Creating a Family Archive for the Ages

The three of us huddled in the cramped front seat of my sister’s pickup truck Tuesday night, waiting in the darkness as she fumbled with a cassette.

My sister -- the only one who knew what was coming -- popped it in and, suddenly, there was Grandma, clear as a bell on the tape, talking and joking.

Hers and the other voices on the 15-minute tape were from Nov. 5, 1966 -- Grandma’s 75th birthday and a women-only family affair that cousin Kathy tape-recorded. Who knows if Kathy had posterity in mind, but 37 years later her work behind the microphone that day has become a terrific Christmas present.

My sister, visiting for the holidays, had arranged to get the recording transferred to a cassette and brought it as a surprise for me and our mother, who’s also visiting.

Grandma Parsons was the star, but the recording itself, ultimately, is the tribute to the lasting power of the family bond. I raise the subject advisedly, knowing full well that on this day after Christmas families from coast to coast are wondering if this genetic commonality stuff can be overplayed.

The quick answer is yes.

The honest answer: No, it can’t.

More than patriotism, the thing that binds Americans is our common awareness of the perils and pleasures of family. It’s the one comedy subject where everybody gets the jokes.

A joke, that is, until out of a cassette player comes your grandmother’s voice that you haven’t heard since the months before she died in 1990, not to mention the distant echoes of cousins and aunts and great-aunts and your mother and sisters ... and you’re reminded of the powerful hold that families have.

It helps if your grandma was a grand old gal. On the tape, Grandma notes that both daughters are absent for her birthday. “We sure do miss Eleanor and Evelyn today,” she says. “Evelyn on account of sickness, but Eleanor -- she prefers the ballgame.”

She was referring to my aunt, a Cornhusker football fan like everyone else in our native Nebraska, who apparently was AWOL to listen to the Nebraska-Kansas game on radio (Final score: NU 24, KU 13).

Grandma goes on to rave (“Look at these!”) about her new “underbritches” someone gave her. Someone mentions that she and Grandpa are taking a trip to California in a week, forcing Grandma to miss bingo. A young cousin, nervous on tape, mistakenly refers to Grandma as “Aunt May.” At one point, Kathy interjects that Nebraska just scored a touchdown.

Trivial, silly family stuff.

Trivial and silly back then, that is. Thirty-seven years later, as you listen to your grandma’s voice and your young mother’s voice (“I have laryngitis, so I can’t talk much”), it takes on a whole new dimension. It becomes a solid-gold recording.

Which leads to my 2003 holiday entreaty to you all: Pull out the video camera or a tape recorder. Point it at family members and insist they say something. Take pictures of the house and the street sign showing the block you live on. If you’re narrating, read headlines from that day’s paper. Mention what’s on TV and what’s showing at the movies.

Then, stick the tape in the cellar. You don’t need to look at it for years.

Long about 2040 or so, however, your kids will be looking for a great Christmas gift. Someone will mention the tape you stuck in the cellar long ago.

Whether you’re dead or alive, whatever family you still have then will thank you. They’ll be sitting in a home you can’t envision now, surrounded by spouses and children perhaps not even alive today, and watching that great tape you made as 2003 wound down.

Guaranteed: They’ll think of you more fondly on that day than they ever had before.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana .parsons@latimes.com.