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. I 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 'Sunday Morning Sing-Alongs'" and provided some song titles to "help" the AI tool replay my memories.
Here is the story:
Sunday mornings in the mid-1950s had their own special rhythm at 2119 30th Street, and I treasured them above all other times. While the rest of the neighborhood slept in or prepared for church, my master bedroom became a concert hall where the most joyous music wasn't coming from the radio – it was coming from the hearts of the family I sheltered.
It always started the same way. Fred would get up first, padding quietly to the kitchen in his slippers to start the coffee. But instead of his usual weekday rush, he'd return to the bedroom with that mischievous smile Betty had fallen in love with years ago. The radio would click on, and he'd adjust the dial until he found the perfect station – one that played the popular songs that had everyone humming during the week.
"Time for our concert," he'd announce softly, and soon the whole family would migrate to the master bedroom like moths drawn to musical flame.
Betty would settle against the headboard with baby Scott in her arms after he arrived in November of '55, her voice already humming along to whatever tune filled my walls with perfect pitch. Randy, now twelve but still small, would sprawl across the foot of the bed with the casual confidence of a boy becoming a teenager, while eight-year-old Stan bounced with barely contained energy, waiting for a song he recognized.
When "Rag Mop" came clearly through the radio speakers, the magic began. Fred's voice, surprisingly melodious for an insurance man, would lead off, and soon my bedroom walls vibrated with voices in enthusiastic, if not always perfectly tuned, harmony. Betty's perfect pitch provided the musical foundation, while Randy – bless his heart – couldn't carry a tune in a bucket but sang with the full-throated confidence of a twelve-year-old who didn't care. Stan made up for any musical shortcomings with pure volume and dramatic flair.
"Young Love" brought out Betty's sweetest soprano, and I'd watch Fred's eyes go soft as he listened to his wife sing about romance while holding their newest baby. The tender moments were always balanced by the rousing choruses of "The Yellow Rose of Texas," which had Stan marching around the room like a tiny soldier, or "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," which sent both boys into elaborate frontier adventures – Randy now too sophisticated for outright marching but still tapping his foot and grinning, while Stan acted out every verse with dramatic gestures that made everyone laugh.
But it was "Sixteen Tons" that really got the family going. Fred would deepen his voice dramatically for the verses, while Betty's perfect pitch soared through the harmonies. Randy would attempt the bass notes with his changing voice, creating sounds that were more enthusiasm than melody, while Stan would pretend to swing a pickaxe and march in circles, completely caught up in the song's driving rhythm.
When "Hot Diggity" bounced from the radio, the bedroom became a dance floor. Betty would sway with Scott, her voice hitting every note perfectly. Fred would do his version of sophisticated moves that made the boys giggle, Randy would attempt some twelve-year-old version of cool dancing, and Stan would bounce around with uninhibited eight-year-old energy, usually ending up collapsed in laughter on the bed.
The quieter moments came with songs like "Que Sera Sera." Betty's voice would turn thoughtful as she sang about whatever will be, will be, and I could feel the contentment settling over my master bedroom like a warm blanket. These were the moments when the family seemed most complete, most at peace with themselves and each other.
The radio DJ became an unwitting conductor of our family orchestra. When a new hit would debut, I'd feel the excitement ripple through the bedroom as everyone tried to catch the words on first listen. By the second or third Sunday, they'd have it mastered, adding their own family flair to whatever was popular across America.
Betty often surprised everyone with her knowledge of lyrics. While Fred might stumble over a verse, she'd sail through with perfect recall, having absorbed every word while doing dishes or folding laundry during the week. "How do you remember all that?" Randy would ask, and Betty would just smile mysteriously.
These musical Sundays created their own tradition within our household routine. The boys would wake up asking, "Is it singing Sunday?" and Fred would make sure to have the radio tuned to just the right station before the family gathered. Even neighbors occasionally mentioned hearing our "concerts" through my windows, though they always said it with smiles.
As Scott grew old enough to contribute his own baby sounds to the mix, the sing-alongs evolved. His gurgling and cooing became part of the percussion section, and Betty would bounce him gently to the rhythm while the rest of the family provided the melody.
The Sunday morning sing-alongs lasted until the boys grew older and began sleeping later, drawn away by the natural progression of childhood into adolescence. But for those precious years in the mid-1950s, my master bedroom hosted a weekly celebration of family joy that needed no special occasion, no holiday, no excuse beyond the simple pleasure of voices raised together in song.
I held those melodies in my walls long after the last note faded, treasuring the memory of four voices – and later five – creating harmony not just in music, but in life itself. The popular songs of the era became the soundtrack to our family's happiness, each tune forever linked in my memory to the sight of the people I loved most, gathered together in perfect Sunday morning contentment.
3) The Audio Overview, created by the Google Notebook AI tool is here. (Note that a Blogger writer cannot provide an audio file.)
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 over a period of time and the names and events mentioned are real. The radio was a big part of our lives in the 1950s - besides Sunday mornings, we listened to the San Diego Padres baseball games and the news almost every day, and before we got a television, we listened to the serial radio programs. Stan and I loved The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and other cowboy radio shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But Sunday mornings were special for all of us. It's funny how we recall certain otherwise unimportant events like this, but it was a special family time before breakfast.
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