Maryland One - Text
Subject One is a twenty year old student at a small liberal arts college in Northern Maryland. He has had a few theatre classes, but has made no effort to correct his dialect. His brother (subject two), is a freshman (eighteen years old) at the same school. Both young men grew up in a small town on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where little has changed in the last 50 years. The big excitement on the weekends is still to "Roll the Bowl", meaning drive around the parking lot of the town's bowling alley. Although their mother is not from the area, the father and grandfather grew up there on the property where they still live. Although subject one seems to think his accent is not as pronounced as his brother's, it is still the interviewer's impression that it is actually more authentic to the region. Recorded by Elizabeth van den Berg on 10/14/99, and edited by Shawn M. Muller on 11/29/99. Recording length 00:03:33.
TRANSCRIPTION
Ryan: What do we like to eat for diner? Ah, my favourite dish is probably meat loaf. What do you think?
Andy: Ah, mine is, ah, when Ryan, ah, cooks spaghetti probably.
Ryan: Spaghetti’s good too. Lot of meat, we like the meat. Good ol’…
Andy: We like the…we like good old beef.
Ryan: Yeah, ah, crab cakes are good too. I like crabs a lot.
Andy: Yeah
Ryan: Yeah. What else? A lot of chicken on the eastern shore.
Andy: All kinds of chicken.
Ryan: So, like to eat the chicken. Um, let’s see. And what else? Oh, you know, um, the Water Fowl Festival that they have? Every, ah, November they have a Water Fowl Festival where it’s all about hunting ducks and geese and things like that. And always have, you know, ducks or geese to eat.
Andy: Ducks or geese.
Ryan: Um, we also have oyster, um, shells that they get out of the water. So, I don’t know, what else? You know, we live across from a farm, over there on the eastern shore in the town of Easton. Well, there’s about 10,000 people there. And, ah…what else? We live on Chapel Road.
Andy: Along with the rest of our family.
Ryan: Yeah. Um, I have a lot of cousins.
Andy: On the, on the same section of the road
Ryan: Yeah, uh, kinda. The family tree worked in a way that Popop was, ah—my father’s father, Popop and Momom, um, they had the farm there. And as the children grew up, and they worked on the farm their entire lives growing up, they would give them the property, which to build the houses on, um, in the surrounding area. And so, many of our first cousins are on the same road, actually. Um…
Andy: Living on the same property that they’ve always lived on their whole life.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah. I’ve pretty much lived in one, yeah Andy’s lived in the house for his entire life and I’ve lived in there as long as I can remember.
Andy: Yeah, I’ve lived in the same house all my life.
Ryan: Um, what else? Ah, yeah. Pretty strong family relations there. We have a lot of cousins. A lot of trouble to get into I guess, on the backroads. Um…
[What kind of trouble?]
Ryan: Oh I don’t know, ah, I don’t know if I can describe that. It might be incriminating.
Andy: Yeah
Ryan: Um, well you know, ah, you ever been cow tipping?
Andy: Cow tipping all the time, you just go.
Ryan: No, I’ve never really been cow tipping, but I hear a tale of it a lot. No, um, I don’t know. I can’t think of any other big local events besides, you know, there’s always…
Andy: Water Fowl.
Ryan: Water Fowl Festival. Everybody goes through our town on the way to the beach. Um, breeze through there to Ocean City, Maryland. Ah, we’re kind of a pit stop on the way there, but the town itself is kinda old.
Transcribed by Mitchell Kelly, January 15, 2008