space.template.Greer

INTERVIEW Tessa Greer Nana- Is the sound ok? Tessa- Yeah it’s good Nana- It’s getting picked up? Tessa- So, what is your name? Nana- Sammy Crawford Greer Tessa- And you grew up where? Nana- In Arkansas, on a farm outside of Arkadelphia-in southwest Arkansas Tessa- And how long did you live there? Nana- I lived there until I went to college. Tessa- Oh cool.   Nana- Yeah. Lived in just two different houses. Was born in one house, and then my parents built a new house when I was fours years old, and uhh we moved in it and I remember when we got electricity. Tessa- Really?   Nana- I think it, I think I was five then, and I think maybe we lived in that new house a year before we had electricity.   Tessa- That’s awesome.   Nana- So all the lights and and refrigerators, and then I remember when we got our first biiiiig floor freezer -- Tessa- Like one of the big chest ones? Nana- Mmm? Tessa- Like one of the big chest ones? Nana- Yeah, yeah because so we lived on a farm so we had all this food- Tessa- Oh nice. Nana- That we froze-vegetables and fruit and meat and all sorts of things like that. Tessa- And you just lived on the farm until you went to college? Same town?   Nana- Yeah yeah but you know we never had a telephone during all the time my 18 years, so 17 years on the farm, there were no telephones. Tessa- Looking back its got to be a looooot different now adays. Nana- Isn’t that amazing given the way we use telephones now? Tessa- I know, I would not be able to function without mine. Nana- Yeah and uhh……my first four years at school…..I had the same teacher and there were four grades in one room. Tessa- Really? How’d that work out?   Nana- Yeah yeah and when I was in fourth grade I would help the teacher teach the first graders. Tessa- Oh geeze. Nana- So uhh another thing you don’t see anymore are those schools. Tessa- That’s for sure. Nana- In high school we rode a bus to town to high school. (2min 10sec) Tessa-Awsome Nana-But uhh ohhh Tessa-So how did, like how many people were in your school? Like in each, in each grade like in the four grades Nana-Ohhh just a handful you know maybe 10 in a grade or even fewer then that with four classes in a grade Tessa-Compared to now where there will be like 300 in a grade Nana-yeah yeah Tessa-Geeze that weird Nana-Yeah because it was just the kids that lived right around there that went to that school, right right sround there Tessa-And now people will be going across the country Nana-They don’t have those country schools anymore Tessa-Yeah Nana-So estitset….comparing then and now, the fir……st tiiiime I ever went away from hoooome…..I I probally was in the eighth grade…maybe 9th grade, went away to camp in the mountains one summer ahh because the uhh, you didn’t fly at all and uhh there were trains aaahhh but uhh this was uhh we hopped on a school bus to camp so I did go to camp every summer but didn’t travel like you all did at all. Tessa-Yeah. Nana-My first travel was when I was a….junior in college in the summer. Tessa-Woah. Nana-And I took a job in…..Washington state. Tessa-So it wasn’t really traveling it was. Nana-Well I had to get there. (3.48)   Tessa-well ok fair enough Nana-i took the train all the way from, went from arkansas to little rock, and then it changed-I don’t mean in little rock-I mean I went to little rock to Chicago and then changed trains and went all the way across it, we woke up in the morning and-it had the littler sleeper car, a little a little bed that they make- and I woke up in the morning and looked out the window and there was all was black jungle-we were going along the Columbia river. Tessa-yeah I don’t take trains anymore…I’ve never even been on a train in the US. Nana- yeah….and I was sitting up in uhh on the trip, sitting across from uhh some man suhh I could tell very well that he was from east coast, and I was reading uhh….a novel….called budenbrokes, which is a german novel by Thomas mann. And we had read something by him in college and I its, it’s a verrrrrrrry heavy reading. And this man was just amazed, that this country girl, you know the little Arkansas accenTessa-and he was from Harvard, he was a Harvard professor I found ouTessa-that I was reading that big fat book. Tessa-that must have taken him aback. Nana-yeah. So he had lots of questions when he, when he realized what was going on there. Tessa-so what, what from like your middle school, highschool age, what is the most drastic change you can tell from then too now? Nana- ahhhh ok   Tessa-like is it is it really technology rrrr it is…. Nana-well of course the technology, you know, everything from cellphones to computors is a totally different world. Tessa-mmhmm Nana-i was, for example I was editor of of our highschool newspaper, but we ran it all on a ditto machine. Tessa-oh really? The old- Nana-no a memeograph machine, one step up from ditto. But you know there there were noooo electrical powered machines, we spend hours after school running off our newspapers. Tessa-that’s interesting. Nana-and you know it was a good sized highschool and but and and uhh uhh we had a journalism claaaass but but all we had was typewriters and you would have to type those memo-do you know what a memo machine is? Tessa-no Nana-it it’s a waxy thing you type into and its cuts the letter and if you make a typo you have to stop and you have to put a little…..a little umm…..stuff on it to fill in the letter. Hah hah so it was laborious. Tessa-no backspace. Nana-and then we made the headlines for the newspaper with with stencils and we’d cut cut them into that memo stuff. Tessa-how did it copy it over? Like ihh ihh is that is that the kinda like the stamp for the whole paper? How did it copy it back over onto other, other pages? Nana- well we uhh you put youyou put the headlines you’d type the stories you’d fill this page with this kind of, not a carbon at all but it would be like a carbon on a typewriter. And then you you clamped it on a drum and you’d turn and the paper would turn through and it would print.