Nicole PopeFollow

Date Collected

11-30-2017

Place item was collected

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Informant

John Pope

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

John Pope is my father. He was born in the Salt Lake area of Utah but spent most of his growing up years in Vernal, Utah where his father transferred while working for Wheeler Machinery. He lived on a small hobby farm with his parents and siblings from the time he was 6 years old until he was 16. He then moved to Las Vegas with his family for the last half of high school. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with my mother and younger siblings. He is 45 years old. He comes from a Mormon background and is still very religious, but he has a great sense of humor. He is the 3rd child out of 6 siblings and has always been known by his siblings as the tease. He likes to make people laugh especially when they are feeling down.

Context

I interviewed my father over the phone in a series of phone calls because he still lives in New Mexico and I’m away for college. I would call and ask him to tell a story and then we would end the call so that I could check my recording. I had previously had trouble with recording so I wanted to make sure to capture everything. Every Time I picked up the phone he would answer the phone with some sort of joke before going on to tell me about a story or saying that he had. The atmosphere was really laid back because he and I talk on the phone fairly regularly and he was telling me about one of his common phrases and where it came from. He usually only uses the phrase when he is with family or one of his close friends. He often has humorous sayings that he uses to try and get people to laugh. Teasing is one of the ways that my father shows love.

Text

[Me]: So do you want to tell me the food on a stick?

[John]: Well that started from our friends actually where I started saying it was from it was after you know we went over to our friends the Masciantoni’s we went there for dinner and they had kabobs and john masciantoni said "everything I put on a stick you know my kids will like it. So you put meat and vegetables on a stick and cook it they like it." so then I just started joking about food on you know stick or breakfast on a stick pancakes, toast, scrambled eggs or sometimes even talking about putting tuna on a stick things that aren't really practical [laughs]

[Me]: You used to come up with weird food combinations to put on a stick didn't you?

[John]: Yea I'd come up with different things and sometimes I'd just a lot of times it was just to be silly and see if I could get you to laugh or get people to laugh in the family. and a lot of times people would say Dad! [laughs] no one really liked my ideas so [laughs]

Texture

When telling me about one of his favorite phrase/joke he speaks in a lighthearted tone. After he’s been talking for a while he starts to laugh heartily at his own joke especially when he remembers times when he made me and my siblings laugh when we were kids. He spoke familiarly because he and I are fairly close and this was the second or third phrase or story he had related to me during our interview. He’d gotten a little more comfortable and was falling into his regular speech pattern.

Course

Introduction to Folklore/English 2210

Instructor

Dr. Lynne S. McNeill

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G3: Written Rhymes, Poetry, and Sayings

EAD Number

4.0.9

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