Documenting the American South Logo
Collections >> Oral Histories of the American South >> Document Menu
Oral History Interview with Roy Ham, 1977. Interview H-0123-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
Audio with Transcript
  • Listen Online with Text Transcript (Requires QuickTime and JavaScript)
  • Transcript Only (87 p.)
  • HTML file
  • XML/TEI source file
  • Download Complete Audio File (MP3 format / ca. 406 MB, 03:42:15)
  • MP3
  • Abstract
    Roy Ham grew up in Ashe County, North Carolina. He recalls wading through heavy snowfalls, milk bucket in hand, to attend school. He left shortly before high school graduation to contribute to the war effort on the home front, but eventually returned to earn a high school diploma before entering the working world. What Ham did for a living most of his life is not entirely clear, although he has spent a lot of time making stringed instruments and plenty of time having fun. This interview is less useful for gleaning information about the industrializing South than it is for illustrating a life rich in storytelling and song. Ham shares anecdote about ghosts, sleeping in a ditch after an evening at the movies, mistaking groundhogs for polecats, telling lies, and doing on-stage back flips at a concert. Listen as well for some music.
    Excerpts
  • Milk, bread, and an onion make good eating
  • Frustration with an interfering but ineffective government
  • Strategies for dealing with poverty
  • Rural recreations
  • Inequal race relations
  • Learn More
  • Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
  • Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
  • Subjects
  • Furniture industry and trade--North Carolina
  • Appalachian Region, Southern--Social life and customs
  • The Southern Oral History Program transcripts presented here on Documenting the American South undergo an editorial process to remove transcription errors. Texts may differ from the original transcripts held by the Southern Historical Collection.

    Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.