Termite TV - Life Stories

Alright my name’s uh Pam Schwartz I was born in Dansville New York and let’s see grew up on a farm it was very rural. Actually it’s Sparta New York it’s not even Dansville it’s Sparta, and that really describes the area it’s very um very Spartan it’s all farmers, it was all farmers they mostly went out of business. So my family had a family farm they’d been there for like 200 years, I think our farmhouse is 200 years old and their barn 200 years old and that’s all they’d done all their lives for the most part. And there was a whole bunch of kids in my family I’m one of 6 five girls one boy all the girls have red hair. And because there’s so many kids as you might imagine we were poor, we didn’t have a lot of money. When you have a lot of kids in your family like that you get really, one thing, you get really possessive about your food, cause if you leave the table they’ll eat cause there isn’t a lot. So anyone I know from a big family if you try to take anything from their plate they’re like get away from my plate. So I had a whole bunch of brothers and sisters, I’m the oldest, well mostly sisters one brother, he was real outcast he wasn’t a red head either so. Um let’s see my Dad didn’t actually own the farm my Grandfather owned. It was just kind of a fun place till I was I don’t know what age, I can’t remember 12 or something then my Dad took it over and then suddenly we all had to work on the farm which was hard, ya know, a pain the butt and stinky, hard and stinky. All of us worked down there, we, it was fun, cause we got to play a lot, when you have like six kids, you can have all sorts of games, you can have a kick ball game, because you have enough people for teams…. so that’s kinda of cool. Um let’s see what else what else what else…we used to go visit my Grandma all the time she’s an antique dealer and that’s pretty cool we used to go play at her house all the time and she had all sorts of neat stuff to look since she was an antiques dealer I mean she’d have expensive antique stuff but she’d also have weird stuff, an old like old boxes of things, I can remember an old box of crackers from the 40s, she found somewhere, and she’d just kinda show us cause it was neat. It was weird to think of those crackers sitting in there all that time. She’d also take me to yard sales and stuff like, that was a lot of fun. Probably should say something about my parents they uh, since I’m the first born my Mother had me when she was 19, and she had 6 kids before she was 30, so that’s kind (laughs) and she still maintained some semblance of sanity (laughs) the last two were twins so that kinda helped up the numbers a little bit. My sisters are identical twins when they were little they spoke their own language so that was kinda neat. Also when I was little I ran around the woods all the time cause uh, since it was a rural area kind of explored everything around me I love to go follow the creek all the way up to the next farm and back and found all sorts of neat things that way used to catch all sorts of little critters and stuff like that that was really fun. Like catching little creatures, also to rescuing them if they were injured, or whatever probably a little dangerous in some cases but usually okay. Um let’s see, when I was 19 I went to college, I went to college of Fredonia, that was fun because living in Dansville there wasn’t really any art or anything, there was very little art and nobody really was interested in the same things as me. Which kinda stuck, I really didn’t, I really certainly didn’t fit in, it was a small town, there wasn’t, there was no else, it seemed like there was nobody else interested in what I was interested in. So I went to college, it was cool cause I got to do what I want to do. I got to start playing music, I played music before, but there was no one to play with since there was a lot of musicians in this area I got to start my own band and I started being like a musician for like real instead of just thinking about it, plucking away, writing thing myself. I actually got to get people together and start that mayhem of like being a musician. I studied photography there, I actually was going to study music, but um it was really a traditional classically oriented program and I was interested in composition so they weren’t too interested in anything far out. And let’s see how much time do I have I see you looking at your watch? You’re almost done. I’m almost done! Okay, and then I moved to Buffalo, and um let’s see, and I don’t know I went to school there, I moved to Buffalo, I went to graduate school, and I changed to computers because I was curious about ‘em and nobody does photography anymore so now I have to do computers even though I love photography a lot I can’t really do it anymore because nobody does it anymore so now I’m a musician and a photographer and a computer person. (Laughs) I went too slow because I thought I’d have to spread it out more, oh well.