My First Interview

Wednesday, November 24^th,

It's the day before Thanksgiving and I'm walking down Main St. Poughkeepsie looking for people to interview. My idea is that I can meet people around Poughkeepsie and they can tell me what the city's like from their perspective. I can write up what I hear about and make a blog.

This is my first time trying to interview random strangers so I really have no idea what I'm doing. It's pretty cold out and people don't seem interested in talking to me. A lot of them are talking on a cell phone or listening to head phones so it's hard to approach them.

I tuck into a locally owned shop on Main St. which shall remain nameless to respect the wishes of its manager. We'll call him Ted. But I don't meet Ted right away. In fact, when I first walk in the store there's no one to be seen. It's dimly lit, with tall ceilings and the floors crammed with as much merchandise as they can fit. I walk to the back of the store and I'm greeted by Rocky whose coming out of what could roughly be called an office. He's a black man with a worn complexion and short gray hair. He's got a smile and a gentle way about him and he's willing to talk to me after I explain what I'm doing, but no recording and it's gotta be quick because he's working. He invites me into the office.

The door and walls of the office are thin. There are various binders everywhere some laid open with pictures of their merchandise, others closed and neatly labeled. “That's Ted on the phone. He used to be my teacher” Rocky says as way of explanation. Ted is telling a customer that somebody screwed up the shipment again and he's very sorry. He double checked and sure enough he put in the right order, but they sent the wrong thing anyway. He could get her money back or try again on the order. He understands either way.

Rocky goes to the workbench to make a repair and I start my questions.

Rocky has lived in or around Poughkeepsie his whole life. That's more than 60 years and sure he's seen a lot of changes. There are the physical changes, like how the the arterial used to be just a regular road before they expanded it, but the people have changed too, he told me.

In the mid-seventies he was dating a white girl and back then people would point at them in stores and make comments. One time they went to lake George together and got turned away from one hotel after another. Now you see a lot of interracial couples in Poughkeepsie and it's just more accepted. He told me, “Poughkeepsie's a lot more integrated now. In the past all the whites lived on the South end and all the blacks lived on the North end, but now there's more of a mix.”

Ted finishes his phone call and turns to me. I can't get a question out because he has some questions of his own. What's my angle? What agency am I working for? Whose project is this? Am I trying to show Poughkeepsie in a positive light or a negative light? I tell him it's just something that I want to do. I want to meet people in Poughkeepsie and get to know the city from their point of view. Ted's point of view is that government interference is the main problem in America. As he starts talking, Rocky finds something to do outside the office.

Ted has a commanding voice. He's a white man, older than Rocky if he was his teacher, but you wouldn't know it by his energy. I would ask him more about himself, but I can't really get a question in edgewise. Ted's not finished interviewing me.

He asks if I'm more socialist or more capitalist. I tell him they both had their strengths, but some socialist programs like Social Security retirement are helpful to a lot of people. To Ted's mind Social Security was a Ponzi scheme, a pool of money that the government feels completely at liberty to steal from whenever they please. Furthermore, people are poor mostly because they're lazy and the government incentivizes that laziness.

Rocky walks in on the middle of Ted's explanations and laughs to himself. He's clearly heard this all before. “Oh, you're having one of those conversations,” he says. He tries to help me steer the conversation back to Poughkeepsie. All Ted has to say on the subject is that it's government is also corrupt. That's why I can't give Ted's real name, or say where he works. There might be retribution. I can see Rocky crack a smile.

I'd been there almost twenty minutes. I don't know if that's what Rocky had in mind when he said “it's gotta be quick,” but I doubt I threw off their schedule that much. In fact, Ted is reluctant to let me go. I'm a nice person, he says, and he has another thing to tell me. I suspect Ted could tell me things for at least another hour, but I've gotta get going. There's so much more of Poughkeepsie to see and so many questions to answer.

Are the North end and the South end as integrated as Rocky said? Why were they divided in the first place? Is the Poughkeepsie government really so corrupt? Do I care?

I don't know, but I'm glad I met Rocky and Ted. They were friendly and invited me into their world and wished me a happy Thanksgiving when I left. I also know that I want to meet more people around Poughkeepsie and find out what makes them tick.