Papa Jim’s Interview

I interviewed my grandfather, James Farrell Covington.  I interviewed him because I wanted to learn more about his life.  I chose him because he’s my favorite grandpa, and he tells the best stories.  I interviewed him from a Vonage phone and took notes. 

Q)  What was it like in fourth grade?

A)  In the sixth grade I wasn’t that nice, but in the fourth grade I was very nice.

When I was in fouth grade, it was like every single person was one person.  Everyone worked together. 

Q)  What was your fourth grade teacher like? 

A) She was a parent of his fellow student.  She was always dressed in a blue dress and her hair was always primped up very nice.  She was very nice, and I learned the most of all my classes in fourth grade. 

Q) Did you walk or drive to school?

A) I lived right across the street from his school.  So when I heard the bell, I started running to school! 

Q) How old were you when you got your drivers license?

A) Just fifteen.  I first drove when I was seven.  A friend of my dad’s told my dad that he saw his car driving with nobody in it.  And my dad told him, “That was my son driving around.”  I was too short, and even though I was driving, I just looked though the steering wheel to see where I was going. 

Q)  What were the toys like? 

A)  The toys were either metal or sport things that would get you active.  Once my friend rode on the top of my metal car (it wasn’t a real car), and I automatically stopped and my friend got cut on the leg and maybe got stitches. 

Q) What were the games like?

A) When I was in fourth grade, there were all the games that exist now, except for Wii and some of those electronic games.  All the sports they split teams and they picked me last because they thought I wasn’t a very good player.  In American football, I was picked last again, and I tried to catch the ball but I didn’t.  I tried and tried until I finally caught the ball. 

Q) Was there a lot of pollution?

A) There was not very much.  There was very clean air, and there wasn’t very much garbage or trash.  They didn’t know much about pollution.  I had a creek right by my neighborhood.  There were traintracks that went north and south and the train produced big black bunches of smoke. 

Q)  Was there global warming?

A)  No one ever heard of global warming then. 

Q)  How hot was it in the summer? 

A)  It was so hot we asked if we could take our shoes off so much because we were so hot.  My mom let us.  I lived in Mississippi.

Q)  How cold was it in the winter? 

A)  When I went to the store that was four blocks away, I came back to my dad’s store and saw my dad shivering it was so cold.