The "Be Here" storytelling project, in conjunction with the MuseWeb Foundation and the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and other contributors, is an effort to gather and distribute stories about community life and places across the United States.

Listen to some of our favorite stories, gathered from people--young and old--across the United States.

Best of Be Here Stories and Stories from Main Street

Recorded in Alpena, Michigan

"My mother's grandparents came to this country from Serbia, and on the way from Serbia, they were given a sack lunch and in the lunch was a sandwich and other items but along with that was a banana, and they didn't know they had to peel their banana, or not peeling their banana, they just took a bite, and it was so sour they'd throw them overboard, so what she told me that's been passed through the years is there were bananas floating behind the boat as far as the eye could see because they didn't want to eat those bananas."

Part of the "Stories from Main Street" project--an effort to collect stories about small-town life across the United States. The initial project was the brainchild of the Smithsonian's "Museum on Main Street" program, an initiative that brings traveling exhibitions about subjects of national importance to small towns across America. This content is also included in the "Be Here: Main Street" initiative. "Be Here: Main Street" is a program created by the MuseWeb Foundation, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

Asset ID: 7012

Photo by Elena. Flickr Creative Commons. Attribution-Non-Commercial. (CC BY-NC 2.0)https://www.flickr.com/photos/elli19/1634004906/in/photolist-3uoGJo-8CFKWc-85vsE-9VScNr-5F3FAY-8FgYoF-5F3KNE-EE31w-5iu4gQ-orb9xv-483BmU-5CdMR4-5EYpF2-5EYmUM-6QRgpz-2Jnpr4-x2HAe-5F3K

Floating Bananas, Alpena, Michigan

Recorded in Alpena, Michigan

"I come from Charleston, South Carolina--a city that's rich with tradition and history. My mom was an excellent cook, sort of home-style cook, good Southern style. She did not believe in using recipes, and whenever I tried to get her to show me how to cook some of her best recipes, it was very frustrating because I'd say 'how many cups?', 'how many tablespoons?', and she'd say, 'well, you just put in enough til it looks right or it feels right,' and that was crazy making for me.

But, my mom was excellent at making shrimp creole, and one story about that is . . . you know, shrimp are expensive, so when she didn't have quite enough shrimp for all the people who were at the table, she would just compensate for that by adding lots and lots of hot pepper or hot sauce, and when I was courting my husband, he came and loved shrimp creole, but she made it so hot, that it would just bring tears to his eyes. He said it was so good though that he would put with the hot so it was so, so delicious. My mom made great biscuits; she made so many good things that were homestyle, and I miss her and wish I could cook half as well as she did."

Part of the "Stories from Main Street" project--an effort to collect stories about small-town life across the United States. The initial project was the brainchild of the Smithsonian's "Museum on Main Street" program, an initiative that brings traveling exhibitions about subjects of national importance to small towns across America. This content is also included in the "Be Here: Main Street" initiative. "Be Here: Main Street" is a program created by the MuseWeb Foundation, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

Asset ID: 7114

Photo by Longhorn Nation. Flickr Creative Commons. Attribution-Non-Commercial. (CC BY-NC 2.0)https://www.flickr.com/photos/15715455@N05/8566330747/in/photolist-e3YFFH-dMpqez-c54PVE-gqHpmZ-FVhTzg-rESj5-9TW6wV-tp7AJ-eniSry-9WyGSE-66SHDh-emTdXa-jMtPV-7cNgCf-7cJmpr-em

Mom's Shrimp Creole, Charleston, South Carolina

What's a traditional recipe without love?

"Love and tomatoes--the main ingredients in recipes that were handed down from generation to generation in my hometown on Main Street in Dobbs Ferry, New York. There were a lot of times when people would get together for celebrations, actually very often, there were weddings, celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, a child's first tooth, anything just to get together. The Italian women could really cook, and yes, they did share their recipes. Most of their recipes from Main Street in Dobb's Ferry, New York, that they handed down, they contained two ingredients almost in every recipe except for the cookies and desserts, and those two ingredients would be love and tomatoes, definitely."

This story was collected in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. #bHereMainSt

Asset ID: 7483

Photo by Simon Q. Flickr Creative Commons. Attribution Non-Commercial. (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/simononly/5056890126/in/photolist-8GRTfN-apGAds-6PSVfG-8iCKD7-6XMsy6-drBnei-psrwq-anaJTX-6276Fj-WpyUa-aYQBiv-7ez14t-arVFSD-vJmPR-9hHbB5-9eqwVy-83zUUG

Love And Tomatoes, Dobbs Ferry, New York

Recorded in Lawson, Missouri

"My mother worked as a cook in a jail for several years, and she passed on some very interesting recipes. And one of them is cookies that have ground browned hamburger in them as a ... You would almost think that it is ground raisins, in it."

"Wow". 

"And the other favorite recipe that we passed on is a chocolate cake that, when you eat it, you think has coconut in it, but really it is sauerkraut. And putting it in with the chocolate sweetens it. And so ... Then my mother wrote these recipes down, and some from my grandmother and her grandmother, and wrote them down and made a cook book for me and my sister, and then I have made it for some of my older granddaughters.  So we're passed this down from probably four or five ... Almost five generations, now ... Passed some of these recipes down.. 

"That's cool."

"Yes."

Part of the "Stories from Main Street" project--an effort to collect stories about small-town life across the United States. The initial project was the brainchild of the Smithsonian's "Museum on Main Street" program, an initiative that brings traveling exhibitions about subjects of national importance to small towns across America. This content is also included in the "Be Here: Main Street" initiative. "Be Here: Main Street" is a program created by the MuseWeb Foundation, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

Asset ID: 7372

Photo by Monique Massiah. Flickr Creative Commons. Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0). https://www.flickr.com/photos/moniquemassiah/9123115330/in/photolist-eUbmkU-6NeazY-3TGG8r-7p3CqM-qhu3z4-4cZCuu-D1NEt-5ChpjQ-7BtxTb-7p7uFh-4hmaTo-5HtMFr-5L393G-uJdja-7J8gAG-aZQ5it-6wFrB-qhu4i8-57eRzE-fi9deh-5qU4Ve-5JZAfm-drNPZb-5kKd-oHiSeb-3gE3Wn-qinqH9-5dNKrM-9fv1Nv-rHJm-7hFyGJ-ph3SFW-9fv1U8-czbf-4qN6Qs-btGaeB-9zbxCG-7Xvf2i-mB5TZ-ajUQcW-4H6yxX-9eoycN-9sTjh3-3K87Q5-JCc6f-dCtyiT-5LdhYB-stNbN2-9fy9Cy-7p3Cgz

Jailhouse Cookies

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "Water/Ways" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, their waterways, and their towns. 

"My relationship with water is a bit of a contradiction. I’m originally from an island in the Caribbean famous for its beautiful beaches and water. As a plane flies into the airport, you can see the water getting lighter as it gets closer to the coast and it kind of glows. It’s very beautiful. My grandmother’s house is located very near to the beach. Basically, you’re on the road and you cross the street and you’re on the beach, so at night, you can hear the waves crashing. Despite all of this, I didn’t learn to swim until about seven years ago. As much as I loved being in the water, I was always terrified of having water cover my face. Even as an adult, sometimes in the shower, as water covered my face there was a moment of panic. Additionally, my grandmother had a very fearful relationship with water as well. She is traditionally from the countryside of Barbados—the idea that water was dangerous; you had to be very careful--That water and fire take away everything. 

So, I’d go to the beach and I’d get in the water, and I’d splash around, but I never really learned how to swim officially. So, I moved to the United States, and I spent my summers in Barbados. Even if I was here in New Jersey. We didn’t go to the beach in New Jersey because why would you go to the beach in New Jersey if you knew what the beach in Barbados was like—we were very snobby about our water, our beach choices. Years past and I moved to D.C. about eight years ago, and I was talking to a co-worker of mine, and his mother was Cuban, being from the Caribbean, and I mentioned that I didn’t know how to swim, and I kind of looked at me and he laughed. Katrina, such a stereotype. Okay, let’s make a deal, if you teach me how to swim, I’ll feed you. He was someone in early 20s, I’d just feed him. So, we did. We went to the local pool in Silver Spring, and he taught me how to swim. 

It was a very liberating experience because I knew I loved being in the water, near the water. It’s very soothing, you know I can splash my hands in the water and just lose time. But the ability to move through the water—to feel weightless—is something you just cannot describe. I remember the first time he got me into the deep end; I did my doggie paddle or my elementary breaststroke back and forth across the pool. It was exciting. One afternoon, he couldn’t meet me, so I just went by myself. I figured there were lifeguards if anything goes wrong, someone will notice! The shallow end was crowded with kids and their families. I just went back and forth across the deep end, and I just felt this really liberating, free, kind of weightless grin on my face . . . this idea of moving through water. 

There’s something very peaceful, very calm about it that is very hypnotic. So, even though I came to it late in life, I can say that water really is a very beautiful, very pleasing, very soothing sort of thing. This idea of growing up on an island and being surrounded by this beautiful landscape, this beautiful water, and just being able to enjoy even if I wasn’t swimming, walking near it or hearing it crash on the beach at night and standing and letting the waves role over your toes and to feel the sand, or standing and looking out across the water, you can see it getting a deeper blue the farther out you go, but there is something quite magical about water. I think that’s why so many people are drawn to water and so many communities are concerned and fearful about the future of their waterways because it’s something that I think is instinctively and innately a part of our make-up that we crave the connection to the water around us."

Asset ID: 3915

Learning to Swim: The Beauty of Water

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, their waterways, and their towns, and their histories.

"What traditional music is celebrated in your town? I suppose it depends on who you grow up with . . . Just growing up in the house and listening to the radio, it was really old country music on the 8-track stereo so old George Jones and Hank Williams Senior sometimes Hank Junior, Marty Robbins . . .  really great stuff. In church, definitely was a whole bunch of Southern Baptist hymnals, which funnily enough also kind of merged with Bluegrass which is kind of the thing that a banjo player would play at our church. 
During the 4th of July celebration, they would have bluegrass pick offs, with bluegrass banjos and they would have cloggers too, which were basically like the Lords of the Dance, except they are in those dressers made out of tablecloths, and they were hoping around on their clogging shoes. 

So, it was kind of like the whole soundtrack to 'Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?', which is fantastic except when you’re 16, and you don’t want to live in that city, and you’ve been listening to INXS and Poison [laughs], all you want to do is go play some Iron Maiden and jam and drive a car real fast, but looking back as an adult it was pretty neat . . .”

Photo of "New Harmonies" traveling exhibition. Courtesy Museum on Main Street, Smithsonian Institution.

Asset ID: 7125

Growing Up with Bluegrass In South Georgia

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, histories and traditions--in this case traditional music in local communities.

"We are in the small town of Indiantown, Florida, a small community in Martin County that has a large population of Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants, and I’m here with Isalora, who is going to sing us “La Puerta es Cristo” which is a song of praise in . . . one of the indigenous dialects of Guatemalans." [Singing]

Asset ID: 7140

Photo of Guatemala-1958 by Dennis Jarvis. Flickr Creative Commons. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://www.flickr.com/photos/archer10/2213796675/in/photolist-4nChCc-a4j5eJ-49VL8a-4nFsEd-3fbS5E-izYDM2-4nNERF-4nGgZs-DkT6R-3aspoF-4bNsKe-4nBpTg-35tNDY-3puY5Z-XHtK9-4nCeR4-dkZ93w-6V69Cb-4GaY3f-DCsQw-4U9Z5L-3KNCQz-pRaFZZ-2fBm9C-2Qh82i-i6FQ4g-a3NY2q-6SZJ2k-4nBpgk-4bNsHr-4i1rmZ-3awUEJ-izKkjz-4nBnWv-475tLv-iVoYjS-i6GmcF-4TJEBV-izKaSu-9TUTeA-4nBouV-qy2GM-6H4XbW-4nBpcc-aaxzRv-9dPDNu-3pzwj5-35peMr-izYFMK-kvAZkG

Songs of Native People from Indiantown, Florida

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "Journey Stories" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences.

"My favorite vacation journey story must have been about three years ago, I jumped on my bicycle and decided to do a journey, a trip up the coast of California from Anaheim, California, to San Luis Obispo. Took me about three days. I was all by myself, just my bicycle and my backpack, no cell phone, and a credit card just in case I needed to purchase anything and some cash. It was the most exciting journey, vacation, mini-vacation that I’ve ever had. It was exhilarating. It was just me on the road with my bicycle maps and following these bicycle trails leading me up from Orange County to San Luis Obispo. And I would say that’s probably been my favorite vacation journey story. This is Kevin Cabrera from the Heritage Museum of Orange County. I am the director of collections, curator at the museum."

Asset ID: 6939

Curator of Heritage Museum of Orange County Speaking about Journeys

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. #bHereMainSt

"We lived in Las Animas, Colorado, a little town of about 2,000 people. Our recreation in the summer was softball. We had never heard of slow pitch, so it was fast pitch, and a lot of us played every night we could by going to the local park and waiting until the men’s teams—we were kids in our teen years—came by and needed an extra player or two to fill out the roster. We would call home, jump in the car or the pick-up truck with our spikes and our gloves and go off to places like Eads and LaHunta, Swink and Sand Creek, and Rocky Ford and play softball—maybe two games even. But we were playing with the guys. They would use us to fill out the roster. We sometimes got back late at night, but that was okay. We never paid anything and as far as I know, no one ever got hurt. But that was one of our main recreations was fast-pitched softball played with grown men. "

Asset ID: 7355

Photo of "Softball" by Phillip LeConte. Flickr Creative Commons. Attribution Non-Commercial. https://www.flickr.com/photos/phillipleconte/4709922399/in/photolist-8bczuB-8bcziV-8bcuWR-8bfMwu-8bfKkb-8bcznT-84voBE-8bfQe3-8bczQB-8bcxXv-8bcvV2-8bcAXT-8bcz44-8bcwDD

Fast-Pitch Softball in Las Animas, Colorado

Recorded in Morenci, Michigan

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "Hometown Team: How Sports Shape America" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. 

Teacher: Okay, 4th graders, I’m going to ask you a question. What do you like best about sporting events? 
Student 1: I like to play them because I like to run and I like to play, and I like to watch them too because I like to see what they do. 
Student 2: What I like the best is . . . it gets you active, and I love living a healthy life. 
Student 3: I like watching them because . . . to see what team would win. 
Student 4: I like to watch them . . . I like to see what team would win.
Teacher: Did any of you guys watch the World Series last night?
Student 1: I didn’t.
Student 2: I didn’t either.
Student 3: I don’t have cable.
Student 4: I did not watch it.
Teacher: Does anyone know what type of history was made in the World Series last night?
Student 1: No.
Student 2: No, not really. 
Student 3: I’m not sure.
Teacher: What teams were in the World Series last night?
Student 1: Ohio?
Student 2: Oh, Michigan and Michigan State? Is that what you’re talking about?
Teacher: I’m talking about Chicago and Cleveland!

Asset ID: 6850

4th Graders Talk about Sports in Morenci, Michigan

Violet Spolarich of Palisade, Minnesota (population 167) shares her story about growing up on the Willow River and Mississippi, and her feelings about the need to protect the watershed where she lives from the encroachment of businesses that threaten the health and safety of land, water, wildlife, and people who live in her community.

Violet Spolarich on fighting pipelines and protecting water in her rural community

Recorded in Stillwater, Oklahoma

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "Journey Stories" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. 

What's your favorite memory about living in a small town?

“I live in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and I like living in a small town because it’s easy to see your friends. And, also, it’s a very good place to grow up because it’s safe, and it’s happy, and it’s quiet. Here’s my dad. I live in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and I also enjoy living in a small town. It’s a great place to raise a family.”

Asset ID: 6872

A Kids' Take on Growing up in Stillwater, Oklahoma

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "The Way We Worked" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. 

“I was a telephone operator in Chanute, Kansas, in 1960 and ’61 when they actually went dial. And, it was very interesting, and I did night relief, so I worked from midnight to six in the morning by myself, and you ran the whole town’s telephone service, and it was the old days where you plugged in a number and said ‘number, please,’ and they gave you a number and you rang it. I also made long distance calls at night. There weren’t a lot but there were some, and that was quite interesting, living in a small town. I did that my senior year until we went dial. It was wonderful. You met a lot of people you felt like you knew even though you didn’t. Thank you.”

Asset ID: 7094


"Detail of Telephone Switchboard" photo by Kim Rollins. Flickr Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial. https://www.flickr.com/photos/cirocco/8512344560/in/photolist-dYcZto-eb6ThT-pZyenK-5BaNkN-eb6TdK-4zxCPi-bHVf1H-ebcvJw-bw8sBX-dhNAH4-gfm1vR-fqxZkF-qWgmkq-ebcuYQ-buTPuw-ae9GXQ-gQAVFq-7y6Tjr-7pFJzD-4xsska-D1Juu4-psjtXr-wUDEas-wEmocq-aDgfCe-8Reb3T-e4ctEY-5qcLy-dYcZnj-64kBTh-fA3qxW-a9HWeg-7f1S3v-8xyhGy-7V6s9K-5J7cG4-bu9CsV-btNgeX-m5wTs-5DUdQH-4pwySm-8ivHzQ-6Potjt-565RZt-bnHBXo-57TUiU-Ftn9-9j2enw-p4J28y-bn8mTn

Being a Telephone Operator in Chanute, Kansas

This story was collected in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. 

"I didn't grow up in a small town. I moved to a small town in 2003, Temple, New Hampshire. In December of 2008, there was an ice storm that knocked out power to the entire town at one point, and it was the rallying of everybody in town to help each other out that really showed me what small town life was all about. 

The elementary school opened up, and the principal cooked for days and opened up the building for hot showers and for hot food and a place to get warm. A local contractor put a generator on the back of his truck and drove around giving free power so people could heat up their house, heat up their water, and cook a hot meal. 

The fire department went door to door checking on people, and if there was an elderly couple or an elderly person living somewhere, they made sure their neighbors were checking on them to make sure they were okay. My wife and I, at times, were moved to tears over the care and the outpouring of aid from person to person in this town. I may not have been born in a small town, but I'm a small town person now, and I can't imagine living anywhere else."

Asset ID: 3852

Kindness and Caring in Temple, New Hampshire

This story was collected in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. 

"As a high school student in the, this would have been in the late sixties or early seventies, I worked summers at the local newspaper in Waterville, Maine. I was an inserter. What an inserter is is a job that probably doesn't even exist today. It's the person that used to put the sections of the newspaper together. You do this night after night for three or four hours and I think we got paid about .85 cents an hour and you had the roughest sort of people ever that you could imagine. These were the people that probably couldn't find work anywhere else mixed in with kids that want to go on to college, so you had quite a collaboration of folks. It was a rough group.

I remember one day that somebody actually threw somebody through a window because they got upset with them. The same person a couple of weeks later they tied up and set out in the mail sack with newspapers of somewhere else. You kind of tried to keep to yourself and wanted to make sure that you didn't get yourself in any trouble because you knew that the ramifications might not be so good. It was a good learning experience that you realize that all different types of people, so it is something that has always stuck with me for the rest of my life."

Photo by Heather Shelton

Asset ID: 7204

First Job: Being a Newspaper Inserter in Waterboro, Maine

This story was collected in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition "Journey Stories" by the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. 

"Well, the freedoms that our country have provided for those near and far, have meant something to me personally. My grandfather Giuseppe Fanooki from Cassiano Lucca, Italy traveled away from his family on a ship through Ellis Island at about 1913. He was about ... Well, maybe it was 1911. He was about 13 years old, and he was coming to meet two older brothers who had already settled to farm in the Southern San Joaquin Valley. He started farming, but first he drove a mule train for Miller and [Lux?], which was the largest land owner in the area. 

After a couple of years, he started farming, and to this day, his sons and grandsons continue to farm in the Southern San Joaquin Valley in Bakersfield, McFarland, Delano, Wasco and Arvin. And the farming is almost 100 years of farming in the Southern San Joaquin Valley. So traveling, and having the freedoms that this country provided to work hard, make an established home and legacy for your family has been a true blessing for our family, and America is still the land of opportunity."

Asset ID: 6924

"Railroad" by Thomas. Flickr Creative Commons. Attribution Non-Commercial. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pouchin/15476412836/in/photolist-pzAEm5-hVoirh-oWpgQu-9Y9Wp8-S1GT7-6XhWMD-dbrQkd-7TX3sS-oiEDWi-7cFtmE-oYGYQZ-9HdS5Y-abeC2b-hrsugz-rFhbcT-s8HBqU-ct9c4o-sb1uJF-83LkjE-niMU6B-7cFt2G-4YsRtZ-cy8xAQ-nd1AKa-7cFsPS-dbrT71-cFrEqd-6iVfZK-oQriKj-9AHpjT-5k5EES-8mmeLh-8nSRd6-re1oUJ-o9mn3T-8PCTaN-puapdh-ncjKa8-ssS1mi-mxRXzC-dMvhqr-aAK4aw-4UniZB-aCDNhc-f2dr5r-qYR4Zz-5Nz197-FibCGV-oJrRpG-jQmqin

The Importance of our Freedom to Travel, Huntington Beach, California

Recorded near Eagle River, Alaska.

This snapshot was gathered in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution and its "Stories from Main Street" initiative. The project is intended to capture Americans' impressions and stories about their small-town and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal experiences, and cultural traditions.

"Oh, my. I don't even know where to begin actually. Actually, you guys won't believe this, but it's true. I live in Eagle River, Alaska, way up there. It's really cool up here. It's kind of cold. Right now it's about 15 degrees below. Yeah. It's kind of cold up here. In summer, it gets to about 26 degrees. It's really fun up here. We like to play this game at school, it's called Splish Splash. There are two people take one water balloon full of water, and they pass it in between each other until it pops. And you do this with a whole bunch of people, and whoever does not get their balloon popped and has it staying whole for the very last seconds wins and gets a prize of some sort like a dollar or a whistle or something like that.

But yeah, we have a lot of time in school. You can do snow machining, fishing, berry picking. You can hike mountains. The good thing about living in the valley is you could do a full whole 360 and always see mountains. It's really awesome up here. You guys should come up here sometime. It's really fun up here. It may be cold, so might wanna buy some snow pants once you get up. Yeah, I gotta go."

Asset ID: 7423

Kid's Perspective on Eagle River, Alaska

A short excerpt from a longer interview I did with activist Sally Hausken, a resident of Detroit Lakes (Becker County), Minnesota, and the catalyst of a grassroots movement to preserve a unique parcel of land now known as "Sucker Creek Preserve." Sally got involved with environmental activism and organizing only after she retired to her family's lake cabin. A self-taught native plant expert, and now a grassroots community organizer, Sally shares the story behind her efforts to protect a place she loves and the waters that flow through it, so that it can be enjoyed by all for generations to come.

Sally Hausken on the story behind Sucker Creek Preserve

Recorded in Orange Mound, Tennessee

This story was collected in conjunction with the Museum on Main Street program at the Smithsonian Institution. It is part of the "Be Here: Main Street" collection, intended to capture Americans' stories about their neighborhoods, waterways, towns, traditions, and personal experiences. #bHereMainSt

"Living in a small town can teach you different things. It gives you the opportunity to connect with your fellow community members, because you have no choice. It's like a very large family, living in a small community, you go down the street, you recognize somebody you see, you say hello, because you have a relationship with that individual. If ever there's someone that comes into your town that you don't know, you make the true effort to get to know them, because you want them to be included in your family.

Living in a small town would be a great experience for everybody. It teaches you how to respect others, and to understand what's going on in different people's lives. I admire the fact that I live in a small community."

Asset ID: 7457

Welcoming Strangers in a Small Town, Orange Mound, Tennessee

How does our pace change the way we see our place? Have you ever slowed down, and if so, what did you notice?

Lowell Deede is a Detroit Lakes resident. When he retired, he started walking for exercise. He decided to walk every county road in Becker County, and began noticing things about how water moves, and what happens to water on land. In this story, originally gathered for the We Are Water MN project, Lowell talks about how this experience led him to become a Citizen Water Quality monitor with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

Lowell Deede on slowing down and seeing water in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota

The "Be Here" storytelling project, in conjunction the Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum, and the Smithsonian's Stories from Main Street initiative, is an effort to gather and distribute stories about community life and places across the United States. The first version of this project began in 2011 with the Stories from Main Street storytelling initiative,  the brainchild of the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street (MoMS) team. Today, the Peale is partnering with Museum on Main Street to continue the storytelling campaign, often connected thematically to MoMS' traveling exhibitions about topics like work history, waterways, food culture, traditional music, hometown sports, etc. Anyone with an interest in life in America’s towns and communities can add their own experiences to the archive.

The "Be Here" program is an effort to diversify the voices of American cultural stories, stories especially about places that are important to people. To leave a story, download the "Be Here Stories" app on the App Store. Learn more at https://www.thepealecenter.org/bherebmore/

Best of Be Here Stories and Stories from Main Street

Be Here Stories | Stories from Main Street