Robert LaRose interviews DC-area native and writer David Taylor about his home movies, storytelling, oral histories, and the audio "letters" that he sent to his family while serving in the Peace Corps.
Find more resources about digital preservation and personal archiving in DCPL's Memory Lab Libguide.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
DC Public Library Podcast is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and is a production of the Labs at DC Public Library.
Robert 0:12
You are listening to the DC Public Library Podcast recorded from the Labs recording studio in the historic modernized Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington DC. This episode is part of the Memories on Tap series, where we highlight the stories of real people who use our DIY digital preservation lab known as the Memory Lab to save the memories contained in their precious personal items including home movies, audio cassettes, photographs, and more. I'm your host Robert LaRose, and I'm a librarian in the Labs at DCPL. As part of the Labs here at the MLK Memorial Library, we have a do it yourself workstation called the Memory Lab for digitizing video and audio recordings in a variety of formats. And for scanning photographs, 35 millimeter slides and negatives. You can find out more about it by visiting dclibrary.org/labs/memorylab. Unfortunately, the Labs are still closed to the public due to challenges posed by COVID-19. However, we have a number of upcoming virtual events which you can find out about by visiting bit.ly/labsclasses. You can also sign up to receive email updates about the labs by going to bit.ly/labs-email. To learn about additional virtual programs being offered by DCPL, visit dclibrary.org/calendar. As I mentioned before, the purpose of this series is to feature the stories of real people who have used the Memory Lab to preserve their precious personal collections. My guest today is David Taylor, who used the lab to digitize audio cassette tapes and home movies. So I guess To start off, can you give a little background about yourself? And what initially brought you to the Memory Lab?
David 2:27
Yes, so I'm David Taylor. I've been DC resident for many years, I grew up in Northern Virginia. And one thing that I've really enjoyed my years in DC has been the DC library. I'm a writer, so I often rely on books from the library to for research. But then I've also done projects where some of the local collections like the Washingtonian collection at Martin Luther King library, was really helpful. So I've done tours with I've taken tours with some of the volunteers both with a DC Historical Association, they've shown some of the collections there at MLK. And along the way that I also got a message about the memory lab. And so from both my personal and work projects, I had some things I wanted to digitize. And so this seemed like a great opportunity to try that out.
Robert 3:36
Excellent. Yeah. So you mentioned you are a native of the DC area in Northern Virginia. What What was that like growing up in DC or or in in Northern Virginia?
David 3:50
Yeah, it was really kind of fascinating to be my mother grew up in Alexandria. And so we lived there. Most of time I was was growing up, but we would come into to DC for museums and my father worked for the government in and DC and so we would come to the mall also for things like I remember seeing the kind of a demonstration on the national on the Mall of a jetpack in the late 60s. I was a time around when NASA was showing a lot of its activities towards the towards Apollo and actually for a while my my father worked for for NASA and so we went to that demonstration and it was really cool as a as I was probably about five or six I remember the men putting on the backpack and rising up off off the ball and sort of taking a little trip around seem very Space Age
Robert 4:58
That must have been incredible to see Was did your did your family take any pictures of that? Do you have any of the anything documenting that?
David 5:09
Not of that? No, no. Yeah, we would. My parents tend to take photos and home movies out were family vacations, some visits to their family, friends, and some things around the neighborhood. And so there were in some, some of the things I wanted to digitize were those home movies. But also that featured some of the neighbors and kind of community landmarks in schools where I grew up. So yeah, I wish I had had something from from demonstrations like that, or from festivals that happen in DC, but it wasn't on I guess they're, they didn't know what they were going to see. So I don't think they brought along, you know, that the whole movie camera was kind of a valuable thing that they didn't want to take if they didn't know that they were going to why they were going to take it.
Robert 6:09
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Sometimes you're, you go to something that you don't really realize the full historical or cultural significance of years later. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. So what, what kind of you mentioned home movies? What other kinds of formats? Did you digitize in the lab?
David 6:29
I had, yes, some home eight millimeter home movies, I had some VHS tapes that I wanted to. I had some audio cassettes that were both kind of letters from sort of audio letters that I and other family members had sent home to my my parents and sort of get those digitized. Because by that time, none of us had even cassette players left, really. Yeah. And he so there was that some photos, although photos, even by them, it was easier in some ways to digitize or just scan at the office where we go in. So it wasn't as as many photos but it was more the audio and video, things that I had.
Robert 7:27
That's really interesting. The Can you talk a little more about your your audio letters, these AUDIO LETTERS that you're that you would send among your family members?
David 7:40
Yeah, so some were while I was in the Peace Corps in West Africa for several years. And so I mean, I wrote a number of air gram for letters home, but I also was kind of together more the texture of life there. I would record just my my greetings home and then have some of my host family members speak a little bit. And just to hear the audio background of the village in West Africa, where I was living in there was a different kind of a soundscape, then. Then I knew my family here, normally so. So there was something like that. Some that actually, I think my brother had sent back from when he was in the military. So it was a kind of a hodgepodge that way.
Robert 8:37
Hmm, that sounds really interesting. What what what do you think was the reason or the inspiration to do that sort of thing?
David 8:49
You know, that's a good question. I can't remember what I some of the people I had been I was in Pisco with had done that. I mean, that was a very everybody had, at that point, the kind of radio cassette boombox player for the bus listen to international broadcasts and to know a lot of local music. They're on cassette. So I think it was just a really easy technology to, to have there to do. And I think I must have known several people who had sent their cassette letters back and they kind of inspired me.
Robert 9:29
Interesting. So it might have been a somewhat common thing among Peace Corps. workers. I think that's right. Very interesting. It's it's a very good idea, I think.
David 9:45
Yeah, I think it does capture a lot of not just mean, you speak. You tell stories differently when you're speaking into a tape interesting family members than when you're writing. So I think there's partly that But then you can also just get other other sounds and times of day. I mean, I guess one thing that I captured was six, the call to prayer, which was it's very evocative, and something that necessarily at that point, you didn't hear much around here.
Robert 10:16
Right? Yeah. Where in West Africa. Was it specifically?
David 10:20
I was on the Senegal River. So on the northern border of Senegal,
Robert 10:25
okay. Is that a primarily I'm assuming called the prayer you mean? of Islam? Right.
David 10:31
That's right. Yeah. So most of the part of West Africa is, is Muslim and the Yeah, both Mauritania, which was the country I was actually in was completely a Muslim. So yeah, there were there were calls to prayer five times a day, broadcast from the nearby mosque on a on a PA system. And, and so yeah, it was a sort of a very much a kind of a local marker of life there.
Robert 11:05
Yeah. And I would imagine when you were doing these AUDIO LETTERS, it's even different, even though you're using the audio medium, it's even different than having a phone conversation. Yeah, yes, say things or maybe phrase things differently than if you were having a real time conversation.
David 11:25
That's right. And I think people tend to kind of narrate things more of their day in more depth. And because you don't have that other person's you know, it's not a conversation where you're asking how their day was, because they won't hear the tape until it took me a couple of weeks to send mail from there at that point from, from West Africa to the to the DC area.
Robert 11:51
Okay. Yeah. And so now, you mentioned you're a writer as well. Right. And you are involved with historical topics, is that right?
David 12:02
That's right. Yeah. I'm a freelance writer, both for magazines and newspaper articles. And also I, I write books that involve both history and in science in different ways. So recent book I did was centered around World War Two and several families. Two of them in the Baltimore area, and how they, they all the families worked at the same company. And they got the company was in a business, they got caught up in sort of national security and, and kind of corporate espionage in a way of importing items from from Spain or Portugal, cork, that was something that was important for national security at the time. That was, so it was, I would record my interviews with people in the family. And then write those up. And that was, it was a nonfiction piece that's about the history but also about kind of the, the social and science aspects of their lives then.
Robert 13:21
Interesting. So you, you use oral history interviews as a method for writing.
David 13:30
That's why it can be a really valuable. So I interviewed one man who was in his 90s. His name was Frank to cara, he lived in East Baltimore, and he had been a teenager during World War Two and had gotten a job in a defense company plant then. And then worked for the company a different way after the war, and his own family's experience as Italian American immigrants in East Baltimore, during the war, when they were regarded at points as enemy aliens, because they, his parents had grown up in Italy. So so he had a lot of stories, both about his family and his own work. And so it was really valuable to record those conversations with him, and to hear his memories about just that timeframe. And he had a very vivid memory. So it was, it was great to be able to, to capture that.
Robert 14:38
As a descendant of Italians myself, that that's sounds very interesting. And I am aware of the way in which some people have that descent we're seeing back in that time is very different than Yeah, they're seen today. Absolutely.
David 14:58
Yeah. Even before the US entered the war, there was some suspicion of all kinds of immigrants. And there was a very obviously the idea of America first, first America first movement, way of just very anti immigrant. But then, after Pearl Harbor and the US entered the war against Germany, Japan and Italy, suddenly people with family in Italy still corresponded with their families there, they were under suspicion and had to register. And as you know, they there was there were rules saying, you know, Italian Americans couldn't live within five or 10 miles of the military facility or even on the coast. So a lot of a lot of fishermen. And on the, on the California coast lost their vessels, because they, they had to, you know, they were seen as security risks by the government. Yeah.
Robert 16:08
What do you think? got you interested in, in conducting oral histories in the first place as a as a means to, to tell history? Because, I mean, I'm just thinking in recent years, or it's only really until the last decade or so that oral histories weren't really brought to, you know, the broader, like, mainstream consciousness. So what do you think, inspired you to conduct them?
David 16:45
Yeah, they've been it's been really interesting. I, an earlier project I wrote about for a book and documentary was about the in the 1930s. The Federal Writers Project, hired out of work people, writers and clerks and reporters to document mostly to document their local towns and everyday life in the in America. And so they conducted a lot of oral histories at that time, that's when I first learned about what how much that had changed in the in the 20th century, how recording oral histories, they wrote them down, for the most part, they were using questions that they had been prepared by folklore experts. But a few of them were they had a turntable machine that they could haul around and record people. So fame, later famous writers like Zora Neale Hurston in Florida got the loan of a, of a recording device. So turntable From the Library of Congress, in fact, in and recorded voices, people's stories and songs in Florida during the 1930s. And those are actually in the Library of Congress collection now. So I learned about that process, while writing about that, there was a project called soul of a people. And that, that inspired me to sort of use that more in my own work. And then yes, as you say, about 15 years ago, I guess the I learned about one of the first oral history booths in that StoryCorps put into Grand Central Station. And so and they found that they that StoryCorps, that project had been inspired by the Federal Writers Project experience of oral history. So it's, it's been fascinating to see the past decade how the tools for that that become, as you say, a lot more available for people to record conversations. And any story core itself has helped to with, you know, lists of questions that you can ask a loved one or a friend or a neighbor and get their important slices of their lives down. So I have been excited to see how much more widely that has become used. In fact, I, I did a StoryCorps interview with my father when the story core or traveling van or traveling mobile studio was parked in Washington, and for the Library of Congress for several weeks in, I think was 2006.
Robert 19:38
Very cool. Very cool. Yeah. The the idea of doing oral histories of conducting oral histories is becoming much more widely accessible. And it's also tying in very nicely to people who are let's say like family historians. Their family or genealogists of some kind, it's really helpful.
David 20:05
Yeah, it's true. I mean, you could get stories that people either don't have, don't feel like they can write down or don't have time to and just in the context of a 40 or 50 minute recorded, you know, recorded conversation, you can really get a lot. And I guess, I don't know whether the new memory lab as it's being reshaped course, when when things open up, and we can go back into MLK, more easily. It'll be fascinating to see, for me to see whether there's an opportunity for like to have two microphones or if that's if that's seen as something that the DC library will will accommodate in some other form?
Robert 20:51
Well, yeah, I mean, the the memory lab, as it is now at MLK, is part of a larger recording suite in the lab space. So it's very easy to you know, if you want to conduct an oral history interview, to complement your work, you could very easily do that right next door. We have a few recording studios.
David 21:18
Oh, that's great. Yeah. There'll be will it be signed, you can sign up for the kind of book a slot with them at the same same way you do memory that
Robert 21:28
that is the that is the goal. Great. That's exciting. So when you were digitizing your, your audio tapes, were all of them having to do with the Peace Corps during your time?
David 21:44
No, there were some actually, some were also local radio programs that at that point, they were only available on cassette tapes, I think most now or digitize them online. But there's still some episodes, for example, or some some installments of, you know, some of the local NPR programs like even code run on this show. And before that, there were some that were just on cassette. And so I had, I was interested in a couple of those. And so it bought the cassettes, but wanting to digitize those, just for my own kind of reference. Those are the main terms of the audio cassettes.
Robert 22:32
Were there any that you had of programs on radio stations that were no longer operational? in the DC area?
David 22:44
That's it. Yeah, injured. My wife had some from California, alternative station that was no longer broadcasting. We didn't. We didn't have some from we listened to WHFS. And others. And some of their some of their programs had stopped, but I don't think we had sets of those to, to take in.
Robert 23:13
So what was the Was there anything? As you were listening back to these tapes, that either the radio ones or your Peace Corp AUDIO LETTERS? was surprising to you? Or maybe you remembered a little differently? Anything?
David 23:33
That's a good question. Yeah, I think there were several points where I remembered them a little differently or hadn't remembered, like, having like, my, my counterpart, my mortain counterpart, talk a little bit about things that were happening. And what he said. So that was, it was interesting to hear them again, myself. And also they can capture them so they could share them. And in terms of the, the, I think it was also the case with some of the home movies, they didn't have sound of course, but the eight millimeter home movies had things set on them that I sometimes didn't recognize, because they happen. I'm the youngest of my brothers and sisters. So but I was in fact I wasn't able to digitize them at that point at the memory lab but Ace, the manager at that then suggested a local from the color lab. To for for digitizing. We also have eight millimeter film. And when I did that, I was able to share that with my brothers and sisters and they could tell me some of what was happening in the in the film that I didn't know about some of the people who were in it, who I didn't recognize, talking with my parents, that kind of thing.
Robert 25:05
That's, that's very good that you had your, your family members there to help you out with identifying some of these things.
David 25:13
Yeah, yeah. And that was the valuable piece about digitizing was that I could put it in, like a Google Drive with a link, and then they could, you know, look at them scattered, they're scattered around this area, and a few others, but they could look at them themselves. And you know, and they were excited to see them again, after so many years, but then they were also able to talk a little bit about who is in?
Robert 25:44
Right, yeah, of course. How did you? How did it come to me that you were the one who were tasked was tasked with digitizing all of these family? heirlooms, so to speak? Yeah, I guess it was sort of a.
David 26:03
I volunteered in a way. I mean, this was after my, my father died 10 years ago. And then my mother passed about four years after him. And so it was, actually so my appointment with the memory lab was five years ago. So it was in during the process when my brothers and sisters and I were going through there their effects and in deciding what to keep and how to what things went where. And so it was at that point that I said, Well, I know, I knew that the memory lab existed. And so I we agreed that I wish I could take those in to have them digitize that way.
Robert 26:53
Was there anything that you came across that you just hadn't maybe had never seen before? Or never heard in? Like in the tapes?
David 27:02
In this case? Yeah. There were some that I did not. I don't think I had seen before from a trip my parents made with my grandparents in the in the 1950s. And so it was I might have seen part of that footage before. But it was, it was mostly new to me. And I didn't remember where they had gone. Exactly. So that's, I was asking my brothers and sisters, who were Who are they visiting here? And do you remember anything about the context to that trip?
Robert 27:44
Have what were your siblings reactions to seeing and hearing some of these things? Without anything?
David 27:53
Yeah, they were surprised to see. I mean, I think, even though they knew they these wheels existed, I think it's still a surprise when you see them in a new form. You know, you can just press play and forward and back. And the old eight millimeter reels were in these metal containers. And it was I mean, even when you had the projector It was quite a elaborate process to thread the film from the front reel to the back and the bulb was often overheat. And, and so it was for that reason, even though they knew the rules were there. This was just a much easier way for them to replay and then consider them, you know, at their leisure and not just sort of sit and gather dust. Even Yeah, yeah, of course.
Robert 28:53
Yeah, it's much more accessible now. Yeah. You don't have to go through the trial and error of making sure the projector works and right at all of that. rigamarole Have there been any unexpected results that have resulted from your, your preservation work, either your personal stuff or for your books? Anything?
David 29:19
I think? Yeah, I think that nothing has come out yet. But I think that they, the both the audio and the video digitizing has helped push some of my personal projects in a certain direction about learning more of, you know, my parents experiences in the 1940s and 50s. And to see what, you know, what, kind of to push the boundaries of what I know and what I can write about based on those things in what to ask. You know, my brothers and sisters what they remember. So it's a it's interesting basis for kind of mapping out some projects that I wouldn't have started otherwise, that involve both, you know, my family history, but maybe also more about the community. And you know, what was going on in the country at that time?
Robert 30:23
What's a have an example of one of those projects that you've taken on as a result of this?
David 30:31
Well, one was an essay I wrote about the time of my, yeah, that's great. So about. So I mentioned I, my father had worked for NASA point during the 1960s. And, and so it's about that time and how his personal experiences he had had polio in the 1950s, as an adult, and had had had a lot of physical therapy and occupational therapy to recover from that he had spent about a year in an iron lung. And so that had been a obviously a very difficult time for my mother and him and my oldest three brothers and sisters. And so, but then coming back to the workforce, after he made a pretty good recovery, he was a, but he did have to adapt the car so that he could actually drive it. And this was a time when transmissions only. So automatic transmissions were just starting. So as he was an engineer, and so he made some adjustments to the transmission that he was able to, I think, kind of inspire some of his work in sort of adapting to limitations at at NASA. And so it's I wrote an essay for, for Smithsonian, a couple of years ago on the 50th anniversary of the, the Apollo moon landing to about his experience, and I actually included a frame from one of the home movies that had that I had been digitized showing by the station wagon that we were talking about.
Robert 32:25
Wow, that is very cool. So I'm, I'm trying to remember, I don't remember exactly when the polio vaccine. Yeah. Was it was was that right around that time that he was experiencing that?
David 32:39
Yes. So it was really, it was an I hadn't realized until years ago that one reason why the polio vaccine came out about what it did was the intensifying of the polio epidemic. I mean, it had been going on for a half a century in different waves, but really, in the late 40s and early 50s. It was the most intense waves of polio. And so he contracted it in Northern Virginia in the late 1953. So only about 18 months before the vaccine came out. And and so it was, it was I thought he was like one of the last ones to get it. So it was like tailing off. But no, it was intensifying at that point. So it was really quite a time of imagining pandemic fears like the ones we're living through now. Yeah, of course.
Robert 33:47
It's Let's hope that this one doesn't last that long. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's, that's really cool. So he made a full recovery. Did he have any lasting effects from from that?
David 34:03
He did, he made a recovery to work he did have he had the polio affected his breathing muscles in his chest, but he was able to get that back but he didn't get back the use of his left arm or certain muscles in his thigh so he could walk with a cane. And he had to have his left arm kind of tethered to his belt so it didn't because it because he really couldn't control it. So fortunately, he was right handed so he was able to change it right and into work after that, but it did affect his his ability to get around. on his own.
Robert 34:57
That's, that's for the time and said It's still almost miraculous in a way that he made such a good recovery because it, it really could have been much worse. Of course.
David 35:12
Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating to look at that experience of that generation before the American Disabilities Act and how much for a range there was in what people experienced and what people knew. I mean, my father didn't talk, he didn't want to be defined by polio, which is unfair, at that point where it was kind of a common experience of polio survivors, he often look to kind of the, just a carry on mentality of Franklin Roosevelt, who also had polio as a, an adult and but never referred to it, or even had images of himself was very careful about presenting his image as a president not to be appear disabled in any way. So I think there was still a lot of complex emotions around it. And yet, when children would ask my father, like, you know, what happened to you was quite your homework. He was happy to, to explain it, because they were often the most kind of direct and honest about I just wanted to know what was going on. So so he was very good about not being defensive when, when that kind of situation came up?
Robert 36:32
Yeah. And I mean, with with kids, it's a opportunity to teach them.
David 36:36
Exactly. No, it doesn't sound right. Right. It doesn't mean it's scary, necessarily, they can just understand it's just a different way of bodies working. Yeah.
Robert 36:50
Yeah. So now that you, you have all these digital files, right with that were a result of your, your digitization or the ones that you sent to color lab. So you know, the the work with preservation never ends. It's really an ongoing process. So what are your plans for your your files is? Or is there anybody else in the family? Who will continue your your kind of your preservation work in the family?
David 37:27
Yeah, that's a you know, that's a great question. Because I have not planned for like format changes and things that will come about and I mean, right now, the files are sort of preserved to some degree in one format, on the on the, in the cloud, where my family can access it, so they can download others, it is more broadly preservable. And that sense of nephews and nieces also can, can download it and adapt to transfer to different formats. But I have we don't, we haven't systematically made a plan for managing them and curating them, and making sure they're not degrading. So I'll be interested actually, to hear what what do you what resources or guides do you recommend? Or have you come across that that are helpful for people once they have finished or started on their their digitizing process?
Robert 38:39
Well, actually, and I'm not sure if this was fully developed when you were using lab because you use it in 2016. Correct, right. So that's when the that's right after the lab was was first set up. So it was still very new at the time. But since then, we've actually developed a guide, an online guide that's linked from the website, that is addition to having instructions for how to actually use all of the equipment in the lab. There are also other pages of the website and also links to additional outside sources that give a lot of advice on general digital preservation concepts. So organizing your files, which includes things as as basic as naming, you know, file naming systems, how to create that, how to make sure things will be accessible, how to add metadata to your digital items. So that people, you know, family members or whoever on down the line will be able to know, you know, who is this in this picture? Who is this in this movie? Where is it? Why is it meaningful to the family? Why would it potentially be meaningful to somebody else? Outside the family, things like that. There's a really good site organization called the Internet Archive, which allows you to, and that's, that's actually discussed in the LibGuide. We call it It's okay. Lab lib guide. I think I'll actually put a link to that in our episode description. Oh, great. But the Internet Archive allows you to basically, if you have a certain number of items, a certain if you meet a certain minimum, for your collection of photos, home movies, audio, whatever it is, you can set up this collection and make it accessible to either select group of people or publicly. So it will be widely available.
David 41:26
Okay, that sounds Uh, yeah, I hadn't thought about that access, a wider access, because that's interesting.
Robert 41:33
Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, some people have home movies taken at really, either really, historically significant places or event, like if you had had something from you're experiencing the jetpack demonstration on the moon, that can be just absolutely invaluable to researchers or historians or any number of people outside your family? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, you're mentioned that the Internet Archive is what I was about to go back and check that out. And there, there are some other organizations as well. Some independent nonprofit organizations that are doing similar things, basically trying to provide some kind of secure cloud storage that, you know, of course, there are many different options out there for Cloud Storage. It's Google Drive, you know, iCloud, Dropbox, Amazon, you know, all these different things. But you're not entirely sure if they those services. You know, they they, I don't know for sure. But I would guess that they don't have the preservation, you know, long term preservation mindset when they they create these products or the services. Yeah. So there are other there are other organizations like the internet I archive that have that long term preservation mentality?
David 43:17
Yeah, no, I'll be interested to I'll take a look at the LibGuide. Also, to see if in terms of, you know, what, what I should be planning for, and, you know, with my family members in the coming years to make sure that they're both accessible to people. I never want them but also maybe beyond that useful for other like local history. projects I've been interested in, I guess the DC humanities has a series of relate to oral histories of of disease neighborhoods. And I don't know whether there's a connection with the DC library or not. Maybe I should check that out to see
Robert 44:02
we Yes, there is we have worked. And I believe we are we have kind of a standing collaboration with DC humanities and the DC oral history collaborative. That's the one Yeah. Yes. So we've done projects with them in the past.
David 44:26
Does that involve both the library being a place to record some of those histories or have them available for the community?
Robert 44:36
I think both. Yes. It's both meant to be providing the the equipment. Well, in some cases, not necessarily the equipment but a place you know, and also as an outreach tool, trying to get the broader DC community aware of the resources.
David 45:01
Yeah, now I've been impressed I was attended one session where, for example, the historian of Howard University talked, just a really fascinating overview of Howard's history along the georgia avenue corridor from the 1850s, after the present and other eras of history that that it had navigated getting there. So I think there are so many stories, both from the family level up to the community to institutions like Howard, that would be a great day to be able to go browse and delve into...
Robert 45:51
Yeah, oral histories, I think the more people conduct them and take advantage of the resources that they have to be able to do that. The more of a think more Well, well rounded picture of history, we'll start to see history being told by regular everyday people.
David 46:17
Right, and you get many more communities. I mean, you know, my background, Anglo euro background, there's a lot of written down, that we can draw from but other communities that that have been sidelined by the documentation, it's great to hear how much you know, family histories and oral histories can get into the, into the public record that way.
Robert 46:46
I know we are getting close on time here. I just had one more question for you. If you happen to remember your earliest memory from when you were a child, do you do you remember that?
David 47:00
That's a good question. I think that's a Yeah, that is a question that on the it's a great question, because you said in interviews myself, I had my earliest memory. And sometimes I wonder if it's an actual memory, or whether it was told to me, but I will remember, basically standing in my crib, must have been about two. And I think what made it meaning memorable was that my father, and my older sister were talking with each other just outside of the crib. So I was hearing a kind of near adult conversation they were. And it wasn't. I was basically part of this, this group and hearing it. And I remember my father's voice then. And so that was what I sometimes thought was a phantom memory, but I'm pretty sure that is, that was my first real memory. The first one after right after that is my, my fourth birthday, right after that my memory is my fourth birthday when I received a particular toy dump truck. So I had a more visual and possessive joy about that. But But yeah, the memory of just an exchange between my sister and my father. Outside of my, my crib.
Robert 48:33
that's fascinating. It's fascinating to me, mainly, because I'm guessing you were, that was before you could really talk. Or really, right, or you could maybe understand,
David 48:50
right? So I don't remember those words, except for names. I absorbed names at that point. So I remember what, My so my, my sister's name, Annie. That registered in terms of my memory that I guess I had that vocabulary of people's names.
Robert 49:10
So you remember hearing the sounds without being able to parse the speech?
David 49:16
Yeah. Apart from like her name? Yeah.
Robert 49:20
That's really interesting. Yeah. I don't think I've ever I don't think I've heard of anybody else having a memory of hearing something without being able. I mean, you know, being that young, before you have any language really hearing it without knowing what it what, it's what's being said.
David 49:44
Yeah, yeah, I guess. Two years is sort of at the threshold. Do whatever
Robert 49:50
You probably were saying some words by them, but Yeah, wow.
David 49:56
Do you remember yours?
Robert 49:58
I am Not sure I do. know, I always ask this question. And it's a little unfair because I haven't really thought about it myself enough to remember it. But the thing that comes to my mind, even though I'm sure if I really dug a little farther back, I could find something earlier. But when I was in preschool, probably three or four, probably four years old. And I was playing with one of my friends on this like, kind of sandbox thing. And it had rained not too long ago. So the sand was really wet and kind of, you know, really gloopy. And that's, that's it really.
David 50:53
That's really interesting. Yeah, that texture. I mean, it does that is so evocative. Because Yeah, it's between the rain, the sand and just being in it. That would be that's a very rich, textured memory.
Robert 51:08
Yeah. And it's, I guess it kind of says something about, you know, what we what are what we remember, first, what our first memory is, I guess I can say something about each one of us. I'm not. I don't want to read too much into it. But yeah, not like get to Freudian about it, but just interesting to hear. Yeah. about their earliest memories.
David 51:40
Yeah, it is, it is a it can get some surprising memories that way. And so channels like, I asked my father that in our story, core memory in his first memory was actually seeing his grandfather. Because it was at a time when his parents were living with the grandparents. And so it was, like a three generations in one house type of thing, which I didn't hadn't really known about that much before.
Robert 52:09
Oh, interesting. Well, thank you very much. Thank you again, for taking the time to share all of these thoughts and memories.
David 52:21
Well, my pleasure, thanks for for asking and for from thanks to everyone at the Memory Lab for the worker, making it possible for Washingtonians to preserve their memories.
Robert 52:36
Absolutely. Hopefully, we'll we're still continuing it, but hopefully we'll be able to continue it in a more in person fashion soon.
David 52:47
Yeah. Looking forward to that.
Robert 52:49
All right. Thank you again.
David 52:51
Thanks so much.
Robert 52:54
As I mentioned before, we are continuing to offer virtual events from labs during this time. For more information about upcoming classes and programs visit bit.ly/labsclasses. You have just listened to an episode of Memories on Tap on DC Public Library Podcast, recorded from Labs recording studio in the historic modernized Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington, DC. Thank you for listening. Be sure to join us next time.
Unknown Speaker 53:31
You just tuned into DC Public Library Podcast. Listen and subscribe at dcplpodcast.simplecast.com or wherever podcasts are available. Send us your comments @DCPL on Twitter, or follow us at DC public library on Instagram and Facebook. Thank you for listening
Transcribed by https://otter.ai