Starting a new project is always exciting even if the medium is the same. Unlike continuing a set mold, one can branch out and grow from past experiences.
Case in point, my third and newest podcast, “Discovering the ‘T,'” has motivated me to try new things with the very first episode. I wanted to add more texture to the audio by adding background music. I also wanted to see if the music would mask the abrupt edits. It didn’t, but I also didn’t re-edit the episode.
This is part of my “learn from errors instead of dwelling on them to attain perfection.” I like the addition of background music, but I have to continue using techniques, like crossfades, to reduce the popping/glitching sounds caused by editing.
Another new thing I’m doing with this new podcast is following a thread. One of my aunts intrigued me about the variation of how our surname is spelled. This has already produced one episode, which sent me researching through my parents’ file cabinet for clues/answers to more questions, especially my father’s birth certificate, where his father’s surname appears as “Roberson” and Dad’s first name is spelled “Karl.”
After that first episode dropped, one of my cousins texted me a picture of Dad when he was a junior in high school. Yet another spelling variation of his name appeared: Carl Robertson.
I then resumed my file cabinet search, mainly to pinpoint when my father switched from spelling his name “Carl Robertson” to “Karl Roberson.” The archaeological hunt through my parents’ lives via medical/home maintenance/insurance/military/funeral papers revealed how little I knew them as people.
Mom had done a fabulous job of squirreling away funeral programs, where one section gives a mini biography for the deceased. I took pictures along the way of all the interesting finds, not ever finding a copy of my parents’ marriage license.
I joked with Mom. “I think ya’ll have been lying to us for 65 years about being married.”
She assured me that she’d taken their marriage license with them back in 2019 when we vacationed on a family cruise. Plausible explanation since I hadn’t come across their recent passports either. Now, when I have another “researcher moment,” I’ll have to go through other drawers where Mom has squirreled away that information.
During this journey about both my aunt’s and father’s name variations, I uncovered not just a personal history of my relatives, but also the context of the times in which they lived.
For example, during the first episode, my aunt revealed that she was the last in our family to go to a one-room school. My father and all of his siblings were educated by dedicated teachers within a substandard system that deemed “separate but equal” was legal from 1896 until 1954, the year my youngest aunt was born.
That legal designation may have changed, but the attitude has persisted. Instead of the government separating citizens based on race, people segregated themselves. The proliferation of private religious schools provided the protective mask racial bigots with money sought to hide behind in order to separate their children from attending an integrated school.
When parents with the most resources withdrew their kids, public school was systematically left to languish with minimal funding. The one- or two-room school system may have ended, but not the disdain of educating Black students.
I marvel at how much people in my parents’ generation and earlier have achieved. That’s why it’s important to me to capture as much personal history from both sides of the family as possible. One thread at a time, weaving the fabric of our past together.