Once upon an Airstream

The StoryCorps trailer took off from the Flathead Valley at the end of June, and I’m still listening to the stories left behind — and recorded for the future.

“If you have breath in your body and woke up this morning, you have a story to tell,” Latojia Dawkins of StoryCorps said in an online meeting before the trailer’s monthlong stay in Kalispell. 

Except for the bright pink logo on the side, the trailer’s presence was nondescript. The facilitators, a handful of young people hailing from all over the United States, tag-teamed the chores. The bare-bones operation helped more than 60 pairs of Montanans get the words out. 

My mom and I showed up at a remote corner of a Flathead Valley Community College parking lot for our Sunday morning appointment. The bubbly facilitator, Amy Nadel, dispelled any anxiety as she swung open the door with a smile and ushered us into the mobile recording studio, an outreach program of the StoryCorps mothership established in Brooklyn in 2003.  

StoryCorps has recorded more than 389,000 conversations, most available through the Library of Congress and StoryCorps’s online archive. 

The Airstream swayed a bit as we walked through to the studio space itself, which featured comfy bench seating and a table, walls clad in gray acoustic soundproofing and professional microphones. Nadel gave pointers: “We ask that you not incriminate yourself or others” and not recite any copyrighted material. Her role mainly involved timekeeping, including time stamping noteworthy topics in the conversation, and monitoring sound quality.  

She donned headphones and settled into a corner for the countdown. 

After listening to most of the other stories recorded during the trailer’s first visit to the Flathead, I’m impressed by the variety of subjects and speakers. Some focus on ancestry, career paths and artistic pursuits; others on rock climbing, fishing and running rivers, and computer coding. Storytellers ranged from teens to people in their 90s, and the pairs were relatives, colleagues or friends.  

My mom does nothing halfway so when we decided to focus on a 13-year project to develop a public park, she came up with starter questions. The vibe was casual and fun, and I even learned new details.

In no time, Nadel signaled the final countdown. We signed releases, smiled for pictures and bounced out of the Airstream. It would have taken us months or years to write down a story that we told conversationally in just over half an hour. 

Stories inspire, illuminate and connect like nothing else. At the Northwest Montana History Museum we always ask donors for the story details behind their donations. We've come across scrapbooks full of lovingly mounted photos with not one word about who, what, where or when they depict. StoryCorps came too late for them. 

StoryCorps lists as a lead sponsor the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which announced earlier this month it will wind down after losing federal funding. I hope StoryCorps's mission and archive survive this loss. 

At the kickoff event for the local recording blitz, StoryCorps’s Ian Murakami acknowledged how fast the sessions go for participants. He offered a possible solution.

“There’s so much time after the recording,” Murakami said, “so keep talking to each other.” 

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at mdavis@dailyinterlake.com.