Transition Culture

23 Jan 2007

10 First Steps for a Transition Town Initiative #9. Honour the Elders.

For those of us born in the 1960s when the cheap oil party was in full swing, it is very hard to relate the idea of life with less oil with our own personal experience. Every year of my life (the oil crises of the 70s excepted) has been underpinned by more and more energy. I have no idea of what a more localised society looked like in the UK, the closest I have is how towns were in rural Ireland when I moved there in 1996, the shops all owned by families, the most memorable ones slightly damp smelling with wooden floorboards that sold the most unusual combinations of things (paraffin lamps, boxes of biscuits and aprons) generally run by a couple in their late 60s. There is a great deal that we can learn from those who directly remember the transition to the age of cheap oil, especially the period between 1930 and 1960.

As part of the Transition Town Totnes initiative, we have been doing oral history interviews with older people in the area. One, with Muriel Langford, who is now in her mid-80s, contained a passage I found especially illuminating;

>“Upstairs I had Jeremy in his cot on my side, so I had an electric torch so that when he woke up I would switch on the torch and then immediately Eric would turn to the candle on his side which you couldn’t have on the side where the baby was, and he’d light the candle to save the battery in the torch. We had a good little system going!�

This was in 1945, and batteries were so precious that they had to develop this system to minimise their use. Totnes at that time imported very little food, people lived at higher densities within the existing buildings (which were lived in more like bedsits that as larger homes nowadays). There was very little traffic. She spoke of moving into a flat on the High Street in 1945 which required the windows to be removed, and large pieces of furniture to the winched in. This meant that the removal lorry was stationary in the middle of the road, where nothing could pass, for over 4 hours. Nowadays after 4 minutes you would have created a major traffic jam and you’d have some very irate drivers to deal with!

As well as those kind of anecdotes, I find it fascinating to hear peoples’ stories of how they lived then. Most people gardened, it was just what they did. People talk of the sense of community they had. It is fascinating to see, when talking to those who lived through the War years, the sense of thrift and ‘enough’ that people had (those I’ve spoken to anyway). What would it take to rebuild that?

Oral histories are also very useful for getting a handle on the skills that people used to have, which links directly to **#7**. In doing historic research for the Transition Town Totnes process, I found, for example, that until the early 80s there were market gardens within Totnes, in what are now the car parks, which supplied the shops in town. Oral histories and historical research can offer fascinating insights into how people used to feed, employ and heat themselves. Clearly not all of it is relevant, and collecting reminiscences carries a danger of over-romanticising the past and devaluing the present, but there is much to be gained.

Pehaps you might collect these stories together and publish them. I do think there is something powerful in making one of your first steps in doing this process to go to the elders of the community and asking for their input. It is something that in many cultures would be instinctive, but in ours has been sidelined. One interesting thing when you start doing an interview like this is that people always start by saying “I don’t know why you want to talk to me, I’m sure I have nothing interesting to say to you…”, and then go on to tell you all this fascinating stuff!

One tip though with doing Oral History interviews is to avoid doing them with more than one person at a time. I recently went to do one with a lady who had fascinating stories to tell about being a Land Girl on Devon farms during the War, but she said, a few minutes into our chat, “my dear, I have nothing interesting to tell you at all, so I invited my friend to come along as well”. A few minutes later he arrives, and I start talking with the two of them. The problem is that one will say “and down by the Quay there was that shop, what was it called?”. The other will reply “Jameson’s”, to which the first will say, “oh yes, Jamesons… now they had 3 sons didn’t they?” “Oh yes, Jason, now he’s in Australia now…” and so on. It was very hard to get any useful information!

While you clearly want to avoid any sense that what you are advocating is ‘going back’ or ‘returning’ to some dim distant past, there is much to be learnt from how things were done, what the invisible connections between the different elements of society were and how daily life was supported. Finding out all of this can be deeply illuminating, and can lead to our feeling much more connected to the place we are developing our Transition Town projects.