I have a grandpa who is a pretty badass kind of guy. Throughout my life he has told me stories of his life, all of which were quite interesting-- possibly because he is an amazing story teller. Due to both personal interest and academic interest I've decided to interview him.
Sadly, I regret to say that I don't have a specific topic picked out. My grandpa has suffered a stroke and he's short term memory is shot, making it difficult to hold a conversation with him. While his earlier memories are perfectly fine, it will be difficult to get him to stay focused. Because of that I don't want to narrow my focus too much, in case he decides that he doesn't find the subject interesting.
But here are my vague ideas of what I am planning on asking him, and hopefully one will pan out.
Idea Number One:
My grandpa was in the Vietnam War. I always thought wars were interesting, especially from a first person perspective. Reading about the most recent war in the papers and watching it on television--it's nothing compared to being told first hand what happened. I haven't heard a lot of stories from the war from my grandpa, but I can see clearly emotion that is never portrayed by a news reporter.
Idea Number Two:
My grandpa has told me few stories of the industries he has worked in. They are much different than what they are now, the most notable change for me being the safety codes.
Idea Number Three:
Farming! Farming was one of my grandpa's dearest passions when he was younger. He talks about that often.
Idea Number Four:
Just generally the changing of the rules in society. I've heard quite a few good stories of my grandpa kicking ass and taken names, not necessarily on a legal level. While my grandpa always did things to help people out, I'm not so sure today's society would see it that way. It would be interesting to look into those changes.
Alright, I'm done making your eyes bleed. Thank you for the read!
These all look like interesting options. Of the four, I was most intrigued by #'s 2 and 4. The only problem with two is that first-hand war memories are often difficult for the person to talk about, and are not necessarily things they want to remember. Taking into account your grandfather's stroke, I think this might be a difficult topic to get him to discuss. Four is really interesting, although you would definitely have to narrow your scope at some point. Still, I think it would make a colorful topic and it'd be interesting to see where you would go with it.
ReplyDeleteI kind of like idea number four. That one might open some doors for your secondary research too as I'm sure there are some scholarly articles out there on the topic.
ReplyDeleteIdea number three, however, sounds like you might get the best info from your grandfather. Also plenty of data out there for secondary research. The problem you may face here might be in limiting the scope of the topic.
For the sake of the interview, you could combine the two and just have a conversation with him about his life. I bet your topic might take care of itself.
What a great source, though!
Go for your Grandpa. Just do an autobiography and capture his ramblings, stories, and experiences in factories and many shapes in history. I agree that he does sound like a badass and it would be interesting as well to try to capture the stroke aspect of his personality now and see if you can somewhat capture the essence of what it means to have a stroke these days. Maybe include some sort of timeline and how he grew up with every significant portion of history.
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