Making Personal Connections

Honest Interpretations

From time to time, I get scheduled to work in the Implements Dealership at Living History Farms. It isn't as awesome as the print shop, or the broom maker shop, at least, initially, but it has a lot of neat things in there. I read through the Site Manual through a month and a half ago, and I don't get many chances to work there so I feel the need to read it when I get a break in visitors to dig a little deeper. This time around I found a excerpt mentioning that the Implements dealer has the ability to interpret the entire farming cycle in one room, whereas the farm sites are stuck interpreting the season, here and now. Also the farms aren't always open during the times when plowing or planting is done, or it may have happened on Monday but visiting on Tuesday. The Dealership has plowing, planting, harrowing, cultivating, reaping/mowing, threshing/separating, milling, and storage tools; a full cycle under one roof. The Implement Dealer interpreter can guide a curious life learner into options for low budget hand tools to glitzy pinstriped horse drawn labor saving machines. The colors of the tools do get occasional mention. The machines are restored to their original colors, or to colors that were typical of the time. I try to make the connection to the modern day by comparing it to cars. A maker makes a certain type of car that all have the same options. But would it sell if it was metal colored, or rusty brown? No! They come in all colors! The primary sources show that the implement dealers then knew farmers would buy an implement if it was green if the farmer liked green, even if a blue or a red one did the exact same thing. Pin-striping and stencil work were also common on them, think of it as being a SE or LE model.

US Dragoon c. 1840's Fort Scott NHP in 2013

But I want to get to the title of the post, "Making Personal Connection". It's very important to make a personal connection with your visitor when they come to your interpretive station and have them make a personal connection to your content. Many of the people coming into the Dealership are farmers or former farmers, or formerly raised on a farm. Many point out the things they had or one of their relatives had or something similar sitting in the shed or someplace. They are interested in it because they have a personal connection. Had I visited a year ago, without any farming background to my name, I might have spent 30 seconds browsing through. If I was feeling adventurous, maybe ask a few questions. I didn't have a personal connection then. Making a personal connection with a visitor to the content can be challenging, particularly if they are young and have no farm experience. I can usually point out a few things there that have a relation to the things they have or do today and I try to be as hands-on as much as possible, especially with a lot of "Don't sit on the machinery" signs around. If nothing else, doing some hands on stuff, making a few modern life applications, and friendly banter is enough to make that connection.

However, the real reason I sat down to write this post is the personal connection I have to the content. When I was doing stationed interpretation at Fort Scott National Historic Site, I didn't have much of a personal connection to the US Dragoons, nor the Guardhouse where I was stationed.
I chose it for the novelty of it. It seemed their male interpreters had chosen to do infantry stationed interpretations and no one had done a Dragoon one for a while and it was another opportunity to learn something new. But there was no personal connection, I didn't have an ancestor ride with them, at least so far as I know.

Reading up on the latest at the Dealership

I didn't have a personal connection with the Implement Dealership either, or so I thought. I had posted a picture of myself in the office at a quiet moment onto a social media site. Mostly for my historically minded friends to appreciate it. However, one of my uncles responded to say that my great- great-grandfather would be proud of me. Honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about and so inquired why the case may be. He sent me a photo of my great-great-grandfather's implement store  and grain elevator in Ramona, South Dakota circa 1913.

The Store is the first on the left of the top photo

I had seen that photo before, but did not have a connection with it. I've been to Ramona once, in third grade, and farming was then foreign to me. So it faded from memory probably written about in a sixth grade family history project, also long forgotten. However, now I have a personal connection to the work that I do at the Implements Dealership. It's now a family thing and a emotional thing as well. Without making the connection too dramatic, it is like being a city kid all your life and getting a job working as a blacksmith at Knott's Berry Farm because the pay was kinda better and finding out your family in a distant state in a distant time were blacksmiths too. It gives an extra spring in your step, I think, or motivation at the very least to going to work if there is a connection to it. Interpretation is about making connections, on some level. There are personal connections with your content at a emotional level, personal connections with your visitors on a human level, and making connections with the visitor with the content to their lives. Make the connections.