Tennessee Two - Text
Caucasian male, born 1951 from Madison, TN. Has always lived in the same region.
Reads Comma Gets A Cure and then recalls a Christmas memory.
Recorded 6-8-01by Patricia Childs; edited by Shawn M. Muller. Running time 00:03:39
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
The story is, back when I was livin’ at home ‘ith my mother n’ father, n’ I had two brothers—Mike n’ Pat—an’ on Christmas morning, early Christmas morning, we would wake up early an’ we knew Mother an’ Daddy was in the livin’ room getting’ everything ready for us to come in, but Daddy would hold us—he would keep on tellin’ us, “John, don’t come in yet—it’s—it’s not time—you gotta stay right there.” So’d we’d wait another five or ten minutes and he’d keep on sayin’, “Naw, we’re not ready yet,” and this would go on, I guess, it seemed like hours, but it’s probably about a half hour or so, an’, uh, finally we wouldn’t be able to stand it, n’ we were just dyin’ to get in there to look at the Christmas presents, an’ so finally he would—he would call us n’ say, “Now y’all c’n come on in.” So we’d run in there, run down the hall n’, n’ look under the Christmas tree, an’ it would always be somethin’ special for us, but the time that he would keep us from comin’ in there n’ keep us excited, that was a stor—that’s the time I really remember as bein’ a special part of Christmas.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY SANDRA LINDBERG 22 APRIL, 2008.