"Good (and bad) old days easily preserved with a tape recorder" from the September 13, 1979 Door County Advocate
By JOHN ENIGL
Good (and bad) old days easily preserved with a tape recorder
By JOHN ENIGL
PART I
This past summer Orville Schopf called me to ask me to speak at the monthly meeting of the Door County Historical Society of which Orville is president.
I felt very honored to be classed a historian, along with the likes of Stanley Greene, who spoke to the group the month before. I don't know how well-deserved the honor is, but I do know that I have a strong feeling about the history of Door County, and the state of Wisconsin. I believe we can make a strong case for the study of our heritage.
When I told one of the teachers in our school that I had written quite a few historical articles, she said, "You like to reminisce, don't you?"
I replied with a line from a play she gives every year, (is that reminiscence?), Shakespeare's The Tempest. "What's past is prologue."
The past is prologue, indeed: If we read the Bible, we are comforted just by the fact that man's problems of today are not really new, and that we can receive spiritual help to solve then; just as people did in Biblical times.
Look at the "Traveling Back" section of this paper. It's amusing, and a good deal comforting, to see that the same concerns have appeared and re-appeared many time over the years, and the county hasn't sunk beneath the waves. Since I've gotten really interested in history, I haven't become so excited over such things as a fuel crisis, for example. I know this country has lived through similar situations.
What I'm leading up to of course, is the premise that if you're interested in history, you're not living in the past. You're equipping yourself to better face the future.
Here's an unusual example of something out of the past can help you appreciate the present. One evening I got a call from longtime friend, Harold Schopf, asking if I'd like to have one of the 1930 model Fordson tractors he got along with an estate he'd purchased. I told him that I'd love to have it, because until 1941, that was the kind of tractor we used on our farm.
After getting the machine home; I tried to get it running. It didn't have. the coil box-ignition ours had that caused it to start hard but a more modern magneto.
As I cranked it, I remembered how my dad, already weakened by rheumatic fever, had to sometimes crank ours for two hours to get four hours work out of it..
Then; as I rode out to the field with it to try it with the plow, all the old memories came back. I felt the shock of the hard-riding steel wheels. The rear axle howled loud enough to be heard a mile away — just as ours did 40 years before. The engine heat, welcome on a cold day, oppressive on a hot one, hadn't changed a bit. The roar of the engine, unmuffled, began to do its work on my ears, enough to deafen them for several hours after I got off the machine, just as it did back then. The exhaust, hot and strong smelling, hadn't improved either.
As I began to plow the small field and see how little progress I made, tears came to my eyes. What courage it took for my father, and thousands of other farmers here and elsewhere, to attempt to wrestle a living from the land with such small equipment!
The "good old days" weren't all that good even when the horse was first replaced by the tractor.
I think of how much more I could do with my big Oliver, even though it is already 30 years old, and what my Oliver 550 will do, with its hydraulic system. Then I think of what Karl and Byron Fehl can do with their huge tractors, which we got to see closely during their June Dairy Month open house.
In this way, both historical accounts written by farmers and collections of farm machinery can give us a better perspective on live. We can see perhaps that the "good old days' were not so good. There were. stresses and strains caused by the difficulty of producing just enough to eat, or of getting wood for fuel for the winter. Yet, people overcame these problems or we wouldn't be here.
There's 'another reason for being interested in history. If you visit another state or another country, what do you enjoy more, just traveling through, or having someone explain the history and significance of what you're seeing? When my brother and I visited Austria, the homeland of our father, we were fortunate enough to have relatives as guides. They knew the history of the area, and its significance to our family. Our publisher cousin, Dr. Josef Enigl, fascinated us with a tour of Vienna. Other relatives showed us the places important to the family history, including the farm Grandpa Enigl had in 1901 before he came to America.
The point is, none of these places would have meant anything to us if we hadn't learned something about their history. I think of how much more the old Carlsville schoolhouse means to me than to someone who doesn't know its history or didn't attend school there. To someone else, it's just the Door Peninsula Winery. That is, unless they stop in and look at the pictures Mark Feldt and the late Jules Albert have displayed to show its former use. The tour guides, too, are taught a good deal about the history of the building.
I don't mind at all that the school I attended has been turned into a commercial venture. After all, a change in building usage is common in Door County, as it is elsewhere. The 'building just north' of the winery once was a cheese factory, then a store and now a residence: The important thing is that the old school is now a living thing again, with people in charge who will tell others of the significance it had in the community. And others enjoy hearing that story.
After having hopefully established that we who are interested in history are not old fogies living in the past, I am going to suggest five ways of getting involved in the historical avocation, if you want to call it that.
A couple of years ago I had the privilege of hearing Alex Haley talk at the Convention of the National Education Association. Mr. Haley suggested a very easy way of preserving family history — the use of the cassette recorder. Briefly let's see why this is so easy to do today, compared to a few years ago. You may be encouraged to try some recording of family history.
The first phonograph recording was made by Edison in. 1876 and shortly thereafter the recording of voices of famous people began. Of course, there are no recordings of Lincoln's voice. He died 11 years too soon. All we have are impressions. of people who heard him speak (a very few of whom are still alive.) Jenny Lind sang for the newly developed machine at an advanced age. Grover Cleveland is the first president to have his voice recorded, and I suppose nearly all the presidents since then spoke for the recorder.
It was difficult for the layman to record voices until recent years, however. A few people in Door county had recording attachments for their Edison cylinder type phonographs as long as 50 years ago. Perhaps there are still some of these recordings around.
Before World War II, home disk recorders came out. (I was fortunate enough to get an old model of one of those so I could make a short recording of my mother's voice a few months before she died). They were difficult to operate, and you couldn't erase the mistakes.
Then came the wire recorder and a lot of families began to record family history. Although the fine wire sometimes became hopelessly snarled, recording was relatively easy, and mistakes were easily erased. Thus, people were less reluctant to be recorded.
Next came the reel to reel tape recorder, shortly after World War II, and it became very practical to record the voices of family members and family history.
The latest development in voice recording is the cassette recorder. There is no threading of tape, and, if the machine is working properly, recording is almost foolproof. It's a very useful device for recording oral history.
Now, I'd be very interested to hear again the voice of our much respected Registrar of deeds, Bert Carmody: or that of hardwareman H. C. Schofield: or "Mitch" LaPlant extolling the virtues of Door county; or one of Doc Muelhauser's stories; or one of Karl Reynold's speeches. But they are gone, and to my knowledge no recordings of their voices exist.
If there are recordings of people who have molded the history of Door county in the hands of family members, I'm sure the library and Historical Society would be interested in borrowing and copying them.
In addition to recording the voices and ideas of prominent people on cassette tapes, every family can benefit from recording family history.
If you decide to record family history on tape, it would be well to start with the very oldest members first. (That's not to say that the oldest people are not going to be around a long time. After all an 80 year old has a much better chance of living to 100 than a 50 year told. The 80 year old is closer to 100 in the first place.)
But sometimes memories fade quickly at an advanced age. One year the memory may be fine: the next not nearly as good. So capture the memory when you can.
Planning 'and some technical knowledge is needed for effective recording of oral history. Your recorder need not be expensive — a $25 model will do a good job. Learn how to use the recorder effectively. Buy a separate microphone — built-in condensor mikes don't work too well. Use a good quality tape, although I've had good luck with cheap ones..Place the microphone so it will pick up you and the interviewee equally well. Try to place the microphone and recorder where the interviewee will forget it is there.
Make out a list of questions you are going to ask the interviewee. Recall the family member's. life in chronological order and use guide questions to elicit
responses. Recall the stories the person has told you over the years. Ask the person to retell them.
Ask about the person's earliest recollections. Ask about dates of births, marriages, deaths — get it all down on tape.
You'll be glad you took the time to do this. Oh. and make copies of the recordings; in case your original gets lost. Copying can be done directly from one cassette recorder to another with a patch cord.
There's another reason for making copies. Family history is something to be shared with other family members, not hoarded.
In the last part of this story, I will suggest four other ways to get involved in preserving our heritage.
(To be continued)
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive