Tag Archives: family story

Don’t put your shoes on the Table

Nationality: Danish
Age: 54
Occupation: NA
Residence: California
Performance Date: 3 - 25 - 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant and the interviewer.

Interviewer: So i’ve always thought it was bad to put my shoes on the table, but you think there’s another reason not to, right?

Informant: haha I mean I don’t know if I actually believe it but my mom always told me that if my shoes touched any table, it would be 10 years of bad luck. It scarred me for life since I’m pretty superstitious… but i still used the same tactic to get my kids to behave haha

Informant: and how did that work out for you?

Interviewer: It actually worked like a charm haha, i told my kids one time and then they started policing each other about it any time one of them would put their shoes on the table. 

Background:

My informant is a woman in her 50’s, originally growing up in Denmark and moving to the United states in her early 20’s. She has been a mother a majority of her life and travels with her kids at least twice a year. 

Context:

I talked to my informant over a facetime call during the 2020 coronavirus epidemic. We had planned to meet in person, however, our meeting was cancelled due to the virus. 

Thoughts

I think it;s interesting just how much folklore comes out of parents trying to scare their kids into behaving. The whole “7 years of bad luck” for breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder all have similar vibes and it makes me think that superstition arose out of children believing the surreal stories their parents would tell them as they grew up.

Food for even the Mice

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired professor
Residence: Taiwan
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Japanese

The informant is my grandmother from Taiwan, her hobbies are going to church and cooking. She says because Chinese tradition is very custom and done in certain ways it is weird to “stray” off on doing certain traditions. However, our family has done many of the same traditions, except starting from my great-grandparents time (4 generations), we had done some of these Lunar New Year traditions differently.

Informant:

When I was growing up we would prepare a separate meal for these specific mice. Although we do not do it anymore because our house is clean and there are no mice around, it was very common during my time when we grew up. The specific mice we fed were called 錢鼠 (Qian Shu). Because their name had money in their names, we would hope that after feeding these mice, we would become prosperous.

The mice are called Asian house shrew/money shrew in english. This was interesting because even my father did not know or believe that these mice were actually real. My grandmother had to convince my father that they actually existed, but they are not seen anymore. This came as a surprise to me, because during this time my grandparents were under Japanese rule and that these traditions did not come from them, but they were extremely poor during that time. Feeding random mice for good luck seems very weird for me, especially since they did not have a lot of food, to begin with. However, seeing as it all panned out well, I guess feeding the mice did help!

Elsie the Cow

Nationality: South African
Age: 55
Occupation: Computer Tech
Residence: Dallas, Texas
Performance Date: 5/1/13
Language: Afrikaans, English

Item:

“During the Anglo Boer war my great grandmother (Dirkie Joubert) was a young married woman living on a typical farm of the time;  in the old Transvaal province of South Africa. It was the year 1900. The Anglo Boer war that started in 1899 had been continuing for a couple of years. This was the war between the British and the Afrikaners rebellion against British rule.

The men have all gone to fight on the battle field, leaving the woman and children behind, alone on the farms. As the woman continued with keeping the farms going they could supply the Afrikaner fighters with fresh supplies whenever they were in the area.

The British soon discovered this source of supply and started burning the farms, removing the supplies for self-use including the live stock.

My  great grandmother had a cow called Elsie. She was a very clever cow and very quickly caught on to what was happening. She became so smart that whenever she saw the dust from the approaching British troops she would run and hide and wait until they were gone to re-appear and help keep my family alive.”

Context:

The three items of folklore I collected from this informant were the only three out of all the items in my collection that were not a result of face to face interaction. The text above was sent to me, from the informant, via email. I also corresponded with the informant over the phone to receive the context behind her stories. That said, the informant’s  great grandmother lived until she was 94. The informant, who lived most of her life in South Africa (she moved to Dallas, Texas with her family in the 90’s), used to go her house after school. The informant had a very special bond with hear great great grandmother, and used to hear this story from her all of the time. Her  great grandmother had five children, and during the course of this war, she and four of her children were taken from their farm and put into a concentration camp. The oldest son went off to fight in the war. In the concentration camp, her four children died. It was not until she was older that the informant learned of this terrible reality; her great grandmother would never talk of the concentration camp.

Analysis:

That the informant’s  great grandmother would tell the story of Elsie the cow and not any of the darker stories of what happened during the war, show that it was a happy story for her. The story is a light anecdote that occurred during a very dark time, and whether or not it actually happened, it most likely helped her get through some very tough years after her traumatic experience in the concentration camp. The informant told the same story to her own kids when they were young, ensuring that this positive story from their family’s history would be passed down.

The Curse of the Secret Flan Recipe

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: College student
Residence: Denver, CO
Performance Date: 4/30/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“Oh yeah so my mom has this secret recipe for flan… that… as I understand it you can make the flan in a third of the time as it usually takes, and it’s… considered the best flan anyone’s ever had… according to people who eat it, but I don’t like flan so I don’t actually know… um… and, yeah, she’s got this secret recipe and everyone she’s ever told this recipe to has like, vanished from our lives, and…”
[“Do you know the recipe yourself?”]
“Myself?  No.  I’ve glimpsed it but I don’t… I didn’t commit it to memory.  Yeah… everyone who’s… who’s read the memory, has been like friends who then move away suddenly, and we never talk to them again…  or like yeah, I don’t know, the worst was when she like… gave my girlfriend the recipe… and… and then yeah… and then she broke up with me.  Eheheheh.”
[“Does everyone in your family now, like, believe the recipe…”]
“I mean, we knew the curse before she told, but she’s like… ‘okay, it’s alright, this will break the curse, and it didn’t…”

My friend is an Interactive Media and Games major at the University of Southern California.  His father is from Colombia and his mother is from Spain.  He was born in Texas.

This story is about one of his mother’s recipes, and for him, the flan is significant not so much because of its taste or recipe, but for its effect on his family’s friends.  Thus, this is more about the folk belief than the particular foodway.

The curse of the flan does affect his family’s willingness to share the recipe.  Apparently, the times his mother has been willing to give out the recipe have significantly lessened.  But she does believe that there’s a possibility to break the curse.  As the attempt to give it to my friend’s ex-girlfriend demonstrated, however, the curse has not yet been broken.

While the giving of the recipe and the departure of friends might not be correlated, the fact that my friend and his family correlate them indicate that there’s some belief that divulging this secret can actually lead to broken friendships.  Since they believe in the curse, my friend’s family might not share as much as they could with their friends in order to maintain relationships.
One thought that I had while listening to the story is that it reflects a belief in distance for maintaining healthy friendships (not completely, but to some extent).

It’s interesting how my friend, who’s neither tasted nor made the flan, accepts that the curse exists through experience.  There’s no need to explain it with any other factor outside of the giving of the recipe.  Overall, it’s a humorous story and I wonder if the curse will ever be broken.

Tale: Family Folklore

Nationality: American-Causian
Age: 23
Occupation: Student Researcher
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 22, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Conversational French

The informant’s uncle Blake Emerson , likes to pass down stories about his life.  He was the 11th of 12 children, raised in a very large ranch in Nebraska. As the 11th of 12 children he was not paid as much attention. He was good with snakes. When he was about 10 one of his chores was to go to the rocky part of the ranch to collect stones for building fences and the like. When he went out he found rattlesnakes. He would find baby rattlesnakes and collect them in a 5 gallon water bottle. He went into town with the bottle and met with combine workers. Combines are machines that are used to harvest wheat. Skilled workers would migrate around the country to follow wheat harvest. The informant’s Uncle would make a bet with the workers; if they could put their hand on the outside of the battle and keep their without flinching he would give them $5. If they failed they had to give him 50¢. If got a lot of money of this bet. He even got featured in the paper; the photograph from the paper is posted on the fridge.

The informants enjoys hearing stories from her uncle because it strengths their family bonds.

Family folklore is interesting because it shows people within the same family have different experiences. Its a good way to solidify family bonds between different generations.