# 20 questions to ask your great-grandparent about the 1950s

Not history: their 1950s. The house, the wage, the first television on the street, what the grown-ups said at the table, what they expected life to become. Ask for the numbers and the clothes. Have the great-grandchild ask the questions, even if you whisper them first. The answers are different when a child asks, and that recording is the one the family will keep.

1. How was the house heated, and who got up first to see to it?
   Cold puts a reader in another era faster than any date.
2. What was the punishment at your school, and did you ever get it?
3. What did your first wage packet hold, and how much of it did you hand over at home?
   The split between the wage and the housekeeping is the whole family economy in one number.
4. Where did you go dancing, and what night of the week was it?
   The dance hall is where most of the love chapters begin.
5. Was there a pub, a hall or a club where everyone went? What did it look like inside?
   One room described well stands in for a whole youth.
6. What was the first car the family had, and where did it take you?
   The first car redraws the family's whole map.
7. Did you grow up around working animals: horses, cows, hens, pigeons? Who looked after them?
   Working animals mean a working childhood, and that is a different book.
8. How old were you in 1955, and what did an ordinary Tuesday look like that year?
   Pin the decade to a day in their life, not to history.
9. When did a television first come into your house? Or whose house did you go to, to watch one?
   The arrival of the set is a scene the whole street was in.
10. What did you wear in the 1950s that you would not be seen in now? Who ironed it?
11. What did a loaf of bread, a bus fare or a week's rent cost then? Which number do you still remember?
   One remembered price does the work of a paragraph of history.
12. Where were you when rock and roll arrived? Who played it to you first?
   Who played it first is a character; the record is only a date.
13. What did the grown-ups talk about in the 1950s when they thought you were not listening?
   The overheard adult world is how a child learns what the decade was afraid of.
14. What was still rationed, broken or unrebuilt in your town when you were growing up?
15. Who on your street had a telephone, a fridge or a car first? What did everyone say about them?
   First on the street is a small drama of envy and pride.
16. What was the big news story you remember from the 1950s, and what did your father say about it at the table?
17. What did you do on a Saturday afternoon in the 1950s: the pictures, the match, the shops?
18. What did you expect your life to look like in 1959? How much of it came true?
   The expected life and the lived one, side by side, is the memoir's engine.
19. Who was the glamorous one in your family or your street in the 1950s? What did they wear, and where did they go?
20. Was there polio, TB or another illness that everyone was afraid of? Did it touch your street? (tender: ask once, late, in person)

## 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