Listening to the murmur of my great-grandmother as she lisped the tales of her young life in the 19th century---her teeth were in a jar by the bed-- showed me the power of an ordinary person's story. The featherbed puffed around us in the sticky attic room, lights from the highway flashed on the angled ceiling. I learned about pioneers stopping by in their covered wagons on the way to Kansas, how she washed--pronouncing it "worshed" -- clothes in an iron pot in the yard. She told me about the first time she heard a voice on a telephone, the first radio, how sh more...
