Mississippi 1

Listen to Mississippi 1, a man in his 60s from Memphis, Mississippi, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 60s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

PLACE OF BIRTH: Memphis, Mississippi (suburb of the larger Memphis, Tennessee)

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: retired teacher

EDUCATION: university degree

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject lived most of his life in the Memphis metropolitan area, most of which lies in Tennessee. He was living in Oxford, Mississippi, at the time of this interview.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Krista Scott

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in the largest city of Mississippi, which is Memphis [Tennessee], uh, although my family never moved to Memphis; Memphis moved out to us; we’d been there since the 1840s in the same area. Uhhh, I now live in Oxford, Mississippi. The reason for that is varied; I taught thirty-one years in, uh, Memphis city schools, I went to high school in Memphis and went to college here in Old Miss, fell in love with it; it’s God’s school. Uh, anyway I taught thirty-one years in, in the Memphis city schools and retired from there, and I when I heard an opening was here and got the opening and taught five years regular here and, uh, two years part-time here, so I’ve retired three times from teaching. I just retired from the last two years. First of all, Memphis has a barbecue contest, Memphis in May, and uh, I was on a team and we won the contest in ‘80 and ‘81. But first of all, Southern barbecue is always pork. Uh, secondly, the main thing is not the sauce, ever. Uh, most people think once you put barbecue sauce on something, you know from outside of this area that makes it barbecue. No, no, indeed it’s the cooking, and the cooking is long and painstaking. For instance, we cooked a whole hog. This takes fourteen hours. Uh, you baste it some as you go with — put a dry baste on it then, uh, vinegar and water to keep it from catching on fire. Uh, anyway, this, this is what we basically won the contest with, but it, its time-consuming. We b’–turn the whole hog one time, and one only. Uh, but, the it, most people out there their idea of barbecue is, you know heat something up and slap a little barbecue sauce on it or another idea is when you grill something outside. Well, grilling outside on a, on a common little grill is not barbecue; that’s done in fifteen, twenty minutes and, and barbecue is a very thorough, very slow cooking, the temperature; uh, doesn’t get up above about a hundred-and-sixty degrees within the meat when I’m barbecue-in. Uh, within the middle of the meat, and its, it’s the slowness of it that does it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jessica Tidd and Sandra Lindberg

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/04/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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