I have many memories of the upstairs apartment in the two-story house at 2119 30th Street in San Diego where I grew up (from age 4 to 24).
Did my house "watch" and "hear" and "feel" and "remember" my time living there?
I wrote a description of the layout of the 30th Street house as I recalled it. It described each inhabitant (my father, my mother, me, my two brothers, but not the cats) and some of the daily events that happened in each room over my 20 years residing there, plus some memories of specific events. I created a PDF of that document and attached it to the AI tool to use.
1) The first AI prompt that I used for the free AI tool Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 was for story ideas, plus a short description of each idea: "Please provide ten family history stories from my house's point of view, based on the information in the attached document."
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 provided ten wonderful story ideas - here is one of them (lightly edited for accuracy, consistency, and detail).
2) My second prompt was: "Please write a short story about ''The Encyclopedia Adventures.'"
Here is the Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 short story:
The Encyclopedia Adventures
A story from the house at 2119 30th Street
The large bookcase in my dining room held treasures more valuable than gold—though the three boys who lived here didn't always see it that way. The complete set of World Book Encyclopedia stood at attention like scholarly soldiers, their distinctive spines creating a rainbow of knowledge from A to Z. Flanked by reference books, atlases, and shelves of fiction, the bookcase also housed Fred and Betty's collection of non-fiction adventure books from the 1930s and 1940s—tales of polar expeditions, African safaris, and mountain climbing that had captured imaginations long before television brought the world into living rooms. But it was those World Book volumes that became the heroes of countless adventures within my walls.
I remember the first time young Randy discovered their power. He was maybe seven years old, stuck on a school report about elephants, when Betty guided him to the "E" volume. I watched his eyes widen as he opened to pages filled with detailed illustrations and more facts about elephants than he'd ever imagined existed. African elephants, Asian elephants, elephant behavior, elephant habitats—suddenly his simple assignment had become a safari of discovery right there at my dining room table.
"Mom, did you know elephants can live to be seventy years old?" Randy called out, his voice carrying through my hallway to where Betty was folding laundry.
"I didn't know that," she replied, though I suspect she did. Betty had a way of letting her boys believe they were teaching her something new.
Soon, Stan caught the encyclopedia fever too. The two boys would race to the bookcase whenever a dinner table discussion turned into a friendly argument. "I bet George Washington was born in 1732!" Stan would declare, already pulling down the "W" volume while Randy insisted it was 1731. The heavy thud of the book hitting the dining table, the frantic page-flipping, the triumphant "See! I told you so!" became the soundtrack of our evening meals.
Fred and Betty were wise enough to let these fact-finding missions interrupt dinner. They understood that curiosity couldn't be scheduled, and when a boy suddenly needed to know the capital of Peru or the height of Mount Everest, the moment was more important than whether the mashed potatoes got cold.
But the real adventures happened during homework time, and sometimes spilled over into pure pleasure reading. I watched countless school projects come to life at that dining room table, with the World Book volumes scattered like opened maps to different worlds. Randy's report on the Civil War transformed from a dreaded assignment into a genuine fascination with battles and generals and the complexities of American history. Stan's science project on the solar system became an obsession with distant planets, their moons, and the possibility of life beyond Earth.
When the encyclopedias couldn't satisfy their wanderlust, the boys would reach for those adventure books from their parents' youth. Stories of Admiral Byrd's Antarctic expeditions, Martin and Osa Johnson's African safaris, and tales of climbing Everest transported them from the dining room table to the far corners of the earth. These books, with their detailed maps and black-and-white photographs, bridged the gap between the factual world of the encyclopedia and the realm of pure adventure—showing that real life could be every bit as thrilling as any fiction.
The ritual was always the same: one boy would start with a simple question, pull down a volume, and then disappear into a rabbit hole of related topics. Looking up "baseball" would lead to reading about Babe Ruth, which would lead to the 1920s, which would lead to jazz music, which would somehow end with a heated discussion about Louis Armstrong over dessert.
Late at night, after the dishes were done and Fred was working with his adding machine in the office, I'd feel the dining room light click on and watch one of the boys tiptoe back to the bookcase. These were my favorite moments—the secret encyclopedia adventures. Randy might be wondering about radio waves (inspired by his DXing hobby), or Stan might be curious about military aircraft. They'd sit cross-legged on my dining room floor, volume balanced on their knees, reading by lamplight like scholars in some ancient library.
The fiction books got their fair share of attention too, but the encyclopedias were different. They promised answers. When the boys fought over whether a tomato was a fruit or a vegetable, the "T" volume settled it definitively (fruit, scientifically speaking). When they wondered how tall the Statue of Liberty was, Volume "S" had the exact measurements. When young Scott joined the household and asked endless questions about why the sky was blue and how airplanes stayed up, the encyclopedias became his patient teachers.
I remember one particularly memorable evening in 1962 when the whole family gathered around the dining table for an impromptu geography lesson. Randy had discovered that there were places in the world where the sun never set for months at a time, and Stan refused to believe it. Out came the atlas, the "A" volume for "Arctic," and the "G" volume for "Geography." Before long, Fred was explaining time zones, Betty was finding pictures of midnight sun, and all three boys were planning imaginary expeditions to Alaska.
Those encyclopedias witnessed every stage of the boys' education. They helped with elementary school reports on state birds and presidents. They supported middle school science fair projects with detailed explanations of electricity and magnetism. They provided high school research on world history and literature. When Randy needed to understand radio frequencies for his DXing hobby, Volume "R" explained electromagnetic spectrum in terms he could grasp.
But more than just homework helpers, those books became the family's referee in countless dinner table debates. "Wait, let me check," became the most common phrase in my dining room, followed by the satisfying slam of a heavy volume and the rustle of onionskin pages. The encyclopedias didn't just provide facts—they provided the truth that could settle any argument, at least until the next edition came out.
As the years passed and the boys grew older, I noticed their relationship with the bookcase evolved. The excited races to look up simple facts gave way to more sophisticated research. Randy would consult multiple volumes to understand complex topics. Stan would cross-reference information, learning to think critically about what he read. By the time they were teenagers, they approached those burgundy volumes not as magical answer books, but as the starting point for deeper learning.
The day Randy left for college in 1961, I caught him running his finger along the spine of Volume "E"—the same one where he'd first discovered those elephant facts that had sparked his love of learning. Stan had already gone to military service, taking with him a broader understanding of the world that those encyclopedias had helped provide.
Years later, when Betty reclaimed the dining room for quieter pursuits, the encyclopedias remained in their place of honor. Occasionally, I'd see her pull down a volume to settle some question or pursue some interest, and I'd remember all the adventures those books had launched from my dining room table.
Those twenty volumes taught the boys more than facts—they taught them that answers existed, that knowledge was accessible, and that curiosity was always worth pursuing. In an age before the internet made information instant, those encyclopedias were magic: heavy, reliable, trustworthy magic that turned dinner table arguments into learning opportunities and homework drudgery into genuine discovery.
The World Book Encyclopedia may have lived in the dining room, but its adventures—along with those thrilling tales of real-world exploration—echoed through every corner of my structure, carried by three boys who learned that the best questions aren't the ones you can answer quickly, but the ones that lead to even better questions, and sometimes, to dreams of their own adventures in the wide world beyond my walls.
3) The Audio Overview, created by the Google Notebook AI tool is here. The Google NotebookLM Video Overview is below:
4) This AI material is historical fiction, since I don't have details of every day or every year in the lives of my own life or the lives of my ancestors. Does it matter that I am presenting these as seemingly real answers or conversations? I don't think so - because my purpose is to enable my descendants to know who their ancestors were and to help them understand the lives of their ancestors. The AI-generated responses are much more readable and creative than any response I have in my memory bank or that I can create.
5) This episode really happened and the names and events mentioned are real. The World Book volumes sat on our dining room bookshelves for a long time - I think they were still in the Point Loma house when my mother died in 2002.
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