Good Memories...

Papa is diligently going through all of his music (tons & tons & tons of it) and trying to record what he has on lists so it is all catalogued and can be easily found. He found a cassette tape of his mother's voice. He and his brothers were asking her questions and she was answering. Papa was so excited to find this tape. It was good for him to hear his mother and to find this treasured bit of family history. He was going to sit and write out by hand what was said on the tape. I assured Papa I could take it and play it on my tape player and type it into the computer faster than he could do that. I just asked him to give me time to get it done. He was grateful for the help. I took the tape home with me. Saturday, I put the tape in my tape player and did a first run through of both sides. The first side has mostly Uncle Harold's voice. I can hear Uncle Salty a bit. And I even heard Aunt Margaret's voice one time. Gramma Duck's (Papa's mother) voice is very difficult to understand. Her speech is really slurred. It was a treat to hear these loved uncles, aunt and my Gramma's voices. I'll go back here and explain why we called Papa's mother Gramma Duck. The home Gramma and Grampa Duck lived in was out in the country. Grampa Duck built a porch on the back of the house. The porch was on posts since the back of the house went down a hill. The porch was on the posts but it was not attached to the house. Over the years it was becoming unstable. Grampa Duck took the porch off and was in process of getting ready to built a stronger porch attached to the house. Gramma Duck went out the back door and forgot there was no porch there. She fell down about a story and broke her hip. After she healed she waddled like a duck. Hence, the nickname 'Gramma Duck'. I really only remember her walking with a crutch most of my childhood and then a walker. Now back to my original story... After typing some of the dialogue from the first side of the tape, I flipped the tape over and listened and tried to get as many words typed as I could of the second side. Papa did a lot of talking on this side. He evidently came to see his mother with lots of geneology research and needed to piece together some key bits of information to get the research to be valid. So a lot of this side is Papa explaining what he has learned in his research. He asks Gramma Duck to think about these names and places and times as she rests in her bed and see if any of it comes back to her. Then the last half of the second side is Gramma Duck and my mother talking. What an emotional experience that was. Part of it was the things they talked about but mostly it was just hearing my mother's voice again. I visit my mom regularly in the nursing home. She occasionally tries to say something. Mostly it is jibberish and often now she is talking to the air in front of her and not directly to me. The tape had mom's voice as I remember it, her laughter, her response to feelings Gramma Duck may have had at an incident she recalled. It was just a beautiful, tender, tear filled bit of time. I felt grateful for the opportunity to hear her voice again. I now understood how nice it must have been for Papa to hear his mother's voice again. Now, Papa found a box of reel-to-reel tapes and he pulled out his 'antique' reel-to-reel tape player to listen to these tapes. His player would not work. He took it apart and couldn't find what the problem was to fix it. He really wanted to get these reel-to-reel tapes onto another media to preserve them. He was going to buy another reel-to-reel player if he could find one on the Internet. I'm far to practical for that. I suggested I see if anyone I knew might have a reel-to-reel player we could borrow for him to complete this project. He agreed. I sent out an eMail to the people in my ward and my counselors. Laura Carter, my counselor, responded that her hubby, Howard, had an old reel-to-reel player/recorder in storage. He was willing to find it and see if it worked. Bless Howard's wonderful heart, he did get it out, got it working, and went through his own box of reel-to-reel tapes. Sunday, Howard brought me the reel-to-reel player/recorder to the Frankfort Ward Conference I was attending. He showed me how to work it. Then I shared with him my experience with Papa's cassette tape and hearing my mother's voice again. He said that when he and Laura went through their reel-to-reel tapes they found lots of things with their kids voices. Then they found a tape of their wedding!!! Can you imagine? And on that tape was Laura's father's voice. He only said a few words, but they are pretty sure it is the only recording of his voice. That meant that as I was having my own tender moment with my mom's voice, my dear friend was also experiencing that same set of feelings with her father's voice. What an outpouring of family feeling and love. I'll keep working on this cassette tape. We want all our family to have this wonderful bit of history. And I'm going to be sure Papa changes this cassette tape into a CD so my sisters can hear their mother's voice again. What a great treasure!!