I discovered Interview Project through David Deubel.
Self-study activity:
Watch Tommie Holliday summarise his life story in four minutes. Just put your feet up and try to understand as much as possible.
Watch the video clip again. What does the following refer to?
1953
14
a butcher
6 years
a machine gun
16 months
wilderness
You can check the answers by reading the transcript below.
My name’s Tommie Holliday, I live in Kingman, Arizona, and I’m 54, and what was the other thing?
I was born in 1953 in Houston, Texas. I guess I came from a poor family with an alcoholic father in a poor neighborhood. I was put on my own at 14, kicked out the house to take care of myself so I packed bag and left when I was 14 years old, and I got a job and did pretty good and just got it going on.
I started out, my first job was working at a skating rink, cleaning up after sessions. Then I got a job Blowing Rock Wood Insulations in hen houses, made a pretty good living doing that, and then eventually I got a job at Saint Regis paper company, where I became an operator, and I worked that job till I was 17, and then I went to work for the Kroger meat company, and learnt how to be a butcher, so started making some pretty good of money.
Shit man, later, I just got myself a later big fat zero. I ain’t got a life, I ain’t doing nothing. I’m just hanging out.
My girlfriend, the love of my life, her boyfriend before me, we’d been dating for like 6 years, but this boyfriend kept following her around, she was camping out in the desert, she moved like twenty times to get away from him, and he told me three days before she killed him that if he didn’t go back (if she didn’t go back) and be with him that he was going to kill her and her kids. Well, I didn’t have a chance to see her before he went to see her but apparently he ran at her with an axe, she had a machine gun, she killed him.
I’ve got 16 months left before I can see her and we’re gonna get married and get the hell out of Arizona and have a life together.
I like to take her and go to Montana, I really like to be in the wilderness away from people and society, and all these idiots, you know. All these people are out to cause me trouble and get me in trouble and stuff. That’s my hopes and dreams, heck yeah man, I get my baby and be in Montana, that would be it, I would be the happiest man on this earth, yeah.
