In this interview, two sisters share a story about the time an ice cream truck came to their rural neighborhood in Ohio. When the ice cream truck came their mother gave them money to get some even though she was an abusive alcoholic. Amy later shares that she no longer was seeing ice cream trucks so she called and asked and they said they only came for events. Amy decided to schedule an ice cream truck for her birthday and let all the kids in her neighborhood get free ice cream. The sisters said that “there’s nothing like ice cream to a kid, but there’s also nothing like an unexpected treat to a poor kid.” This stuck with me because I feel like people sometimes take what they have for granted and don’t realize that something so small to some people can mean so much to other people. The story opens up with some light peaceful music that incorporates a guitar. and then quickly jumps into the host introducing what this story is going to be about. I found this interesting because instead of the interviewer asking questions like they typically do, they just gave an introduction. This did make the storyteller seem very powerful because they knew exactly what they wanted to share with the interviewer and audience. Throughout the rest of the story, you never heard the interviewer speak, it was just Amy telling the story. I also found it interesting that even though two sisters were in the interview, only one of them spoke. Amy’s tone of voice throughout the interview was very clear which made the story easy to listen to.
In this interview, Mary tells the story of her grandmother and how she was a midwife and matriarch that was always there for not just her family but also her community during the Civil War. I found it interesting that at the beginning of the interview, it started off with an introduction of the story being told and would also do that in random parts of the interview. I thought this was the interviewer but then realized it was a different voice once the interviewer began to ask some questions. Music was also played until about 45 seconds in. I was surprised that this was happening that far into the interview because it made it difficult to focus on what Mary was saying. The audio was not as clear in this interview compared to the other interview. It seemed that Amy was almost louder than Mary. I thought this was interesting because the interviews were only done a couple of months apart so I would’ve thought the audio quality would’ve been the same. I also noticed that the pace of the first interview was much faster. I think the fact that each interview opened and closed with music gave the viewers time to think about the stories. The way that each interview was edited was also very similar. I chose each of these interviews because I thought they were perfect examples of how important it is to help those around you and how your actions play a major role in society.
