# 16 questions to ask your father about the 1970s

Strikes, wallpaper, the first mortgage, the first colour television, the clothes the photographs were burned over. These questions ask what the decade actually looked like in their house. Work and tools open fathers up faster than anything. "What was the first truck you drove?" gets you further than "What was your childhood like?"

1. Was there a band or a singer your parents could not stand? Did you play them louder?
2. Did you ever see anyone famous play live? What do you remember that nobody else would?
3. What was your first flight like? Where were you going, and what did you wear for it?
4. Where were you working in 1975, and what did the place look like on a Monday morning?
   A Monday morning scene is the honest version of a career.
5. What did you wear in the 1970s that you have since destroyed every photograph of?
6. Were there power cuts, strikes or petrol queues where you lived? What did you do during one?
   A candlelit evening is a scene; "the seventies were hard" is not.
7. What was the wallpaper, the carpet and the colour of the bathroom in your 1970s house?
8. What did you listen to in 1977: disco, punk, country, the same records as always?
9. What did a house cost when you bought your first one, and what was the mortgage rate?
   The number will be exact, and it will stop a younger reader cold.
10. What did you cook for guests in the 1970s, and what did you serve it in?
   The dinner party is a period piece, and they will remember the dish.
11. What was the news story of the 1970s that you followed every night? Who did you argue about it with?
12. Where did you go on holiday in the 1970s, and how did you get there?
13. What did you drive in the 1970s, what colour was it, and what kept going wrong with it?
   A car that kept breaking down is a running joke the book can use.
14. Which gadget arrived in your house in the 1970s: a colour television, a calculator, a freezer? Who was allowed to touch it?
15. Who were you in 1979, and what did you think the 1980s would do for you?
16. What did your children wear to school in the 1970s, and what did they beg you for that you would not buy?

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com