Maggard, Mildred Edith
Cassette Tape Content Outline Cassette Tape No. 90/17
Knox Historical Museum Oral History Project Special Collection: Theatrical

MILDRED EDITH MAGGARD (Born September 17,1917)
Cassette Tape dated October 26, 1990 on file at Knox Historical
Museum, Barbourvi1le, Ky. Notes by Susan Arthur and Charles Reed Mitchell. Corrected by Mildred Maggard.
Mildred Maggard was interviewed at the home she shares with Susan Arthur at 601 1/2 North Main Street, Barbourvi1le, Ky., beginning on September 21,1990 and completed on October 26, 1990,by Susan Arthur. The subject of the tape is largely social history and entertainment in Barbourville. The second side includes a lengthy description of businesses on the courthouse square in earlier years.
One 60-minute cassette tape. Total playing time:55 minutes.
Open. Release signed.
Disc 13A 0H2

SIDE 1
START. Family genealogical notes. Mildred Maggard was born in Garrard, Ky. in Clay County on September 17,1917. Before her birth, her family lived in Knott County. Her father worked at the Manchester Depot on the Cumberland and Manchester Railroad, which ran from Barbourville. The family moved to Barbourville and lived at various locations on School Street from when MM was five years old until 1958. MM recalls taking the C & M Railroad to Manchester for holidays in her girlhood.
5 minutes in. MM worked numerous jobs in Barbourville after graduating from Barbourville High School in 1936: (1) a dime store called Cole's Variety run by Mrs. Neva Mitchell Cole (sister of Margaret Mitchell Riley) immediately after graduating in 1936,(2)the A & P, (3) Jack's Restaurant under Jack Partin, (4) Union National Bank under Matt McKeehan, (5) Union College. In 1958 MM moved to Charlottesville and worked at (6) the University of Virginia for almost ten years. She returned to Barbourville and worked for (7) Richland Coal Company and then back to Union College for eleven years. After retiring she held a paid position at the Methodist Church for several years. Her only living relatives are her niece Neila Maggard and Neila's son Neil Richard.
10 min. MUSIC. MM was a member of the BHS Glee Club in high school—it was not called a choir until later—and she also participated in a trio. Later she farmed a quartet called the ''Harmony Pals" with Della Dixon, Oma Elam, and Lois Golden, which sang all kinds of music from classical to hill billy. They sang in churches, at Union chapel services, and were invited to travel around the county when congressman John M. Robsion campaigned for office. In 1934 the quartet performed on WLAP radio in Lexington, Kentucky for fifteen minutes.
13 min. Impressions of Congressman Robsion and his house. Amin and Edith Simon stayed at the Robsion house while the family was in Washington.
Description of Robsion neighborhood on High Street.
17 min. RESTAURANTS. For 15c you could get a hot dog and a coke. MM mentions several restaurants including College Corner, John Mitchell's, the Ice Cream Parlor, Jack's, and Jimmy Sanders' restaurant in the Mitchell Building. ((Jimmy Sanders also worked at the post office for many years and was the husband of Ruth Owens Sanders and the father of Mariam Sanders. Before the fire of 1938, the corner restaurant (where Ashley Garland's Insurance office was at the time of the 1984 fire) had a second floor where the Mitchell Theatre office was in the post 1938 structure with a staircase upstairs within the restaurant. The dance hall extended over the National Theatre front lobby and evidently ended at the wall to Charley and Nell Mitchell's apartment on the front of the Mitchell Building. This is the first reference I have to the sale of beer in the Mitchell Building.)) "I remember at that time they sold beer and he (Sanders) had a dance hall upstairs. And my daddy used to say, 'If I ever catch you upstairs in that dance hall, I'll whip you all the way home.' And one time someone dared us to go up there, and we went up there and we started down the stairs and...my daddy was sitting there. I said, 'Uh-oh. I can't go down now. He'll whip me all the way home.' I never did go back anymore." (MM had to hide upstairs until her father left because there was only one exit to the dance hall.)
(At this point Susan's cat gags and gets sick and the interview is interrupted. Several minutes of blank tape.)
23 minutes. THEATRES. MM remembers going to the National Theatre mostly on Saturdays and mostly for westerns. She recalls the stage shows and string bands and has fond memories of a country music band and singing radio group called the ''Georgia Wildcats." "We'd always go at least once a week."
When asked about other theatres, MM cannot recall any not run by
the Mitchells except, "I know that one time they had a theatre... along where the county board of education is, somewhere along in there."
SA. ''Methodist Mountain Mission in there?"
MM. "Yes. Seems to me they had one in there."

SA. ''Keith Wilson remembers one being there that didn't have a

Roof over it."
MM. "I think they called it an outdoor theatre... but I don't remember too much about that... t But I'd heard of it." (CRM: MM
would have been 6 or 7 in 1924 when that theatre was in operation. The Airdome Picture Show Theatre opened April 12,1924 after the burning of the National Theatre on March 22,1924, and was intended to run only during the warmer months of that year until the National reopened July 31,1924. Whether the two theatres were ever in competition is unknown at this time.)
27 min. MM remembered the 1938 Mitchell Theatre fire because it happened while she was working down the street at Cole's Variety Store and her brother (Neil Maggard—first husband of Merle Moore and father of Neila Maggard) was a fireman at that time. The fire burned all day and all night. "I believe that that fire started at the Advocate office." Marvin and Ruth Faulkner lived in a front apartment over the Advocate office and lost everything they had in the fire.
ON THE MITCHELL LOCAL NEWSREELS. "I know that it started in the 30s, because I was working at Cole's Variety Store and Raleigh used to make those pictures—Raleigh Dixon—and he'd catch us out and we'd try running from him and trying to get out of them. And then we really enjoyed going to the movies and seeing ourselves on the screen. Cause they'd always have it before.... They'd have the local news and then they'd have national news and then they would have cartoons and then they would have the pictures, you know, the regular pictures (feature)." "Granny Nell was selling tickets at that time." Later Lucille Hammons (a first cousin of Paul Mitchell) and Anna Katherine Mitchell sold tickets.
"But I can remember well when they took the local news. And I can remember when the national guards left—well, that was in the 40s, I guess during World War II. And I know when I saw the pictures of the local news, it showed the national guards when they were leaving go to Camp Shelby and I was in one. ... I went up there with them to go to Camp Shelby." (MM later clarifies: she went with the group to see the soldiers off to go to Camp Shelby; obviously she did not go to the camp itself.)
SA asks how the local news was advertised. "I think they only had that one night a week. I believe they just had that on Saturday nights and of course that's the time that we always went to the movies, on Saturday night. And they also had a movie that started at eleven o'clock at night and they called that the midnight movie. And we'd always go on Saturday nights and they'd always have the local news and everybody knew that it was going to be on cause regular moviegoers...just knew when it was going to be on and they wanted to be there to see themselves."
SA. ''And it was always on the same night?"
MM. ''Yeah, I think they always had it on the same night. Now, I may be wrong but I believe that's right.... Raleigh would take the pictures through the day and all week long and then he'd fix the film. I think they only had it one night a week."
Raleigh Dixon was about three years older than Della Dixon, who graduated with MM in 1936. The Dixons moved to Middlesboro and
Raleigh worked at the "Brownie Theatre," the smaller of the two theatres in Middlesboro. MM says that the Dixons lived in an apartment above the small theatre there. He later moved to Washington, D. C. MM has no memory of Charley Mitchell's ever shooting a local newsreel.

SIDE 2
START Mildred Maggard remembers the building of the Magic Theatre. "We were all so excited cause they were going to have that magic eye door. You'd buy your ticket there. . .and they had the magic eye door and when you'd go up it would be like these doors at the A & P they have now. You'd go up and the door would just open.
"And then they had sort of a balcony like in the back of the Magic Theatre and they had one section where people that went with their babies took their babies and they called that the 'Cry Room,' if the babies were crying so that they wouldn't disturb the other people. And we were all excited about it. It was really nice because it had—I don't know what you'd call it—those wide screens. ... They had the smaller screens at the Mitchell but at the Magic they had the wide screens, real big screens. And of course we used to think we had to sit down on the front row but then we had to get farther back because that was too close for us."
MM cannot remember silent movies but she remembers Everett Hutton's band and the plays. Traveling plays and locally produced plays were done in the national Theatre. MM appeared with her girlfriends in a play called CRAZY POLITICS in which the girls played female firemen and cops. "We wore those real short shorts and little blue coats and I know I had a red coat with long tail and a little firehat that I wore."
Everett Hutton had a band called the "Blue Rays," if memory holds true. Allen "Keggy" Seay played the piano, Paul Finestein the clarinet, Randall Scotty Hudson, Jr. played an instrument, and Neil Benjamin may have also been in the orchestra. MM's quartet practiced with the orchestra for a National Theatre concert but the orchestra disbanded before the performance.
6 min. Description of work at Cole's Variety Store where MM started work in June of 1936.
THE REST OF THE TAPE IS A DESCRIPTION OF BARBOURVILLE'S COURT SQUARE AREA IN THE 1930s and 1940s.
Jack Partin's first restaurant was in a shop next to the Hutton Shoeshop, which was on the corner of Liberty and Coles Court.
Partin later moved into the present Jack's restaurant and built the Blue Room above.
10 min. Cole and Hughes was next to Cole's Variety Store. J. F. Hughes (father of Irene—who never married) was the the Hughes and Matt Cole was the Cole of the title. Matt Cole's wife Neva ran Cole's Variety Store. C & H also had a butchery shop and a grocery as well as tool sales.
John Croley's clothing store was next to Cora's this sister).
A. B. Hopper's store had a funeral parlor in the back but sold groceries and candy in the front. Above Goldie's was the old Barbourville Telephone Exchange. Kidd Bros. Toy Wilson's garage and Buick sales. Mitchell's Market.
15 min. Where Nell's Department Store is was once the location of the old Post Office. MM remembers how hateful the postmistress was. Quinn's. Blair Drygoods. Wilson Bros, store had everything from groceries to hardware, from candy to school books. Students had to purchase their own school books off campus at Wilson Bros.
21 min. In the Lawson Bldg, the Masons held office and the A & P was on the ground floor. Snyder's Grocercy, Alice Hopper's dress store (called Seymour's Cash Store), and the bus station were nearby. (MM later recalled that when she was in the third grade around 1924-5 that a dime store was in operation where the Board of Education was for many years and that it burned then.)
23 min. MM recalls the bank failure of the 1930s and the panic that inspired. The National Bank of John A. Black was in the Lumpkin Barbershop. The owner of McNeil's Business College (located over Goldies at one time), Mr. W, E. McNeil was accused of embezzeling money from the John A. Black bank and went to jail but talk has it he was framed. MM recalls the First State Bank and the First National Bank, the later ((which combined with the National Bank of John A. Black)) became Union National Bank. Noah Smith was the first president of UNB, followed by Clyde Smith, and later Kenneth H. Tuggle. MM's friend Marg Riley was sent up into the various hollows in the county trying to reassure people that with the new laws the banks were safe.
27 min. MM remembers sometimes taking a car from the livery stable to get home from the movies when it rained but that the cars had no windows, only flaps, and so she got home as wet as if she had walked in the rain.
28 min. Description of the houses and businesses on North Main Street.

INDEX
Interview Index Card
Maggard, Mildred Edith (Born September 17, 1917) KHM
KHM Cassette Tape No. 90/17 Special Collection: Theatrical
Interviewed by Susan Arthur at their home on North Main St. in Barbourville, Ky. completed October 26, 1990. One 60-minute
cassette tape. Total Playing Time: 55 minutes. Open. Release
signed.
CONTENTS: Family of Mildred Maggard. Outline of her working life.
Musical performances in school and quartet group. Congressman John M. Robsion. Restaurants. The National Theatre. The Airdome

Picture Show Theatre. The Magic Theatre. Mitchell Local Newsreels. Raleigh Dixon. Play ''CRAZY POLITICS" at National Theatre. Description of Barbourvi1le: Court Square and adjacent areas, High Street, North Main Street. Banks. Bank failure of 1930s.

Cross-Referencing Index
Congressman John M. Robsion
National Bank of J. A. Black
Union National Bank Dixon
Raleigh Restaurants
Union College
Maggard Family Genealogy Musical performances Theatres
Motion Picture National Theatre
Airdome Theatre Magic Theatre
Mitchell Theatre
Hutton Orchestra
Barbourville High School