Kentucky One - Text
White female, 17, life-long resident of Paducah, Kentucky, USA. Dialect is medium strong, and is a good example of the local speech. Subject talks about the notorious school shooting at Heath High School and reads a poem she composed about the tragedy. Recording quality poor. Recorded by Paul Meier, Paducah, KY, USA, 1999. Running time 00:03:25.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in Albion County, Tennessee and then shortly after moved to Kentucky, lived there all my life. Um, I attend Reidland High School. I’ll be a senior this August. Afterwards, I plan to go to community college then transfer to a state college after two years. I wanna be a English teacher. I don’t attend church as often as I should. (Laughs) We’re not regular members. I work at the Country Club of Paducah. I work in the tennis center. Um, I don’t do much--I get paid to watch TV, pretty much. Um, I have to serve drinks and food whenever someone wants ’em. They don’t pay with cash; they have to fill out a ticket and they get billed at the end of the month. Um, I’m in charge of the tennis courts. I hafta take the water jugs and make sure they have plenty water and ice, and fill ’em up at nighttime. I haveta sweep the clay courts, um, make sure all the tennis balls are picked up and all the trash cans are empty. Each year we have a Paducah summer festival and they get--a lot of the time they get acts that are just new on the scene and then after they come to Paducah they hit it big for some reason. And one year, about three years ago, we had 98º and no one had ever heard of ’em and now they’re humongous. And this year we’re havin’ people like The Moffets and Mulberry Lane and Lonestar. And, uh, a friend of ours runs it, so we get to meet anybody we want that’s in it. (Laughs) Ah, pretty much everybody in Paducah comes down to it one night. This year it’s gonna be ten days long.
Major topic in the news lately has been the school shootings that have been happening across the country and Paducah has been one--it was one of the very first along with Pearl, Mississippi, and although I didn’t go to Heath High School, I had a couple of friends that went there. They weren’t injured. They didn’t even really get to see it; they were in different parts of the school. But it affected them along with everyone else, and of course the worst one that we’ve had is the Columbine one, um, but af—couple months after the Heath High School one, I wrote a poem called “What Has Happened to Our Society.” It says:
Life’s insanity is beginning to fade
Day by day new graves are being made
What has happened to our society?
Children are killing others amongst their own age
We are losing all control, sending us into a mad rage
Birth, childhood, teen years, adulthood, retirement, death
Is how our lives should be
Birth, childhood, teen years, killing, jail
A lifetime of not being free
What has happened to our society?
Parents wonder what they did wrong
Why can’t our kids just get along?
Did we fail to succeed?
Is there any way our children can be freed?
Freed from the pressures, gangs, and drugs
And welcomed home each day with a warm, loving hug
What has happened to our society?
Is the world coming to an end?
Or are we being killed before we have a chance to begin?