A recent review I offered on Maya Angelou’s book, “Mom & Me & Mom” reminded me, once again, of the importance of recording family histories and story telling.
Since man formed his first vocabulary, family and tribal news was carried from tribe to tribe, village to village by a storyteller. They would be welcomed in each cave, hut, and council house as an honored guest and nights would be spent around the fire listening to the latest news from family members living afar. Famine, a good harvest, movement of wild herds, warring tribes, births, deaths, alliances, all were carried by the professional storyteller. After a few days passed the news had been told and the storyteller, rested and refreshed, would move on to the next tribe or settlement.
While growing up in the mid-fifties my mother (certainly a modern day storyteller) would tell me the stories of her and eleven siblings growing up in the forests of Tumwater, Washington (state). The story of my mother’s sister, Ivah
, cutting off her eyebrows in retaliation. When all the kids were down with seafood poisoning and a dairy cow wandered into the yard crying to be milked (milk being the remedy for stomach disorders). Another of my mother’s sisters’ panties falling down around her ankles while dancing at her first dress-up dance.
I believe that these oral histories, as told by the elders of our families will soon (if not already) be a thing of the past. Whenever I have the opportunity, whether it’s teaching a class on writing and storytelling or giving a lecture on same, I relate how important it is for each of us to record our own family’s rich history. When grandparents are gone, the stories are gone with them. My family story, whose origin began in Ireland and France, was great material for my writing. I have just published my second novel, “Wild Violets“. It is loosely based on my mother, as a young entrepreneur, flapper and owner of a speakeasy, in San Francisco 
in the 1920’s.
In this day of television, dvd’s, and computers with games, these stories handed down from elder to child, will be lost forever. Do YOU know some great stories that you were told as a child?
It’s a great place to begin your writing career!
(Photo of five sisters above from left to right: LaVerne, Violet, , Gladys, Ivah, & Lillas)
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This story originated from old papers, receipts and journals owned by Marcel Guerman that I found in a trunk in the attic of a building on Camp Street in New Orleans. The building was being renovated into apartments and I was to be the first tenant. My third floor walk-up looked out on St. Patrick’s cathedral. (seen here) One day we crept up to the attic to take a look. Among the many things in the attic was a single, cherrywood door of an armoire that I have to this day. Off in a corner was a leather and metal ribbed trunk forgotten for decades. As I read pawn tickets, journals, papers of this stranger’s life, from decades earlier, I could envision this European man as clearly as if he stood next me. I wrote the first draft in 1979. Continue reading “‘Hair Cut…Two Bits’…. Nostalgia – (part 6)”
