Mrs. Z was an elderly woman whose family had lived in Boulder City, Nevada during the 1930’s. Her father owned and operated a business that removed bat guano from one of the caves near the Hoover Dam building site. A few years ago, I sat with her for several hours and recorded her oral history. She told me that some of her stories were things that her family had never heard before.
Mr. X was an older gentleman that I have seen almost everyday for the past year. I never had any long conversations with him, just bits in passing, enough to know a little about his life. He was retired military, extremely intelligent and had a large hula dancer tattooed on his arm. He liked to sit outside in the sun. He often told me what was wrong with my car, recognizing a problem from the sound as I drove by.
Mrs. Z died two days after I completed her oral history. Her stories are now a part of the Boulder City Historical Association’s extensive collection and will be available for historians to use for many years to come. I gave her daughter a copy of the tapes and a printed manuscript, copies of the stories that her mother said her family had never heard before.
Mr. X passed away this past weekend in his sleep. I did not, in the past year, sit with him and record his stories. As is often the case, many of these are now lost forever. I would have liked to have heard about his military experience. I would have liked to have known how he knew so much about cars and I would love to know the story behind the hula girl tattoo.
Oral Histories are an important way for non-academics to participate in “making history”. They are often eyewitness accounts of historical events or simply stories of everyday life specific to a time period, which serve as primary sources for researchers, those crazy people who write historical fiction and history books. I encourage anyone who is interested in history to take a short class on Oral History Methods and put on their bucket list to record at least one.
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