I gave a tour today to a group of senior citizens. It was a family reunion apparently, and there were people from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Washington. Quite often this particular program is given to a group of students with no absolutely no recollection of life before the Internet. That can be an enjoyable time showing young people how different life used to be and how easy life is now compared to not too long ago. However, giving a tour to people who have actual memories of things on the tour is a whole different experience.
We started in the town hall of our little historical village, which according to a picture caption I saw recently, used to be a one room school. Every person in the group had attended a one room schoolhouse as a child. One gentleman mentioned how there were 11 kids in his school, while another said he was the only 5th grader in his school. Yet another gentleman talked about how there were five kids at the one room school when his family moved to a new town and a woman joked about how the school population doubled after his family started attending it.
I shared with the group that my mother's family attended a two room country school located on the edge of my grandfather's farm. I grew up listening to stories about what school was like for them. My uncle in particular was not the best of students. Their teacher always bent over at the waist to help a child at his or her desk, and she happened to be assisting the student sitting in front of my uncle one day after he sharpened his pencil to a very fine point. Being the focused student that he was, my uncle sat in his desk holding his pencil out just behind the teacher's derriere as she helped his classmate. When the teacher backed up, her backside ran right into the pencil. She told me uncle to get up, but he would not listen. After some frustration, she tried to pull him out of his seat. My uncle was wise enough to grab onto the desk and wrap his legs around the legs of his chair as she tried to force him out of his seat. The one problem the teacher did not consider was that if you tug at a child grasping for dear life onto a desk which is part of a row of desks attached to runner-boards, there is going to be some resistance. Well, she pulled on him hard enough that she tipped the whole row of kids over that day. I do not remember what happened to my uncle after the fact nor what happened when he arrived home from school that day, but I love that story. My group of senior citizens found it just as amusing.
Making jokes about using an outhouse in the middle of winter in the upper Midwest is something that appealed to this group because they lived it for so many years of their lives. At first I described it sarcastically as fond memories for them, but one of the gentlemen corrected me while laughing that there is never a fond memory about an outhouse. Considering my grandmother did not install indoor plumbing in her farmhouse until the mid 1990's, I can certainly agree, but I always cheated at grandma and grandpa's house and used the indoor toilet grandpa had rigged up so as to save myself the walk outside near the end of December.
The familiarity many had with the wood burning cook stoves manufactured in the 1880's in a few of the houses was unique to their generation. A gentleman talked about how the warming ovens were a perfect place to store a pair of mittens, especially wet ones, to warm. Another mentioned the hot water reservoir on the side of the stove in the house he grew up in. One of the ladies in the group talked about how handy it was to take water from the side of the stove on bath night. Using the wet sink, which would pump collected rain water from a cistern into the kitchen, for washing and bathing was not unfamiliar to this group. Bath night was on Saturdays in the nineteenth century just as it was for this group throughout their childhoods, and everyone shared the same bath water. The only thing that differed, it sounded like, was the bath order. In one family, the ladies bathed first. In the nineteenth century oftentimes, it went oldest to youngest. The baby went last, hence the phrase "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water".
The fact that this group could recognize the washing "machine" and the cider press in one of the houses showed they really lived in much of the history we were reliving on the tour. The ladies and gentlemen could tell of how their families' wringer washers were similar or different to that of the laundry items sitting before them. Or the fact that many recognized the antiquated irons displayed the deep memories the ladies had for sad irons with removable wooden handles as well as the early steam irons, used with kerosene in the nineteenth century but with gasoline in the twentieth century when these ladies were younger. As one lady described it, "Very dangerous!" The green Ball canning jars brought smiles of recognition, and the Singer sewing machine led to a few family stories. They played with stereoscopes as children. The root cellar was a place to joke about how when some of the men were in trouble as boys, they had to sit on the top step of the cellar as punishment. In the doctor's office at the end of town, a gentleman laughed when he saw the hearing device which looked identical to one he remembers his great-uncle using.
I joked during a bathroom break that someone should take over the rest of the tour. When it comes to historical knowledge taught at the museum, their hands on, lived through it experience tops anything I can ever read about. I made sure to thank them for sharing their stories with me because I can use it in my interpretation for future groups. Even though they grew up in the early to mid twentieth century, their childhoods resembled more of a nineteenth century life than a twenty-first century life.
There were a few things the group was less familiar with such as nineteenth century clothing styles, ladies' undergarments, the misconceptions about corsets, and the potent effects of late nineteenth century prescription medicine. I get to teach history, but I almost enjoy listening to the stories people have to tell more. Ask any senior citizen who grew up in the rural Midwest what year they got electricity and I guarantee they will have an answer for you. This group did, and being they grew up in Iowa, they even had electricity before both sets of my grandparents did. Ask someone from that generation about a party line and you will see the eyes light up. Now, party lines are a twentieth century thing, but we were reliving their childhoods as we walked to their vehicles at the end of the tour.
The aging generation has many memories to be shared, and if it is not written down, much of that becomes lost to history. I get to retell these memories on a regular basis, and I get to help a little bit of someone live on through a story. This is the reason why my job is the coolest job in the world.
