Interviewing My Grandma

0:00 [Music] hi guys welcome back to my channel my name is Tyler and for today's video it's a bit different so I was going across videos on my hard drive and I found some footage from about three years ago with me interviewing my grandmother so I wanted to edit that together and just kind of post a video interviewing her about her life I think it's really important that we pay homage to our loved ones while they are alive a lot of people wait until their loved ones passed on to pay their respects and I think it's really important and valuable to capture these memories while they are still with us so without further ado I just wanted to make this quick intro before I went into the video this is me interviewing my grandmother

0:46 thanks for watching [Music] okay hi Keeney town with a tiger mom yes okay so what is your name and what are the names of your parents my name is Jane Elizabeth Williams and my mother is Ida Eliza Williams in the father's chainsmokers my mom six children and she [Music] well we've survived three three passed

1:34 away and I fall in line of the middle girl three girls three boys can you tell me about your parents well yes it's a cultural thing that like back in the 50s and 60s parents should I wish them to be camera nothing my parents didn't talk much with big kids mm-hm no anything about like birth control all that stuff it was almost like taboo to talk to you kids about sex so with other topics of talking to your parents we didn't really discuss the stuff that much and that's one thing that I I kind of rewrite it but my mom

2:20 was a housewife hmm she took care of us kids and just took care of the house and she actually was an artist you would she could go well and my dad was a postal worker and he worked in a Brooklyn Navy Yard and he had a heritage of Turkey and because his mother was a full-blooded Cherokee and we didn't have too much history on there but he passed away both parents passed away and my mom is buried in Massachusetts it's buried

3:12 anyway well I could go back to my childhood mm-hmm I remember just playing and just having the freedom to let you run around because we used to live in the city Manhattan and there was a park right across the street from our house but we had to cross the street and you know parents always concerned about look both ways when you cross of course at the light the green light etc but we used to just run across the street to the park whenever we want when we go home and have lunch and then we run across the

3:59 street and go back to the park and I just seemed like I just played every day all day when it wasn't wasn't a school day across but that's what I remember as a kid and I remember from my childhood since we did in the city and when it's the summer time hi you know you always you always want to go downstairs and buy I see yes oh my god I see I thought we had the Italian ices and lemon was my favorite we had the ices from the bodega Spanish store and you know you get a long one for five cents and it could ever cool you down and also the ice cream truck it would come around and it

4:46 would sink it would play that song and all the kids ran outside to get together ice cream so that's what I remember from my childhood playing being outside and having something cool to cool you off also we had the fire hydrant and the kids would put it on and get a can but the cam in front of it in front of the holes opening of the fire hydrant and spray us and it was cold cold water on a hot day like taking a cold shower and all the kids would brighten and we were screaming cars would stop there to get their car wash but oh my gosh they would

5:34 get their car washed and you know sometimes they tipped the kid or not but they would come and spent you know park right in front of the spraying hydrant and they move on but we that's what we that's how we did up excuse me that's how we had our playtime yeah and we also lived near a elevated train pass through where we live the train conductors would throw down chalk to us mm-hmm we would scream chok chok chok chok white chalk because color they had colors and we would write on the ground oh yeah yeah like we would draw pictures on the ground and it was an activity just to keep us busy well of course the

6:23 JFK assassination of Kennedy the Vietnam War that was a major event that was going on at my news and oh and of course the awareness of black people and black pride because my brother's I used to straighten my hair a lot my brother said you wouldn't have probably that oh I didn't know talked about being afro centric so eventually I started wearing the Afro you know as a young young girl and you know the whole black power [Laughter] the civil-rights Martin Luther King

7:11 social rights and the women's movement with all the women wanted their rights to whatever they wanted to do the women wanted eagle work for equal pay I see still paying for that yeah so there was a lot of marching going on then Martin Luther King the civil rights the Black Power movement the Black Panthers I I grew up in Manhattan because that's where my parents settled I don't remember them living in the South now we didn't live in the south in my we lived in the north but then they had already

7:59 migrated from themselves and we lived in the North in New York City mainly and we also lived in Massachusetts that's where my extended family lives my gram my grandma and my uncles and aunts lived in Massachusetts I remember being the only kid the only black kid in my class and the only black kid in my but they weren't racist they were very friendly and nice people nice neighbors and they treated us well and you know they respect my grandfather because he build the roads so they they respected our family and it was it was

8:46 beautiful because we had a farm where we would grow our food I remember going outside pick a peppermint tea and going in the house and making a cup of tea we would grow food we would my grandfather had a smokehouse where you put the meat because we had chickens and pigs mm-hmm we didn't have any cows because they were kind of big you needed a big homestead for cows cuz they're huge animals but a pig we could have we could keep it on our grounds after he killed the pig he went you know whatever they did with it to clean it and then put good meat in this smokehouse it wasn't a refrigerator it was just dark and you could prepare the

9:32 meat with salt and it's like salt preservatives and it would stay in the air for months and months that kind of living made me the person I am today because once you get closer to nature natural things gardening farming you appreciate life we appreciate life you appreciate the things that you have a lot everything comes from nature [Music] the technology now it's amazing because it serves humanity in a broader

10:18 perspective before only colleges had computers and only companies like IBM international business machines and even libraries didn't have computers offering it to the public so either you had to be connected rich or or you know having resources where you go to go on on a computer they didn't have they didn't have too many websites they just had had a o L America Online and it wasn't offered as much but now you

11:06 know you can find a computer place coffeehouse or something where you get you can go online easily and use computers and you can use it for your homework cause you know it's information it's worldwide information when I was a kid I guess grade school my mom would send us to church every Sunday she would give us money to put in the plate you know for the offering and we would go to the candy store buy candy with that money

11:56 you know we would put in a nickel or whatever in the church offering but the funny thing about going to churches and youngsters the minister is his Capelli and the minister would read from the Bible and then have a try to kind of take that with something in real life but I never know anything of what he was talking about so I went to Sunday school and nameless miss battle which I remember and you know I learned about Christianity but I think that there is a

12:44 creator and I believe my mother expose us to God you got regard to creator or but everyone call so we have to we have to learn we have to know that you have to have a little bit of fear of something in your life and religion towards you good and bad but it even you know and 10 commandments the rooms that Moses sent down from the moves to Scott from it from God from heaven and those are like rules to live by in order to live a long and decent life on that hill

13:32 that's not steal honor your mother your father etc so that part helped me to understand about how to live in society and culture [Music] I got some advice about a career advice and I studied art major and credit certificate leave New York but I got some advice from a gentleman named Bill I wish who ended up being my fiance he told me when I graduated from college he told me okay you did your four years we

14:18 got your BA we're gonna do next so I said well my major is is art and I didn't wanna german hard at that time and my mind was fashioned and there wasn't much much of industry bastion jobs black women at that time so he told me he gave me some advice he said why don't you try education because they always need the teachers so I went down to the Board of Education in New York City and they heard me yeah and that

15:03 that's not in my career in education being a person enjoys life no matter how it comes to to me before being rich being fat being skinny being white being black whatever the cards are dealt to me I want to be remembered being a person who could be adjusting to the environment and I want to be remembered for appreciating cleanliness because you have to have clean like a floor

15:51 octane environment cleanliness is next to godliness so I want to be remembered for the cleanliness eating good food sharing I want to be remembered for all of all the things the more rules that my mother taught me beautiful thank you grandma me [Music] yeah [Music]