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 twenty family history stories from my house's point of view, based on the information in the attached document."
Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 provided twenty 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 Great Train Crash Championships.'"
Here is the Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 story (lightly edited):
The Great Train Crash Championships
By the early 1960s, my sun room and living room had been transformed into one of the most elaborate indoor railroad systems in all of San Diego. What had started as a simple Christmas gift years earlier had evolved into a magnificent obsession that connected two of my main rooms with ribbons of gleaming track, creating a circuit that would have impressed even the most demanding railroad engineer.
Randy, now seventeen and approaching the dignity of near-adulthood, might have been expected to outgrow such childish pursuits. Instead, he had become the chief engineer and master strategist of what the family had dubbed "The Great Train Crash Championships." Stan, fourteen and full of competitive fire, served as his worthy adversary and co-conspirator. Little Scott, at five years old, was the enthusiastic spectator whose job it was to retrieve derailed cars and provide dramatic sound effects.
The Lionel O-gauge train set had grown far beyond its humble beginnings. Birthday money, Christmas gifts, and carefully saved allowances had all been sacrificed to the gods of locomotion at Frank's Train Store uptown, where Fred would drive the boys on special expeditions that had become family traditions. These pilgrimages to the shrine of all things model railroad resulted in an ever-expanding collection of engines, cars, track sections, and most importantly, the dual control systems that made the championships possible.
"Today," Randy would announce with the gravity of a sports broadcaster, "we determine the ultimate champion of controlled demolition!" The rules were elegantly simple: two trains, two operators, multiple track crossings, and the goal of engineering the most spectacular collision possible while avoiding accidental derailments that didn't count toward the official score.
The track layout was a masterpiece of strategic engineering that took up a lot of my floor space. The main circuit ran from the sun room, through the living room, and back again, but Randy and Stan had added multiple spurs, crossings, and switching points that created opportunities for tactical maneuvering. The key intersections were positioned where both operators could see them clearly, allowing for the split-second timing that separated glorious victory from ignominious defeat.
Randy's approach to the championships was methodical and calculated. He would study the track layout like a military strategist, noting the optimal speeds for different sections, the timing required to reach intersections, and the physics of collision angles that produced the most satisfying crashes. His train handling was smooth and precise, building up speed gradually, then timing his approach to intersections with mathematical precision.
Stan, true to his competitive nature, preferred a more aggressive strategy. He would send his trains hurtling around the circuit at maximum speed, relying on quick reflexes and intuitive timing to achieve his crashes. His approach produced more spectacular failures, but when he succeeded, his collisions were legendary in their violence and drama.
"Gentlemen, start your engines!" Fred would call out, entering into the spirit of the competition. Betty would pause in her afternoon activities to watch the proceedings, shaking her head with amused tolerance, and quietly sayting "Boys will be boys" at the elaborate ritual her sons had created around the deliberate destruction of expensive toy trains.
The trains themselves had developed distinct personalities over the years. Randy favored a sleek diesel engine that he'd named "The Torpedo" for its streamlined efficiency. Stan preferred a powerful steam locomotive he called "The Thunderbolt" that seemed to embody his more dramatic approach to railroad warfare. Each engine pulled a carefully set of freight cars, passenger cars, and specialty pieces that had been acquired through years of dedicated collecting, but no more than four cars at one time.
Little Scott served as both audience and cleanup crew, his five-year-old enthusiasm adding an extra layer of excitement to the proceedings. "Crash! Boom! Bang!" he would shout as the trains approached their intersection points, his sound effects providing a soundtrack that enhanced the drama considerably. When spectacular derailments occurred, Scott would rush to the scene like a railroad disaster expert, carefully gathering up scattered cars and reporting on the "damage" with five-year-old expertise.
The championships developed their own elaborate scoring system, with points awarded for the spectacle of the crash, the number of cars derailed, and the distance the wreckage traveled from the point of impact. Randy, with his systematic approach to everything, maintained detailed statistics in a notebook, tracking wins and losses with the same dedication he'd once brought to his dice baseball games.
"Direct hit on the Pennsylvania Railroad!" Stan would shout as his locomotive plowed into Randy's train at the main crossing near the living room couch. The sound of metal against metal, the sight of tiny cars tumbling across my floors, and the boys' enthusiastic cheers created a chaos that somehow felt perfectly natural in my accommodating rooms.
Betty's reactions to these deliberately engineered disasters were studies in maternal patience. "Boys, please be careful with those trains," she would call from the kitchen, though everyone knew she was more concerned about my floors and furniture than about the trains themselves. The locomotives and cars were built to withstand considerably more abuse than the family was willing to inflict, despite the dramatic nature of their collision experiments.
The train store expeditions became legendary family outings. Fred would load the boys into the car for trips uptown to the hobby shop that catered to serious railroad enthusiasts. These were serious shopping missions where birthday money and allowance savings were converted into new pieces of rolling stock, additional track sections, and the specialized equipment that kept the championship series running smoothly.
"What do you think, Dad?" Randy would ask, examining a new locomotive with the intensity of a professional buyer. "Does it have enough power to handle the grade coming out of the sun room?" Fred would offer his opinion with the seriousness the question deserved, understanding that these technical discussions were an important part of the hobby's educational value.
Stan's purchasing decisions were more impulsive but equally passionate. He would fall in love with a particular freight car or passenger coach based on its color scheme or the railroad line it represented, adding it to his collection without regard for its strategic value in the crash championships. His approach led to a more eclectic and colorful train consist, while Randy's careful planning resulted in prototypically accurate railroad operations.
The track layout evolved constantly as new sections were added and existing routes were modified to create fresh challenges. What had once been a simple oval became an intricate network of mainlines, sidings, and crossover points that would have done credit to a real railroad system. The boys spent hours planning modifications, testing new configurations, and fine-tuning the geometry to optimize crash potential.
"We need a better approach angle at the north crossing," Randy would observe, studying the track arrangement with engineering precision. "If we add a curve here and extend this straight section, we can get better collision velocities." Stan would nod seriously, though his interest was less in the technical aspects and more in the promise of bigger and better crashes.
Scott's role evolved as he grew more familiar with the proceedings. He became the official crash inspector, carefully examining each collision scene and providing detailed reports on the effectiveness of various impact strategies. "That one made the caboose fly really far!" he would announce with five-year-old authority, his assessments carrying surprising weight in the post-crash analysis sessions.
The sound of trains running around my rooms became part of the daily soundtrack of 2119 30th Street. The rhythmic clicking of wheels on track, the electrical hum of the transformers, and the occasional spectacular crash created an audio environment that was both soothing and exciting. Betty learned to recognize the subtle changes in sound that indicated a crash was imminent, timing her kitchen activities to avoid the moments of maximum chaos.
My hardwood floors bore the gentle scars of years of railroad operations – tiny scratches from derailed cars, worn spots where tracks had been temporarily attached, and the occasional paint chip from particularly enthusiastic crashes. But these marks were badges of honor, evidence of the serious play that had occupied my rooms during some of the family's happiest years.
The Great Train Crash Championships represented more than just elaborate play – they were lessons in physics, engineering, strategy, and friendly competition. Randy learned about timing, precision, and systematic analysis. Stan developed his reflexes and competitive instincts. Scott absorbed lessons about cause and effect, teamwork, and the joy of shared enthusiasm.
As the boys grew older, the championships gradually evolved and eventually faded, but the track was brought out and laid out across my floors for years, a testament to the elaborate hobby that had brought such joy and excitement to the family. Every night the tracks would be broken up into sections and put under the boys beds so that the living room and sun room could be used. The trains themselves became treasured possessions, carefully stored and occasionally brought out for nostalgic runs around the familiar circuits.
In my sun room and living room, where the Great Train Crash Championships once ruled supreme, I held the echoes of those spectacular collisions, the cheers of victory, and the sounds of boys learning that the best games are the ones you create for yourself, with rules that make sense only to the players and outcomes that matter only because of the fun involved in achieving them.
3) The Audio Overview of this story, created by the Google Notebook AI tool is here.
4) The Google NotebookLM Video Overview is below:
5) 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.
6) These events really happened over a period of time and the names and events mentioned are real. We boys looked forward to rainy weekends and gloomy summer days to drag out the train set, set up the tracks, and play for hours. One of my daughters had two sons, so the full train set was given to that family. Unfortunately, they never played with it. I wonder if it still works?
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