Boston-area 1980s videos from the WGBH archives

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a quirky social media account operated by a public broadcaster in Boston, GBH Archives (aka WGBH Archives). It has proved to be a fountain of 1980s nostalgia.

The GBH Archives Twitter and Facebook accounts provided a daily dose of old videos from the vault, many from the 1980s. Street scenes (Facebook). Storms (Twitter). Shoppers (Twitter). High school students (Facebook). Snowstorms. Interviews with locals, from a “Celtics superfan” to our former governor, Michael Dukakis. Bettors at a chariot race (yes, this was a thing):

Much of the shared clips are B Roll - supplementary footage used to provide context or establish the background of a news story.

For instance, “Back seat drive along Memorial Drive and Mass Ave Bridge in April, 1984” shows the view from the back seat of a car driving around Cambridge and Boston while the driver fiddles with the radio.

It’s utterly mundane, and utterly delightful to watch. I’m clearly not the only one, as such clips typically garner hundreds or thousands of likes and shares.

Why do we feel nostalgic when looking at 1980s videos of street scenes, hairstyles, and automobiles? Because it reminds us of our youth. It shows us how cities and towns have changed, for better or for worse. We hear accents that have faded, and performers that are no longer with us. The footage brings to light the places and people and music and fashions and trends that made us who we are.

It’s fun to find these repositories. We salute the media archives, history societies, and museums that make an effort to preserve and share them. This often means resurrecting obsolete technology formats (see "Digital reality check: CD-ROM database of WW2 airmen can only be opened on Windows 98").

But they are constantly under threat, as the recent deactivation of the MTV News archive shows. Thousands of hours of interviews with artists and producers dating from the 1990s were taken offline as staff were laid off. Some of it may be stored on the Internet Archive, but much of it is gone forever.

Nostalgia can be a huge aid to genealogy research, whether the goal is to gather information or family stories.

 I was reminded of this when researching a maternal great-grandmother, and an old print archive turned up - the “Old Timer's” column in the March 1933 issue of the Canton Commercial Advertiser in Canton, New York, reminiscing about attending grade school where my great-grandmother was his teacher … in the 1880s!

The games we played as children: Relievio

It's now early September. Hearing the crickets at dusk takes me back to the warm late summer evenings of yesteryear, and the sounds of neighborhood kids playing outside. 

Growing up, what were the games you played with your neighbors or siblings? Hopscotch? Stickball? Jumprope? A list of children's games is endless. But I wanted to mention a special one: Relievio. 

From age around the age of 8 to 12, this was a favorite game in our neighborhood. Relievio was a simple game, a cross between hide and seek and capture the flag, but spanned all of the properties on the street, including back yards. You needed at least a half-dozen kids to play, who were divided into teams. There was also a "jail," but the captured kids could be freed by a teammate. There were special phrases and calls, including "Ollie Ollie in come free." 

We would play after school until it got dark or it was time for dinner. On a warm night, we would go home for supper, but then come out again to play until twilight or our parents called us in. The cries of the game and shouts of glee when someone was tagged echoed throughout the neighborhood and then faded as everyone drifted home. As darkness fell, the crickets started their own calls. The block fell silent until the next day. 

I always assumed that one of our cleverer or more social friends made up Relievio, or perhaps learned of it from other kids in our town. Recently I learned that Relievio actually has a long tradition, going back to the 1800s and spreading across at least two continents under various names. The origins are obscure, but it seems to have come from Britain. The game-ending phrase that I heard as a child - "Ollie Ollie In Come Free" - was likely "All ye, all ye, in come free" at some point. We had no idea! 

Nicole grew up on the other side of the world and never heard of Relievio. But growing up, she and her siblings and friends had their own games and traditions. Every group of children did, no matter where they lived, or when they lived, as this Breughel painting shows:

Remembering these games now brings a smile to our faces!

As for our own children, our teenage son never heard of Relievio. It's sad, but it's not the first gaming tradition to fade away. I remembering hearing about kick the can, and would find scuffed marbles in the school playground, but never played these games myself - they were the domain of an older generation of children.

But other games live on. Our son played some of the same games that we did 40 or 50 years ago, including touch football and run the bases. In the winter, he went sledding with his friends. Both of our kids were enthusiastic Halloween participants through middle school. These and other childhood traditions will live on ... or perhaps be replaced by something new.

Boom and Bust, 1800s edition

There's a story in our family dating to the late 1800s. At the time, a maternal branch living just south of the Canadian border was engaged in farming - specifically, the farming of hops, which is used to brew beer. My great-aunt takes up the story, in a hand-written written account that is now part of our family history:

“Raising hops was very profitable at one time in Northern New York which caused my grandfather to buy a farm and take up raising this crop. The farm was in Burke, New York. Unfortunately, there was one bad year. When the price of hops went so low that he was ruined. He had to go back to his original trade.”

I've heard variations of this tale that this hops-growing ancestor was a millionaire on paper one day, and completely broke the next. But it wasn't the end of the world. My great-great grandfather was able to fall back on his original trade - stonemasonry, which his Irish-born father had taught him. Life went on. 

 I bring up this tale because much of the world is currently headed toward a deep economic crisis. Inflation. Energy shortages. Stock market selloffs. Wild fluctuations in the supply of certain types of goods. Layoffs. 

Sure, it's worrying. But most people reading this can remember recessions, layoffs, gas shortages, and inflation that was even worse. Before the pandemic, I experienced 3 major downturns as an adult - the early 1990s recession, the 2000 dot-com crash, and the 2008 financial crisis. I have childhood memories of the 1970s oil embargoes. A few readers may even recall the darkest days of the Great Depression, when the unemployment rate hit nearly 25% and Social Security wasn't yet available. 

 We'll get through it this time, just as we did back then.

This old house: old owners come back

Do you ever get mail for people who used to live at your address? We do. It's usually junk. Until now, we have always marked it "return to sender."

But a piece of mail from a state retirement system a few weeks ago looked too important to send back. Through a neighbor, we contacted the previous owners of the house, who lived in it from 1991 to 2005, and asked if we could forward the mail to their new address. They said that they were going to be in the area the following day, and we could give it to them in person.

Why not? We had some questions about the house, and knew that they probably wanted to see what it looked like as they had done a lot to improve the property and had raised a family there.

So we invited them over. And it was a lot of fun! We were surprised to learn that they were only the third owners of the house, which was built in 1916. They purchased it from an elderly lady who was related to the original owners.

When they got it, the house had good bones. But it needed a lot of TLC, including a new roof, better drainage, work on the gardens, and work on the interior. We learned about the plants they had planted, the construction they had completed, and the little things that seemed strange to us when we moved in in 2007 but made perfect sense once they explained the situation that faced them in the 1990s.

We laughed about the house's quirks, such as the roof's tendency to attract nesting birds. Or, carrying the window air conditioners up from the cellar every June, and taking them down in October. One year, when Steve was mounting the air conditioner, he pushed too hard and the air conditioner went right out the window to the garden below!

We also talked about some of the same activities that our families had done, such as waiting for the bus when the kids were little, or going down to the river nearby to canoe. The house has mysteries like the outdoor hatch (anyone remember the history mystery from last year?) and the check stubs an electrician found in the attic crawlspace.

If you have a chance to talk with the previous owners of your house, do it! It's an opportunity to learn about the history of your house ... and pass down stories to the next family.

The Amish come for furniture, and how to age a dovetail joint

Last summer, I went to northern New York, to work on a construction project on a family property and blog about genealogy and family history when I could. Here is an anecdote that relates to antique furniture and a visit from an Amish family.

We are demolishing an old structure. There are lots of items to give away, as well as a smaller number of special things we want to keep for the new cabin that will be built on the site.

We have already given a wood-burning stove made of iron and several beds to a local Amish family, whose two middle sons, aged 18 and 19, loaded it up on the biggest horse-drawn wagon I have ever seen:

I was about to give away a chest of drawers to them. It's a piece of so-called "brown furniture" that is well made but not very popular nowadays.  

“Don’t give it away," my parents said. "It’s a nice piece of walnut furniture with dovetail joints.”

That interested me. Dovetail joints are an old-fashioned method of manufacture. It went out of style 150 years ago, but furniture made this way is renowned for quality construction.

I looked on the outside of the chest and couldn’t see any dovetail joints.

My father took out one of the drawers and showed me. I couldn't believe how small and fragile they looked, but they had held together this chest of drawers since sometime in the 1800s!

“The smaller the dovetail, the older the piece,” my father said. They are indeed tiny, a testament to the skill of the artisan who made it.

We are keeping the chest. But I also took a lesson to heart: Important details are easily missed. Sometimes, you need to look twice.