FOLKLORE
NEW YORK Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A Circumstances of Interview
STATE NEW YORK
NAME OF WORKER Terry Roth
ADDRESS 47 W. 69th St. New York
DATE Nov. 28, 1938
SUBJECT "STORIES OF A LOCAL TOBACCO ROAD"
1. Date and time of interview Nov. 22, 1938
2. Place of interview
Washington Square Park
3. Name and address of informant
"Just a guy named Elmer"
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
{Begin page}FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
FORM B Personal History of Informant
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Terry Roth
ADDRESS 47 W. 69th St.
DATE Nov. 28, 1938
SUBJECT STORIES 0F A LOCAL TOBACCO ROAD
1. Ancestry
Not given
The informant would not give any information as to his identity because "I live up there in Doodletown and these people are my neighbors and I wouldn't want to queer myself with them. Just say you got them from a guy named Elmer. You better change the name of the village, like instead of Doodletown call it Yankeetown or something, and change the name of the people. Don't call them the Junes and the Herberts, see what I mean?"
2. Place and date of birth
Middle West
3. Family
4. Places lived in, with dates
5. Education, with dates
High school and 3 years of college
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates
Writes for pulps
7. Special skills and interests
hunting, wood shopping, nature study
8. Community and religious activities
square dances
9. Description of informant Informant is about 36 years of age, height 6 feet, weight 175 pounds, purple black hair, keen blue eyes, nice strong face, a "Tom Dewey" moustache.
10. Other Points gained in interview
Likes to wear real rough clothing like the characters in his pulp stories; seems to enjoy whittling things down and has habit of whittling his clothing; cuts down all the brims of his hats, whittles his belts and pipe stems.
NEW YORK
FORM C Text of Interview (Unedited)
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Terry Roth
ADDRESS 47 W. 69th St. New York
DATE Nov. 28, 1938
SUBJECT "STORIES OF A LOCAL TOBACCO ROAD"
"Uncle Larry chopped wood for twenty five years, and at the end of that time he saved $5,000. One day a friend came to him and said. "What you ought to do is put your money in a bank." "What's a bank?" Uncle Larry asked him, so the friend explained that a bank had a strong vault where the money would be kept, and there would be policemen there to watch it. So Uncle Larry gave the friend the money and that was the last time he ever saw the friend or the money. So Uncle Larry began chopping wood again and at the end of another twenty five years he saved up $5,000 again. This time he put the money under a floor board in his shack. And you know what? When he went for the money later, it wasn't there. The mice ate it all up. So now Uncle Larry [doen't?] chop wood. He has a cabbage and potatoe patch and chickens. But the deer come down and eat his potatoes. So he doesn't sleep. He sits up all night long, watching the potatoes. When the kids pass by his house they say, "Stand up straight, put your hat on so Uncle Larry won't think you are a deer."
Uncle Larry belongs to the Badgers' which are a little higher than the Millers' how have more scandal in their family. Uncle is the renegade.
{Begin page no. 2}You musn't use the real names of the people or the village, 'cause they are my neighbors and I gotta keep on friendly terms with them. Sure I visit with them sometimes. I even go to their square dances. This was a funny one. One night I'm at the dance there, the caller is yelling, so I can't understand anything, but the dancers know what he says. One guy, he's enormous, about 6'5" a tough baby who smokes huge cigar, this call came with a change in the music, suddenly this guy dances up to me and takes me around the waist and dances me around. Sure, even up in the mountains they got 'em.
This is a local Tobacco Road sort of thing. Clarence Miller is living with his wife and babies and drives a truck. "Nic" Badger was sort of the boarder. Aside from this manage the wife and three babies and who is now pregnant again, and the boarder, there is also another couple and babies in the same house, surrounded by cars and boats, haystacks, garage full of everything so that you can't get anything in it, the porch full of auto parts and babies and wine presses, all on three quarters of an acre on a triangle on the side of the road. Jesus what a place. Oswald, the boarder, came home one night and found "Nic" sleeping with his wife. Now all this I got second hand, you know, rumor. Oswald says, "Nic" you are a bastard", and Nic answers, "Oswald, I don't like this." So Oswald taken the kids and goes back to his mother. "You know the kind of a girl you married in the first place." she says. "Go back to your bed and sleep in it." So Oswald goes back to Nic and says, "Let's forget about it for the time being, but don't let me see you with my wife any more." So Nic lives on peacefully and is very helpful and does things around. But lately, Oswald isn't going home, sleeping with the wife. That's the way things happen there.