Preserving family’s Seattle history with an app

All of our families have stories that are worth sharing and preserving. But, I must confess that even though I document complete strangers’ lives and stories for a living, I’ve yet to do that for my own family.

That was until I found an app called StoryCorps where you can gather and catalog your family history using your phone.

Some examples of stories that have been captured by StoryCorps include that of Marine Lance Corporal Travis Williams, who was the only one in his unit to survive a roadside bomb in Iraq. And that of 12-year-old Joshua Littman, who has Asperger’s Syndrome and wanted to interview his mom.

The range of stories proves that every one of them is worth capturing. It doesn’t have to be an epic. The best part about StoryCorps is that you can choose from a set of questions to get the process started. Sometimes, that can be the hardest part.

I decided to try it out on my family – my mother first – because she is one of the last of about five generations who can tell the story of Kastner’s Market in vivid detail.

My family’s meat market started in Ballard in 1895. Even before that, the Kastners operated a meat market in Germany. I powered up the StoryCorps app and my mom began telling me about the two Seattle Times articles that featured Kastner’s Market.

“Tell me about some of the first memories you have about going to the market,” I asked.

“They had this scale that came from the wall and when the sides of beef would come in, they could hang it on the scale. There were these two hooks, what I liked about that – they used to weigh my sister and I. We’d hang from these two hooks with our hands and they’d weigh us. It was a lot of fun,” she reminisced.

I asked her a lot about her memories as a little girl; watching her dad, uncle, and grandpa running Kastner’s Market. That would be three generations under one roof.

She can remember vividly the image of her dad (my grandpa, Edward Kastner) sharpening the knives. She said he did it with poetic motion. She admired her dad a lot. My mom, as a little girl, also got a whopping 35-cents for washing meat trays.

We talked for about 45 minutes, and it could have gone on longer because these little stories were fun to hear.

I’m so glad I started the process of these interviews because Kastner’s Market, after 80 years in business, fell to the big chain grocery stores in 1976. And now, the building that housed Kastner’s Market at 56th and 20th in Ballard will be no more.

We recently learned it will be torn down to make way for, what else, apartments.

“I knew eventually they were going to tear the place down, but I accept it now,” my mom said, starting to get emotional. “It’s just when I talk about the memories there… I’m still – they’re so nice. I know I can’t go back, but I have these memories and, you know, my mom is gone, my dad is gone, my uncle is gone, my grandpa is gone, all the men that worked there are gone…(she hesitated) the market, to me, is gone.”

Yes, we shed a few tears. We also laughed a lot and I learned more about my family’s history in Seattle. It made me proud.

After you finish your interview on StoryCorps, it gives you the option to submit it to the Library of Congress for safe keeping. You can also peruse the stories other people have started cataloging from around the world.