Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 28, 1994 TAG: 9403030008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joe Kennedy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With those words Owen explains her decision to write and privately distribute a book of memories called ``That's How It Was: Cow Tails and Other Tales.'' Owen, you see, is distressed at the speed of change in her lifetime. The customs of the past, the ones she grew up with, not only have disappeared, but are in danger of being forgotten, she says.
Her book tells about her family and the way they lived in the early part of this century. Owen wanted to record those days so her daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter would know a bit about where they came from. They are fortunate, for many of us grew up in families that rarely talked of the past.
Perhaps our parents believed in letting sleeping dogs lie. Maybe they were just trying to be forward-thinking, in the true American fashion. Whatever the reason, they left us with an information gap. For many of us, tracking down the story of our ancestors has become one more item on an overlong list.
If we're wise, we won't burden our children the same way.
Margaret Bigger of Charlotte, N.C., conducted a workshop yesterday at Hollins College on ``Getting Your Memories on Paper for Your Family.'' In an interview, she called the process ``the next step up from getting your genealogy together ... doing for your descendants what you wish your ancestors had done for you.''
Genealogy may provide names and dates about your forebears, she said, ``but you don't know who these people really are.'' Our own words can provide insights to the coming generations that mere historical accounts cannot. Blessed are those who make such a record.
When my father was 10, his father died. This sounds like a pivotal event, but my father never talked about it. I thought about it a lot when I was 10, and I think about it now that my son is 10. How did it feel? How did he get through it? How did his family survive?
We'll never know.
Two things keep people from telling their stories, Bigger said. One is a shortage of time and the other is not knowing how to start. Her workshops, which she teaches at colleges and retirement communities, are aimed at convincing students they need not be former diplomats or female flying aces to have stories worth telling.
The stories can come in many forms: straightforward narrative descriptions, moral tales, even armchair psychohistories. Different members of the same family may have different opinions, depending on their perspectives. The important thing is not whether everyone agrees, but whether everyone's - or at least someone's - voice is heard, on paper or on tape.
During his recent visit to Roanoke, Garrison Keillor, the writer and radio star, reminisced about the time during the Depression when his ancestors entertained each other by sitting at the kitchen table and telling stories into the night. They weren't professional tale-spinners, like he is. They were people who were willing to talk about their days to people who were willing to listen.
``To me,'' Keillor said, ``this is what makes culture. It's not books, TV or radio. It's what you do for each other.''
Any parent can bear witness to the soporific effects of the electronic media: We see it in our kids all the time. The content of the mass media has an effect, as well. It distracts us from the meanings in our own lives.
Those who determine what gets published or broadcast can be found, for the most part, in New York or Los Angeles, Keillor noted. They are ``highly illiterate and parochial people who patronize the people who live in the great, vast, middle of the country ... and we don't deserve it.''
Our happy experiences and hard-won lessons are our legacy to our children. What a loss it would be if the busy-ness of our lives, or our discomfort over the hard work of searching our memories, kept us from passing them to our kids.
``As we get older,'' Keillor said, ``we do have an obligation to tell them our stories.''
Time Out, by Joe Kennedy, looks at life in the middle years - marriage, family and contemporary events - from a perspective both serious and light. It appears every two weeks.
by CNB