Maryland Two - Text
Subject is white, a 40+ mother of three and step-mother to two. She is employed as a housekeeper at Western Maryland College, Westminster, MD, and has lived in the area all her life. Born on a farm in Howard County (adjacent to Baltimore) her family moved to Baltimore city when she was a young child. Her dialect is typical of the Baltimore area. Note the pronunciation of Baltimore ("Bal-mor") and the lack of plosive endings. This interview was recorded by Elizabeth van den Berg on 2/22/2000 and edited by Paul Meier on 2/29/2000. Running time 00:03:04.
TRANSCRIPTION
All right, I grew-- I s-- I-- I-- I was born on a farm in Howard County. I lived there for the first four years of my life. An’ I had-- (uh) my mom was 19 an’ she had three kids. So I have two older brothers, and I have a younger sister ’t’s four years younger than me. So the boys were three years apart. Each of us are a year apart, the three of us, an’ then four years later, a sister was born. So it’s four of us.
An’ then we moved to another part of Howard County when I was four. We lived there about a year, an’ then my parents bought a house in Baltimore. My dad was a mechanic, auto mechanic. An’ then he worked the farm, but when he didn’t wanna work the farm any more he went into the mechanic business full-time, Chevrolet cars. So, we’ll belong now.
So then we moved to Baltimore when I was-- I think I was seven when we moved there, an’ it was just a normal-- We walked everywhere. You could walk anywhere. Or you could get a bus. My mother worked downtown at the Hecht Company, so she would get the bus, and we’d go down there on Saturdays shoppin’ at Hecht’s. …called it Hecht’s then; that shows you my age. An’ (um) that was fun, but we just basically went to school, teen center, that kind o’ stuff.
Vacations weren’t real exciting because we usually just went to places like Gettysburg, which was a big trip when you lived in Baltimore. [Interviewer: That’s great.] Now I’m getting’ ready to move that way it’s really comical. [Interviewer laughs] ’n that’s where my husband Al is from-- [From Gettysburg?] from-- is-- Yes, Gettysburg, P A. He never toured Gettysburg till I met him, an’ then I made him go on tours. I said, “You don’t live in Gettysburg and not tour it.”
But I was like (um) bus ride. You could get on the bus and be downtown, where it’s [the] Inner Harbor now but it wasn’t there years ago [Uh-huh], an’ like ten minutes, you were right down there. I was tryin’ to think, ’cause like nothin’ really exciting, exciting happened, other than when I went to the Bulmer Civic Center and saw Elvis Presley, which was like my highlight. [Noise from interviewer] Do you like ’im? [I love him.] Oh, okay. [Both laugh] ’Cause it was wonderful. An’ it was before he got sick an’ the drugs took over an’ everything, so he looked good and it was like proba’ly the most-- That was proba’ly one of the most exciting things besides having three kids that I’ve ever done. Because we were real gutsy at that age. I think I was like 17, so we went out-- we followed their limo from downtown Baltimore out to the airport. An’ I lived ten minutes from Bal-- BWI Airport, so we used to hang out there. [At the airport?] Yes, that’s our hangout. Saturday night didn’t cost anything. An’ we used to go there, an’ I-- an’ I met like Brooks Robinson there, from the Baltimore Orioles. I sat with him while he was waitin’ for a plane. ’Cause my friends bet I wouldn’t have the nerve to go up to him, and you don’t bet me anything. At that age, you didn’t bet me anything.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, March 28, 2008