One of my all time favorite college classes was called Folklore. It was an offering from the English department but it might just as well have been considered sociology, history, psychology or even political science. It focused on the stories, jokes, songs, propaganda, and hoaxes of everyday people. As the professor noted one can learn much about individuals, regions, and nations by studying the interactions of the common folk and what they had to say about the times and the places where they lived.
Folklore can be divided into many different categories but the ones that fascinated me the most were the oral histories from people who spoke about how they viewed the times in which they had lived. I truly enjoyed reading the letters and essays from individuals who had endured the Civil War or who had experienced the Great Depression. It’s one thing to hear an academic describing certain times but when the words come from the mouths of people who lived those moments it is extraordinary.
While oral histories may not be totally accurate with regard to the particulars of a certain events, they indeed provide very personal views of how people felt in those moments. One of the tracts that we studied included reports from both the American colonists and the British soldiers during the onset of the Revolutionary War. It was fascinating to read how differently each side was feeling. Their words made sense of how strained the atmosphere must have been. It was a very human experience and those oral histories that someone wrote down were as enlightening as a listing of facts, possibly even more so.
I ended up writing an oral history based on the memories of my paternal grandfather. I recorded hours of Grandpa speaking about his boyhood, his life as a young adult, his journey through two world wars and a depression and his evaluation of modern times. The themes in every single story that he told were focused on hardship, strength, innovation, and our human tendencies for both good and bad. Spanning one hundred years it was an American tale with editorial passages. Overall it was a chronicle of hopefulness and gratitude as well as understanding that our nation was not finished and had much more work to do.
Since having my father-in-law in our home I have tried to encourage him to tell his story that began ninety six years ago in a small mountainous town in Puerto Rico. Because his family was somewhat wealthy and powerful his tales are very different from those of my grandfather. He was the son of a doctor and he enjoyed the respect of the townspeople because of that. He lived a very insulated life typical of a small town where everyone knows everyone.
One tale that my father-in-law returns to again and again involves a time when he was quite young and enjoyed playing baseball. By his reckoning he was rather good at the sport and spent a great deal of time honing his skills. Back then there were no helmets protecting the head of the person at bat. The baseball was hurled with as much force as the pitcher was able to apply and it did not always miss the body of the batter. Thus a time came when my father-in-law was hit directly in his head as he was swinging at the pitches coming his way.
At first his head seemed to only hurt a bit but he decided to rest in the dugout until he felt better. By the time he was heading home he thought that the worst was over and he would soon be laughing about the headache that seemed to be slowly going away. Once he arrived home his father noticed fluid coming from one of his ears. Immediately my father-in-law was heading for the hospital where a team of doctors were waiting to examine him.
The last thing he remembers as the physicians probed him is suddenly feeling dizzy and falling asleep. When he woke up the room was filled with a priest administering the last rites and his aunts praying the rosary for him. A number of doctors and nurses hovered near his bed as well. It seems that his concussion was far worse than he had thought and there was fear that he would not make it. Instead he lived to repeat the story over and over during his long life. In every telling he always mentioned how lucky he was to have a doctor for his father. He has always wondered if a less educated person would have known to rush him to a hospital. Given that all of this happened in the nineteen thirties it is easy to believe that he really might have died but for the quick thinking of his father.
His story has always struck me because so many people during that time truly would have died. It points to how limited healthcare was back then, especially for someone living in a very small town. Sadly there are still those among us who might just go to sleep given the same situation without realizing the danger they are in. Our healthcare system is far better than it was in the nineteen thirties but not everyone enjoys the same level of access and excellent care. We still have much to do just as my grandfather always believed would be the case.
The stories of old should push us to try to make things better. Progress should be our goal. Lately we seem far too content when people roll things back, forgetting why we made improvements to begin with. We would do well to listen to the tales of the old timers whose words tell us why we don’t ever want to move backward. My father-in-law knows all too well that one’s status in life should not be the way we determine how we care for the people around us. He knows how good his fortune has been and wants to share it with everyone. His tale should inspire us to look out for everyone, not just the son of a doctor.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 