Mining Your Family Stories

When I was researching and writing The Brass Bell, my richest and most interesting stories about the “Olden Days” came from those who are still alive and willing to share what exists only in their memories. I talked to cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends of the family.

Here is a sampling of the precious and fertile stories that contributed to the narrative non-fiction account of my great aunt, my family, and the community in which they lived ordinary extraordinary lives:

“My father, Uncle Bob and Aunt Sara were all sent home from school one day because they smelled of skunk. Seems that the muskrat trap line that they had out had caught a skunk instead of a muskrat and the kids got sprayed when checking the line before school. My grandmother got the kids clean up and soaked in tomato juice, but they couldn’t return to school until the next day.”

“I was born and grew up on my family’s 60-acre farm. On the 10^th of September, 1897, a crew came with a steam engine to fill the silo with ensilage….There had been a long, dry spell, so when the steam engine blew up for lack of water, the flames shot into the hay-filled barn; the fire spread rapidly. Soon the house caught fire, and in about half an hour both buildings burned to the ground. The County Fair was being held that day, and many people on their way to it hitched their horses to the roadside fences and rushed to help. There were no volunteer fire companies, no telephones to summon them had they existed; no water except what was pumped from the well by hand, or had accumulated in cisterns from rain running off the roofs.”

“My Uncle Ned delivered milk out of his car during the early days of his dairy farm. It was a 1930s Studebaker. Aunt Betty’s sister used to walk to the farm to get raw milk in a container. She tells about drinking the whole milk and the wonderful taste compared to pasteurized. Then they had a milk wagon and horse. Folks wanted it delivered by breakfast and they would be up long before sunrise. The milk was kept in the milkhouse at the farm.”

These are simple accounts of life during a time when children played in fields and streams, when life was lived without modern conveniences, when amenities and services we take for granted today were all but unimaginable. Future generations will never know what came before without the humble stories told by unworldly people whose lives will be lost with the passing of time.

Use your writing skills and your curiosity to excavate and write the stories from those who will soon be gone, those whose childhoods exist only in their memories.