This recording was made during the summer of 1956 in Galesburg, Illinois. Helen, Susanne, and Charlie visited Grandpa Christopher “Doc” Cranston at his little home near the Willsies in Galesburg. The recording quality isn’t so good – I apologize. We were limited by the technology of the time.
I did a “best effort” to transcribe the voices. That transcription is below. The “Older Voice” is Doc Cranston.
Transcript — “1956 Doc Cranston” Recording
Source file: 1956-Doc-Cranston.mp3
Duration: 5 minutes 30 seconds (5:29.6)
Voices heard: three — an elderly man who does most of the talking (labeled Older Man), a man asking most of the questions (Interviewer), and a third participant who interjects (Third Voice)
Transcript notes: The tape is noisy and voices frequently overlap, so speaker assignment is a best judgment and unclear passages are marked [inaudible]. Timestamps are approximate to within a few seconds.
0:00 — Air conditioning, oxygen, and breathing
Interviewer: In fact, a perfectly air-conditioned room, like — it’d help asthma.
Older Man: It will.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Older Man: It will. ‘Cause I know when I go in a place that’s air conditioned, I can breathe a hundred percent better than I can out —
Older Man: Now, oxygen — when you’re in the oxygen tent, you breathe that when you can’t hardly breathe.
Older Man: Can’t you?
Third Voice: Yeah, that’s pure air. [inaudible]
Older Man: Nothing like out in the night air sometimes. They used to say it was the ozone in the air made you breathe easy in the evening.
Interviewer: With the oxygen, you’re not supposed to — you’re not supposed to breathe it. It’s supposed to do the breathing for you.
Third Voice: Mm-hmm.
Interviewer: When it goes down in your lungs.
Older Man: Yeah.
0:45 — Night air, and how long since he’s seen the family
Interviewer: Well, how long has it been —
Older Man: You know how that is, to stir about of an evening outside, up in that country in the fall of the year. Know how the air is? Yeah.
Third Voice: You feel good then, don’t you?
Older Man: Mm-hmm.
Third Voice: What were you —
Older Man: Go ahead.
Third Voice: No, I was just gonna let you go ahead and ask your question.
Interviewer: No, I just was going to ask him — how long has it been since you seen Bobby?
Older Man: Well, I haven’t seen Bobby since —
Interviewer: You got his graduation picture, though, didn’t you?
Interviewer: How long has it been since you seen Shirley?
Older Man: [inaudible]
Interviewer: Has it been that long?
1:30 — Dates, and being ashamed of not writing
Older Man: — either ’51, or — I think ’51, wasn’t it?
Interviewer: How long has it been since you’ve seen Kathy?
Older Man: That was fall of ’52, wasn’t it? And I never wrote to you since ’51.
Interviewer: No, you haven’t. Uh-huh.
Older Man: I’m kind of ashamed of myself for not writing.
Third Voice: When is the last time you wrote to Mary? Did she ever write to you?
Interviewer: [inaudible] to Mary [inaudible].
Older Man: Wrote to Mary?
Third Voice: Yeah.
Older Man: Oh, I ain’t wrote to her since —
Third Voice: Since when?
Older Man: Wrote to her?
Third Voice: Yeah.
Interviewer: Mary never gets [inaudible]. I even sent you a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Older Man: Yeah. Sure.
2:15 — Ruth’s stationery and the three stamps
Third Voice: What’d she write?
Older Man: [inaudible] writing. Ruth sent me a big box of stationery and a couple dollars’ worth of stamps, I guess. [laughs] And I’ve used only three — three stamps. Gave one to [inaudible] kids over there.
Interviewer: Did you ever use any of ’em?
Older Man: I wouldn’t know.
Interviewer: Well, I didn’t — oh, what?
Older Man: Now, that’s kind of bad. I better write ’em. Not half bad. [inaudible]
Older Man: I think about it all the time, and I never get to it.
2:45 — “I keep saying I’m gonna write, and I never write”
Older Man: Never a day goes by I don’t think about that country [inaudible]. Yeah, I just keep saying to myself I’m gonna write, and I never write.
Third Voice: You never write.
Older Man: Never write.
Third Voice: Why don’t you write?
Older Man: Well, I figure if you don’t — if you don’t hear from me, you never will [inaudible] down there. I never write.
3:15 — Letter writing as a lost habit
Older Man: Well, [inaudible] if you don’t do it here, probably you never will write to ’em there. That’s right.
Interviewer: You’re always right. Well, I haven’t done too well lately. I don’t write many letters anymore.
Older Man: You get over writing letters, seems like.
Interviewer: I like to write letters.
Older Man: Something good for a person to correspond.
Third Voice: Yeah, it is. Gets thoughts on paper.
Older Man: It is. Takes lots of paper.
Interviewer: It does.
4:00 — Which hand is sore
Interviewer: And that was written with your left hand.
Older Man: Right. No.
Third Voice: Right hand.
Older Man: With the right hand.
Interviewer: Wait a minute. I was thinking it was your right hand that was sore, but it’s your left hand.
Older Man: Left hand. I write with my right hand. [Hand can’t] hold the paper down.
Interviewer: Oh, I see. [laughs] He says he can’t hold the paper down.
4:20 — “She was a great correspondent”
Older Man: And [inaudible] she liked to write ’em. She was a great correspondent. [inaudible] wrote a long letter. She’d start [inaudible] half a page [inaudible] long letter. Used to [inaudible]. She — she got right down to writing ’em.
Interviewer: She kept her correspondence up quite well.
Older Man: Yeah. [inaudible] she didn’t have to keep track of a lot of ’em. Keep kids from running around all the time.
4:45 — Before radio and television
Older Man: But them days, there wasn’t much going on to attract people’s attention away from home. Wasn’t any radio or TV or anything like that. I don’t think that stuff really does a person any good.
Interviewer: It takes away from a lot of family life, doesn’t it?
Older Man: Sure does.
5:15 — Asking after the boy
Third Voice: I don’t know — that little tyke, he really used to act like he was kind of seeking knowledge, didn’t he? Is he that way yet?
Interviewer: Yes, he likes to study.
Third Voice: Does he read a lot yet?
[Recording ends]