We take a lot of things for granted.

Of course, going back farther, they also had to fight off neighbouring villages in war, pay the "King", gather wood and so on.

The bottom line is: We take a lot of things for granted.
How Lucky we are..

The other bottom line is, from what I can determine by the memoranda they've left behind:
"They loved the life they had."

Greyfox

[Johnny V]

My mother who was 94 years old passed away this July. She lived in a nursing home since she was 90 and I had learned so much about the Great Depression, WWII and the family history of that era and before.
On my many visits to the nursing home I had the opportunity to talk to many of the seniors there around my mothers age and I heard many fascinating stories. The oral histories put life and meaning into the times and what it was like to live back then.
I remember one time they had this entertainer come in for them and play some music and records for them. Many of the residents just sat there seemingly unaware or not interested or just listening absentmindedly. Then when the song "God Bless America" was played, every single one of them seemed to come alert and they all sang the song along with the record not missing a word or a beat.