Voices from the Dust

My dad was a collector.

Ok, he was also a hoarder. But that's another story.

Several years ago, Todd & I & the kids went to California & helped my mom by packing up and cleaning up the basement, in anticipation of her future move to Idaho. It was a job. Todd, being a great de-clutterer, needed a bit of guidance on what was of value, and what wasn't. One of the things we had to save was Dad's old reel-to-reel tape player and a number of tapes that went to it.

Go back even more years (like 50 or so), and there was a period of time when my family and both sets of my grandparents would exchange "tape letters". In lieu of a handwritten letter, they would talk into the reel-to-reel tape recorder and talk about the latest news. The children were often given a moment to talk also. Then, my parents would mail the tape reel to our grandparents, who would listen and then record their answer. Many of these old tape letters no longer exist, because my frugal family members would tape over the message they'd just received, and use the same reel for their return message.

My dad, being the collector that he was, had some of these tapes that he'd set aside and kept. I suspect that there were also a couple that were never meant to be sent, but recorded for entertainment purposes -- so the kids could hear their own voices.

With reel-to-reel no longer being the audio method of choice (ok, it's obsolete!), my sister recently took our reels to a guy who provided a transfer service, and recorded these tapes on CD's. This last week, she sent me a set of CD's for my copy. The whole group cost $200.00 to transfer (I don't know how many original reels there were), and we got six CD's. THIS WAS WAY WORTH the $50 I paid my sis for my portion.

Two nights ago, I started listening.

Talk about being taken back in time. Some of these were recorded before I was born, and there is a wide age span between me and my siblings.

Now, for the first time in 20 years, I am listening to my dad's voice. My dad passed away when Brandon was a baby. I am reminded of how much I've missed him and how I wish my children could have known him. It is very emotional for me, but it a wonderfully good way.

It is absolutely an amazing feeling to listen in on my family's comings and goings. I don't know if Dad picked and chose the reels to save, or if it was more random chance. Maybe some came from my grandparents' belongings after they passed away. I strongly suspect my mom would have thrown them out years ago, but she tended to leave Dad's stuff in his "corner" alone.

I haven't listened to all of them yet, since I have to pick a quiet time when I can sit with the CD player going for me. Here are a few of the things I've heard so far:

• My mother describing how busy she was, including church activities that were much more varied and time-consuming than they are now. "Night Relief Society," packing spinach at the welfare farm, catering dinners (our ward Relief Society did this as a fundraiser), and visiting teaching extra routes.
• In one tape letter, Mom describes how my dad had put a pop can in the freezer, the ends of the can had bulged, and he took an ice pick to it and punctured the can, with the resulting spray coating every surface in the kitchen with stickiness! ("I could have clobbered him!" she said) HAHAhahahaha
• In another, I heard -- probably for the first time -- the voice of my brother, Steven, at age 9. He died at age 13, before I was born, and I never met him.
• Mom, talking about how she got a photo of my sister's intended from one of her friends. My sister, who was away at BYU at the time, sent the photo to the friend, but not to Mom! ("This Marc seem like a nice fellow.")
• Tape letters from one grandma, who got the giggles because she was tongue tied and at a loss for what to say.
• And a grief-filled tape from my other grandparents who had obviously just received word that Steven had died. At the time, they were on a mission for our church in Lima, Peru, where my grandfather built chapels. Unable to travel back to the States for the funeral, they expressed their mourning and comfort to my parents on the tape.
• Another from Grandma that told of an uncle who had added on to the back of the house: a bedroom and a bathroom. Now they won't have to go outside to go to the bathroom. (I had to explain to Darcie that they obviously had been using an outhouse up to that point!)
• A cheerier tape from Peru came, where Grandma described the street market and an organ grinder with his monkey.

If these tapes didn't exist, I wouldn't have known the difference, and would not have missed anything. But oh, what a treat it is to have them! They are not chronological in time, so it is interesting to decipher the time period by listening to the news.

It is like a gold mine of information, and it tugs at my heart to listen. So thanks, Dad. Thanks for keeping those old reels. And thanks to Karen for arranging the transfer. I'm going to go listen some more.