Missouri 20

Listen to Missouri 20, a 49-year-old man from Hannibal, Missouri, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 49

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1953

PLACE OF BIRTH: Owatonna, Minnesota

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: stonemason and stone carver

EDUCATION: N/A

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

Although he was born in Minnesota, the subject was raised from the age of 2 in Hannibal, Missouri. He lived for a short time in California but was living in Lawrence, Kansas, at the time of this interview.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject might be stereotypically described as a hillbilly, judging by his speech.  He has much of a self proclaimed “twang” in his voice, as well as a very tight mouth from which he makes his vowels. His calm demeanor is even evident in his recording. Stories of his boyhood on the river, in Mark Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, make him seem completely honest and give one the impression that he’d do anything for you.

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

RECORDED BY: Ryan Butts (under the supervision of Paul Meier)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/04/2002

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well, I was born in uh, Minnesota, a town of Owatonna; that’s, uh, just south of the twin cities. My dad worked for a publishing company, and he got transferred when I was real young, ’bout 2 years old to, uh Hannibal, Missouri, which was, uh Mark Twain’s boyhood home. And, uh, it’s a small town right along the Mississippi River, and, uh, I lived there until I was uh, oh about 14 or 15 years old, but, uh, it was the main place that I grew up at. And, uh, since then I, uh, we lived for just a short time in California but then moved to, uh, Topeka, Kansas, and I’ve more or less lived in Kansas for the rest of my life. Uh, now I live in Lawrence, and uh, Lawrence, Kansas, and I’m a … I’ve always worked construction; uh, I, uh, right now I’m a stonemason and a stone carver. When I was a kid, uh, the, the Mississippi River, uh, was, uh, ya know, it’s kind of a treacherous river, uh, particularly, uh, on that stretch of it, and it’s real wide and the current’s real, real strong, and, uh, but there was an area north of the little town of Hannibal that they called “The Bay.” And, it really wasn’t a bay of the, of the river, I don’t think. It was more, uh, oxbow lakes and, and backwater of, of the river, and there would be these big pools that would be, you know, five or six acres of water, and then they’d be connected by canals. And, uh, because the water wasn’t very deep and there was no current in there, our parents would ‘llow us to go up there and fool around, and, uh, there was this, uh, friends of ours, that uh, my brother and I had some friends, and their dad had a construction company and his construction shop was right near this bay, and so whenever we needed to build something we’d go in there and there’d be somebody that, you know, could like do welding for us, and stuff like that, ya know? And, uh, so we’d get things built, ya know, go-carts and stuff like that. One of the things we built was this, uh, raft put on the bay and, uh, we, uh, would have, uh, like a paddle wheel on it. And the paddle wheel was, uh, run by pulleys on a … we’d have a lawnmower engine and so we could putt-putt around and go up and down the thing, ya know, and go fishin’ and mostly it just was to fool around, ya know, to go from here to there, and that was about all we did ya know; we’d … it had a little house on it, and we’d climb up onto the house and, ya know, leap off into the water and all that stuff.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Ryan Butts (under the supervision of Paul Meier)

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

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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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

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