Camille Jones
Period 2
An Interview with Sue Smith Sue Smith is a neighbor of mine whom I’ve known for many years. She was born September 23, 1939 and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina with nine brothers and one sister. Day to day life for Sue as a teenager included waking up at five in the morning, milking the 120 cows her family owned on their dairy farm, eating breakfast, and then going to school. For Sue, school was an enjoyment. She liked English and history and liked to hang out with her friends. I asked Sue what social group she had fit into growing up. She told me that she was considered “a popular girl” but informed me that what constituted as “popular” in her time was nothing like it is now. Back then, popular meant one was “respectful, someone who always obeyed the rules, and people who were just flat out nice and polite.” I found this interesting because in my opinion, the people who are considered popular now are generally more rebellious and show little respect towards the people who are older than them. I think this is because kids today have much more freedom. Their rules are less strict and they have less responsibility. This wasn’t the case for Sue; she was already cooking, cleaning, and sewing at a very young age. Sue didn’t like her home economics class because what she was learning in that class, she was already doing at home. Back then women were expected to take care of the house. Today, kids are more encouraged to get a good education in order to get a good job, whereas in Sue’s time, it wasn’t a necessity for women to get a job. Sue told me that, for her father, the idea of going to college was very silly and he felt like it would be a waste of money. Sue also told me about the kind of things she liked to do for fun while growing up. She told me that she liked to meet up with her friends at a drive-in restaurant called Honey’s or she liked to watch movies at the drive-in theatre with her boyfriend. Every weekend, all the teens mixed at the movies or hung out at Honey’s, driving around and talking. Sue told me that everyone talked to everyone else and that the drive-in and Honey’s were the “places to be.” Sue also enjoyed going to church youth group events such as weenie roasts. She even told me that she had her first kiss at a weenie roast while playing spin-the-bottle (but only on the cheek). Sue’s activities as a teenager do not differ that much from what most teenagers today like to do for fun: going to the movies and restaurants with friends. Sue had a lot of friends growing up but she felt closest to her best friend Patsy. She and Patsy would go to each other’s houses and would help each other with whatever work needed to be done that day. Patsy helped Sue with her farm work and Sue helped Patsy take care of the foster children that Patsy’s mother took in. They were very loyal friends to each other; they