Number one hit

After a painful but fruitful deep muscle massage yesterday I went to Best Buy and bought a small tape recorder (boy are those hard to find--what you can get these days are digital recorders--tape recorders, not so much). I recorded 2 stories for the neighborhood rag on the way home. I'm amused by myself because I talk as if I'm telling a fascinating story, adding emphasis to words like the THUMP! that the ice and snow make when they fall from the roof. So it turns out these things would sound better aloud than they probably will read on paper. Well, let's hope someone finds them vaguely interesting to read anyway.

I took the recorder to Ken's house. I've taped him before with very limited success, partly because the machine I had was not very good and partly because of the way he was talking. This time I told him my idea of putting together histories of the families and early settlers of Hawkeye. He knows a lot about who was there when his family settled there, and who was there while he was growing up, from 1914 on, and especially who was there while his father and grandfather were farming there. This seemed to please him, so after dinner we sat in our usual spots, him in his rocking chair and me on the "davan" next to him, with the recorder running. I prompted him a bit, asked a few questions, added a word or two to get more details out of him, but it was really neat. The only problem was that I had the recorder on the arm of the sofa so my voice is loud and his is faint. I need to put the recorder closer to him. It was fun, though, and he was great at ignoring the recorder and telling stories he's told me before. It'll all have to be rearranged before being written down, he scatters things around a lot, and it won't be a complete history but it's really fun (so far).

I'll have to get information from other people (like everyone's arch-enemy, Leroy, since his family was there before anyone else's). Well, who knows how far I'll get with this project, but it does seem worthy because this is the history of my home and it seems as if there's no other handy way to record it. It also makes it easier for me to listen to the same stories over and over and to guide Ken's stories in a direction that's productive, for me at least. We spend hours and hours and hours together--3 nights a week now, and I'm reaching the point where I zone out, the way I did with my grandfather, so I'm losing the details of what he says. I wish I had the stories and details my grandfather told me so many times when I was a teenager and was bored sitting next to him as he showed me pictures of the mills, the log flumes, the log jams on the river, the nail factory, etc.

It feels like March out there today. A hint of things melting, snow heavy with moisture. This is really nice, full of hope and good cheer (better than Christmas!). Soon we'll be able to smell the earth thawing. Can't wait. Sometimes as the frost leaves the ground and the birds change their songs I feel as if this is really what we wait for all year--summer is nice, yes, but spring is really the best part of the year. Let's see if I feel that way in March--I seldom do because March is the cruelest month. Give the slightest hint of spring, then take it back.

Now on to Billy Graham--The journey: how to live by faith in an uncertain world. In large print so that EVERYONE can read it. Then Spike vs. Dracula. Let's hope that's a graphic novel.