Oklahoma Three - Text
This recording, made in August 1999 by Rena Cook at Oklahoma State University, is of a man in his mid twenties. He is a hair stylist, and was born, raised and still resides in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He talks about his plans for the land he inherited and reads the Rainbow Passage at the end of the recording. Recording is 2:31 in length.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I’m from Stillwater Oklahoma. Uh, born and raised here. I was born in 1971. I’m a hairstylist. I work at Rex Seven Hair Salon and, uh, been doin’ hair about nine years. Actually, it was my great-grandfather’s land and, um, my great-grandfather willed it to his son, which was my grandfather. Then my mother inherited it when he passed on. And then she said, “Well, before I go, I’ll just give you the land—if you can get it divided up and survey it and uh”… So anyway, long story short, we got twenty-six acres out of an eighty and it’s four hundred and forty feet wide by half a mile long and, uh, it’s not the best piece of property ‘cause I’m only gonna use about ten acres of it because that would be the front part of the property ‘cause it’s such a narrow strip to begin with and, uh… About, uh, three or four months ago I went out, got excited and put four nine-foot creosote poles and built a gate. I got excited, concreted ‘em in, and, uh they were right by a big oak tree and a pecan tree and, uh, I thought it’d be great to drive through it, be my driveway, and it’d be windin’ through the trees and it’d be really nice. Well, I realized that it’s cheaper if your road is straight at ninety dollars an hour with a bulldozer than it’s curving through a bunch of trees, so I’ve gotta move it about a hundred feet to the north where I previously have it set now and it’s gonna- so that’s kinda got me stopped on any, uh, future work on it cause it’s time, you know, to build the gate. If you’re not careful, you can really spend a lot of money before you even break ground, you know, because your mind gets to runnin: well, you can do this, well, I need to do that, and I gotta build a fence, gotta get it surveyed, you have to have water, septic. Electric line from the road to where I wanna put my house is about a six hundred feet distance from the road to where I want to put the foundation and that’s two dollars a foot to run your lines. Well, that’s a lot of money. So, you know, there’s all kinds of things that, you know, or you can just go out there and have a picnic and enjoy…
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY KATIE WHALLEY 6 MAY, 2008, UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF PROFESSOR SANDRA LINDBERG