1992OH01.13 Beauchamp
Frankfort’s Craw Oral History Project
Interview with Bo Beauchamp
July 17,1991.
Conducted by James Wallace
© 1991 Kentucky Oral History Commission
Kentucky Historical Society
Kentucky Oral History Commission
100 W. Broadway ( Frankfort, KY 40601
502-564-1792 ( (fax) 502-564-0475 ( history.ky.gov
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should be corroborated with the original audio recording if possible.The following interview is an unrehearsed interview with Mr.
Jo Beauchamp for "Frankfort's 'Craw:' An African-American
Community Remembered." The interview was conducted by James E.
Wallace in Frankfort, Kentucky, July 17, 1991.
[An interview with Mr. Jo Beauchamp]
WALLACE: Is . . . today is Wednesday, July the 17th, isn't it?
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, July the 17th, you're right. Wednesday,
July the 17th.
WALLACE: We're here with Mr. Jo Beauchamp to talk a
little bit about Bottom and his remembrances of . . . were you
born in Frankfort, Mr. Beauchamp?
BEAUCHAMP: No, sir. I was born in Louisville.
WALLACE: Ah. Where abouts in Louisville?
BEAUCHAMP: In on Buchanan Street.
WALLACE: Ah, okay. Is that the West End?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. I just really don't know because Mother
left . . . my daddy died when I was six weeks old and, uh, they
were all from here; so, she come back here when I was, oh, about
five or six months old, and all my life has been right here in
Franklin County.
WALLACE: Ah. Well, when she came back here, where did you all
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move to?
BEAUCHAMP: Down in the Bottom there, down on Wilkinson Street.
WALLACE: Ah. Where abouts on Wilkinson?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, we first lived, oh, my first remembrance of it,
it was down there by the hemp factory, the old hemp factory,
where Jim's Seafood is now.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, then, we lived up, all up and down that
street. And I rented a house from an old colored feller and I
went to pay my rent one day and he said, "Jo, how much is this
you paid me?" I said, "That's a hundred dollars. I've been here
ten months." He said, "Well, if I was to tell you to move, well,
what would have?" I said, "Well, I don't think you'll tell me to
move long as I pay my rent." He said, "Jo, that ain't what I'm
getting at. I want you to own you a home." I said, "Well, man,
I . . . ain't no way I can get it. Said, "I'm going to fix it so
you can." Now, this is a black feller.
WALLACE: What was his name?
BEAUCHAMP: John Buckner.
WALLACE: John Buckner, I've heard a lot about John Buckner.
BEAUCHAMP: Buckner. Now, he worked for the, oh, uh, for years
and years, up where that park is right now. What was them
peoples' name?
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WALLACE: Oh. Were you talking about where the park is where
Juniper Hills and Berry . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Juniper Hills. Berry Hill. He worked for the Berrys
for years and years. And he owned a bunch of houses and he went
up to the old Capitol Building and Loan with me and he said, "Jo,
you all got a house for sale on Wilkinson Street and I want this
boy to own it." Said, "He lives in my house and he's always paid
his rent, but I want him to own a home."
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: And they sold me that house for a thousand dollars.
And I was working at Schenley Distillery and they said they
wanted $200 down. So, I went down there and borrowed the $200
and they took it out so much a pay-day on me. And, uh, paid it
down on there and moved in.
WALLACE: When did you buy that place?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, I see, I lived there 20 years, 22 years. Oh,
[laughing] I've been out here 31.
WALLACE: Okay, so . . .
BEAUCHAMP: So, that was 50 years ago, or 51 years ago.
WALLACE: Okay. So, that would have been 1940. Fifty-one
years ago would be 1940, and, uh, you've been out here thirty . .
.
BEAUCHAMP: -One years.
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WALLACE: Thirty-one years; so, that would be 1960. And you
lived at that house for 22 years.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: So, back 22 out of 1960, you got it in '38, 1938 or
'39 [1939], about that time.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Well, let me back up a little bit about your folks.
What was your mama's maiden name?
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, she was a Crane.
WALLACE: A Crane, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh.
WALLACE: And your dad was the Beauchamp?
BEAUCHAMP: A Beauchamp, yeah.
WALLACE: When your mama came back, uh, what did . . . how did
you all make your living, with her being a widow woman?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, we just lived from hand to mouth. We had an
awful hard time. And she married again. She married a Linton.
And they worked at the hemp factory and they didn't make very
much.
WALLACE: What were they doing at the hemp factory?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, at the old hemp factory, they made twine. They
brought that hemp in there and, uh, they carded it and spun it
and spun it into twine; and sold the twine to different . . . all
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over the country, and shipped a lot of it out of the country.
WALLACE: Did your mama work on the machines that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. She worked on the spinning frames.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, and then I went to work there when I got
older enough.
WALLACE: Ah, how old were you when you first started?
BEAUCHAMP: I was about 17.
WALLACE: Ah. So, did you . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I worked there two years.
WALLACE: Uh-huh.
BEAUCHAMP: Then got fired.
WALLACE: Ah [laughing].
BEAUCHAMP: I'll tell you what happened. Them girls I was
working with asked me to bring them a drink. Wasn't nothing but
moonshine.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And I, like a . . . I was kind of sweet on one of
them and she said, "Oh, bring us a drink, Jo." And it make them
sick and they had to go home and, the next day, they got them out
there in the office and made them tell who brought it in there to
them and they told on me and they fired me.
WALLACE: Oh, no.
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BEAUCHAMP: [Laughing] Yeah. Yeah, they . . . I got fired over
that deal.
WALLACE: Well, as you were growing up, was it just you and
your mama or did you have brothers and sisters?
BEAUCHAMP: I had a brother and two sisters, half . . . half-
brother and two half-sisters.
WALLACE: Ah, sisters. Di- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Junior, Harvey Linton, Jr.
WALLACE: Harvey Linton, Jr.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, well, she never would accept her name. It
was Crystabelle Linton, and she changed it to Kitty.
WALLACE: Ha.
BEAUCHAMP: See, back in them days, they didn't keep account of
birth certificates. They just . . . were just . . . just come
in, born, and left. Never wrote down nothing.
WALLACE: Yeah, I forgot to ask you. When were you born?
BEAUCHAMP: 19 and 14 [1914], January the 3rd.
WALLACE: Ah, okay. So, you were . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I'm 77 years old.
WALLACE: Ah, okay. So, you were back in Frankfort, then, in,
probably, 19 . . . about the Summer of 1940. You were only . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I was back in 1914, yeah.
WALLACE: Well, as a young man coming up, where did you go to
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school?
BEAUCHAMP: Wilkerson Street School.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: To the third grade and we got in there and, went to
the fourth grade, we had to go to Second Street School. And Miss
Freda Dreyer taught Second Street School in the . . .
WALLACE: Was that Bob Dreyer's wife?
BEAUCHAMP: Sister.
WALLACE: Sister. Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: That was Bob Dreyer's daughter.
WALLACE: Oh, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Okay. I'd heard about him in connection with his
grocery that he used to run.
BEAUCHAMP: On St. Clair Street.
WALLACE: Right. I didn't . . . I'd never heard about the
daughter teaching school. That's a pretty good little walk to
walk from the hemp factory all the way across on the other side
of the river to Second Street.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, and we had to walk. We lived on Wilkerson
Street right on Clinton Street there then, but that was right on
the corner, just a real short distance off Clinton. We . . . no,
wait a minute now. We lived on Wilkerson Street. We walked
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around Taylor Avenue, me and my sisters.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, well, we got over there, they give us ten
pennies for our lunch, go in the free-lunch line, and we had to
line up on one side and the others on the other side, and, uh, to
get that ten pennies. And this one guy, right today, I still
hold it against him. I was . . . I see him walking going
someplace, and I know where he's going, I won't pick him up. He
said, "Look at that old poor white trash over there". And I
never could forget it. I don't . . . I don't have nothing to do
with him right today.
WALLACE: 'Cause the kids looked down on you 'cause you had to
get that free lunch and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, 'cause we didn't have . . . me and my sister,
and we had to get in the free-lunch line.
WALLACE: Well, I imagine there was a lot of kids in that free-
lunch line. Those were tough times.
BEAUCHAMP: There's a string of them here to your car out there.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: We didn't have anything and just lived from hand to
mou . . . there wasn't no welfare or food stamps or nothing then.
[laughing] I don't like groundhogs and possums and rabbits right
today [laughter].
�
WALLACE: You ate so much of them as a young . . .
BEAUCHAMP: [Inaudible] [laughing]. Fish, [laughing] Daddy and
I would fish every day.
WALLACE: He probably fished the river, didn't he?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, we lived right there on the . . . Wilkerson
Street, right on the river and he . . .
WALLACE: You were on the river side of Wilkinson.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Yeah.
WALLACE: Well, wasn't the dump right in there behi- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, uh-huh. We lived a short distance from that
dump.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Had damn rats and roaches and [laughing] . . .
WALLACE: Yeah, they . . .
BEAUCHAMP: [Laughing] It was a wonder we hadn't all died from
some kind of damn disease.
WALLACE: Isaac Fields and some of the others were telling me
when the water would come up, one of the things they'd do is go
down to the dump and go rat-bopping, you know.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah, uh-huh.
WALLACE: Shoot them, or hit them with a stick.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Well, if one had had a 22-rifle. We mostly
had sticks to hit them with. A rat's the easiest thing in the
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world to kill. You get him one lick on the head and he's gone.
WALLACE: Well, that was one of their forms of recreation.
When you think about your earliest remembrances of the Bottom, or
of that area, what comes to mind; what images come to mind when
you think of Bottom?
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, well, I tell you, when I think of the Bottom, I
think of a lot of the hard times and the hardships we had down
there. And, uh, well, there's just so much that happened, it's
just hard to put your finger on one different thing.
WALLACE: Well, let me keep going then. As far as . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I guess the worst tragedy I can remember down in
there was the 1937 flood.
WALLACE: Tell me about it.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, that was terrible. The water come up and got all
of our houses.
WALLACE: Were you living on Wilkinson Street at that time?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, and, uh, my sister-in-law lived up on the hill
there and the water didn't get to her house, and there was 18 of
us up there in three little rooms, where people had been flooded
out.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And electric was all off. They had one little ole
two-cap stove there. We call it a two-cap monkey, [laughter -
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Wallace] and that's what we cooked on.
WALLACE: And you had to stay there until the . . . did you
move back in and clean up your home, the home?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Were you all still . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Went down . . . went down there and build up a fire
to . . . well, we really moved in before it dried out in there.
And they told us, said, "Watch it, it's going to kill you.
You'll take double pneumonia." Said, "Wh- . . . we ain't got no
other place to go." And nothing to . . . and I say that's about
the worst thing that I can remember to happen was the 1937 flood.
WALLACE: Well, so many people I'd talked to, some of them just
didn't come back. Some of them, like you, had no other place to
go. They had to go back and, uh, clean it up. Were you all
owning your home at that time or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No.
WALLACE: You were . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, we didn't have nothing. Renting then.
WALLACE: Well, as far as your education, you went to Second
Street up through high school years?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, no. I . . . I dropped out of school in fourth
grade.
WALLACE: Ah. What led you to drop out; had to make the money?
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BEAUCHAMP: Well, uh, I got sick and I just couldn't stay awake
in school. I'd just go to sleep. And they finally says, well,
we're just going to have to send you home. There's something
wrong. And the public school, that's where that I got was the
fourth grade. Miss Freda Dreyer. Well, Roosevelt was elected
President and he said, "I'm going to get these boys off the
street and put them to work."
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: So, he . . . he formed the CCC.
WALLACE: Civilian Conservation Corps.
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir; and they hired a fellow from the Berea
College. He was a professor down there, and he come up there and
started a school program and I enrolled in that and I went to
school 14 months up there. And he gave me a diploma for the
eighth grade. He said, "Jo, you got an education" And along
about the last two months that was in there, he started giving
tests and he told me, said, "Jo, you'd . . . I've done give you
this diploma. You . . ."
WALLACE: Up through the eighth.
BEAUCHAMP: Eighth grade. Said, "You've got a edu- . . .
educated yourself in here and what I've helped you do. You took
interest." I went to school every night for 14 months except on
the weekends. After supper, we'd all go down to the . . . a
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dining hall, uh, and . . .
WALLACE: Where was that camp that you all were at?
BEAUCHAMP: In Jackson County.
WALLACE: Jackson.
BEAUCHAMP: McKee.
WALLACE: You working on logging or roads or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, uh, worked on roads and, then, I got into the .
. . a gang building the houses. We built a house, we built a
bridge and we built a depot, and, uh . . .
WALLACE: When did you all come . . . when did you come back to
Frankfort, then?
BEAUCHAMP: In 19 and 35 [1935].
WALLACE: Thirty-five [1935]
BEAUCHAMP: I was there 14 months.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Then, they come back, they'd passed a law that you
had to get out when you'd been there 14 months. You let some
others in. And I got out and they wrote me a letter down to the
distillery and, uh, I went down there to see Mr. Fissin and I
said, "Mr. Fissin, I need a job awful bad." He said, "I know it,
son." I said, "Did you get a letter from the government for me?"
He said, "Yeah." And said, "I'm going to hire a few men." Said,
"You hang around here for awhile and maybe I can give you a job."
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And he did, he give me a job, $3.15 a day, and took off from
there. I stayed there 41 years and 7 months.
WALLACE: Good grief. What . . . when you left, what was your
capacity and what were you doing, what was your job?
BEAUCHAMP: I was a water tender and I was making $300 a week.
WALLACE: Oh, my, that . . . good money.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. When I was making $14.40 a week when I went
there.
WALLACE: [Laughing] Oh, to be at one company for that length
of time is a rarity these days.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, just like I said, I just only had a
eighth-grade education, or equal to an eighth-grade education,
and, uh, I just couldn't make that kind of money no place else.
WALLACE: Well, let me ask you. When you were growing up and
helping around the house, what kind of chores and
responsibilities did you have as a young person?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I had Daddy and Mother and my sisters, and I
lost my little brother. That's the worst thing ever happened to
me in my life. My little brother was nine years old, and that's
the . . . I'll say that that's the worst thing that ever happened
to me in my whole entire life when I lost my little brother. Uh,
I had to help take care of Daddy and Mother; and my sister, she
growed up and married off. Well, before she married, she went to
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live with her mothe- . . . her grandmother in Columbus, Indiana,
and she got married up there. And, then, she got . . . him and
her quit and she married another fellow and moved to Texas, and
lived out there for years and years, Fort Worth. But she's gone
now.
WALLACE: Umhumm. Well, let me ask you. As you were growing
up down there, [how] did you meet your wife? Was she living down
in the Bottom or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. She come here on a visit and I met her.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: That was my first wife. We were married 37 years.
She died of cancer in lungs smoking them damn cigarettes.
WALLACE: Ah. I'm sorry to hear that, sir; sorry to hear it.
Well, let me switch gears here, and I hear that area referred to
as Craw sometimes and sometimes as Bottom. Where does the name
Craw come from? Do you know why they call it Craw?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it was slums of the town, and then, just every
kind of a criminal and everything else lived down there [laughter
- Wallace]. Now, there was a lot of good people down in there;
but, like I said, we was talking about "Mountain" Mary.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Her brother got in the peni- . . . he got in the
penitentiary here in Frankfort. And he got in the penitentiary
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and, here, all of her family come down here.
WALLACE: To live, to be close to . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: . . . her brother.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And when they got out of the penitentiary,
they all stayed here; and that happened time and time again. And
a lot of them were good people and a lot of them were just down
right-out criminals.
WALLACE: Ummm.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, I had a uncle. I guess you've got that in there
someplace. John Fallis.
WALLACE: Yeah, tell me about John Fallis.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he was a bad man. He was a evil man.
WALLACE: Wh . . . in what way, evil?
BEAUCHAMP: Mean.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: He would beat the piss out of you for nothing. Beat
up a many a man. He hit my grandmother with a pair of brass
knuckles.
WALLACE: He hit . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He was mean. He was evil. And, oh, he shot two or
three different ones.
WALLACE: Well, he . . . it's funny on him. Some . . . you'll
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talk to some of the blacks and they'll say he's the nicest man.
He'd give them credit or he give them a load of coal, or he'd let
them run up a tab at the store; but, then, there's this other
side of him that you just brought up, that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, he hated his wife's people. His wife and my
mother were sisters.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And he just hated us. Now . . .
WALLACE: Well, why? Why would he hate his own wife's people?
BEAUCHAMP: For some damned . . . I know when . . . I had an
Uncle Johnny was going to kill him, and grandmother saved him.
Now, he was . . . he was going to hide and kill him. He was
scared of him.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Over that hitting her with them knucks [brass
knuckles] [laughing]. . . had a great big knot on her head.
WALLACE: Well, why did he . . . he just got mad?
BEAUCHAMP: [Laughing] He jus- . . . he was evil. He was mean.
WALLACE: Yeah? Well, one of the stories I heard on him was
that, uh, he had married, uh, you know, uh, your mother's sister,
right?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: But he had a young woman that he kept company with,
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Anna Mae Blackwell?
BEAUCHAMP: Right.
WALLACE: And kept her in the same building that his wife was
in.
BEAUCHAMP: No, that's not true.
WALLACE: That's not true. Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: No, that's not true.
WALLACE: Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, my Aunt Annie, his wife, lived on Wilkerson
Street.
WALLACE: Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: All right. He kept that woman [Anna Mae Blackwell]
in the house up on Washington Street.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: See, and he lived with her up there and had one child
by her, Doug.
WALLACE: Oh, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And she was a beautiful woman.
WALLACE: Well, has Doug gone on now?
BEAUCHAMP: I don't know what become of Doug. I lost count of
him. I don't know ever what become of him. He . . . he had a
son and two daughters, and I see his . . . well, I see one of his
daughters once in a while and, occasionally, I see his son; but I
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don't know what ever come of Doug.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: He was a electrician. He went through apprentice's
school and lear- . . . worked there at the distillery and served
his apprenticeship and he . . . when he got his license, he told
them, said "All of you can kiss my hind" [laughter]. Said, "I'm
gone on my own. I won't be beholden to nobody." Said, "I've led
a damn dog's life here with you people."
WALLACE: His name is Doug Blackwell, is that right?
BEAUCHAMP: No, his name . . . well, I don't know. I think it
was Doug Fallis.
WALLACE: Doug Fallis.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Oh, okay. Well, as far as John himself, he was
supposed to be politically powerful, a man who could turn out the
vote. Is that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, yeah. He was . . . took part in politics and .
. .
WALLACE: Do you know anything about the part he took in
politics? Anything . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, like, somebody he was . . . wanted to go down
there and get him and give him a bunch of money; say, go down
here and buy me some votes and get me . . . help get me elected.
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And they'd pay him. Well, they'd do that. See, John Fallis can
do something to vote. He'd tell you to go up there and vote for
so-and-so, see; give them five or ten dollars.
WALLACE: Umhumm. So, he'd buy . . . he'd make sure that
they'd get all the votes bought up.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And he was . . . he took part in politics and
. . . now, like that . . . he got in trouble bootlegging
moonshine whiskey.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And they were going to send him to the penitentiary,
and his lawyer told him, said, "You run a ad in the paper,
anybody needed the help, that you'll help them." And they were
going to use that when he come to trial.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he did, he helped a few; but it was for a
purpose.
WALLACE: For his own selfish . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He wasn't all that good, now.
WALLACE: Selfish ends.
BEAUCHAMP: The point was I concerned, my own opinion of John
Fallis, he was my uncle by marriage. He was a no-good bastard.
WALLACE: Well, now, his boys, Bixie [Benjamin] and Carlos and
Ishmael and had a daughter that . . .
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BEAUCHAMP: John, Jr.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And her . . . his daughter's name was Annie Lee.
WALLACE: Yeah. She was the one . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Got killed in a car wreck.
WALLACE: Car- . . . that's R.T.'s wife's girl [mother].
BEAUCHAMP: Right.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: That's Betty's mother.
WALLACE: Umhumm. Well, all of those Fallises sort of had a
reputation of being quick with their fists.
BEAUCHAMP: Right. They was all . . . all cursed with a bad
temper.
WALLACE: There's a story, and maybe you can confirm it or deny
it, that Bixie's [Benjamin], who was . . . I don't know her name
at all, but the woman of somewhat questionable reputation, sort
of provoked almost a race riot down there one time; claimed that
she was insulted by some blacks.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: And Bixie [Benjamin] Carlos . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Carlos.
WALLACE: And went down . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Went back down there and she claimed that some of
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them said some obscene word to her . . . this being recorded?
WALLACE: Yeah, it is; but, don't worry. We can fix it so, you
know.
BEAUCHAMP: Just like to fuck her, you know, and like this.
WALLACE: Uh-huh.
BEAUCHAMP: And, so, they all went up there and, they did, they
had a heck of a time [laughing]. Carlos got hold of a damn buggy
axle and, boy, he . . . he skinned some heads up in there
[laughter].
WALLACE: When . . . do you know when this took place? Nobody
can remember exactly when that incident took place.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I don't know the date of it. I don't remember
the date of it, but . . .
WALLACE: Do you remem- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I know that it did take place.
WALLACE: In the forties [1940s], you think, or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, in the forties [1940s] see. Now, I come back
here from the Army in, uh, '45 [1945]. I'd say it was '46
[1946].
WALLACE: Sometime right soon after you ca- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, I could be a . . . vary a year or two.
WALLACE: Yeah. One of the things I heard is that the blacks
all went and got weapons and armed themselves, and the Fallises
�
were going to get some of their friends to come in from out of
town, and it could have got ugly.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, before . . . we got it swelled out before
it got to that because they just got in there and a fist and
billyclub fight and . . . and, uh, Carlos thought they'd killed
Bixie [Benjamin].
WALLACE: They hit him over the head with a shovel, didn't
they?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Went up behind him and hit him back
[laughing] . . . in his head with a damn shovel.
WALLACE: Uh, black guy by the name of Thomas Jefferson
supposedly whomped him on the head.
BEAUCHAMP: Right [laughing].
WALLACE: Put him in the hospital. Oh, I've heard a story
where John Fall- . . . John Fallis shot Officer Wilhelm [William
H. Wilhelm, Jr.]; was coming up toward, I guess, his store or
something and he thought it was Guy Wainscott and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, that's not. It was "Slug" Noonan that he shot
with his pump gun; shot him through the glass. He was sneaking
around looking in there.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And he told Carlos . . . Carlos had one of his little
brothers of a sister in his arms . . . said "You back down here
�
till I can get this pump gun". It was "Slug" Noonan. It wasn't
Wilhelm [William H. Wilhelm, Jr.].
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: It was "Slug" Noonan. And they got that pump gun out
from under that counter and, boy, he poured it on, got him right
in the damn face.
WALLACE: Oh.
BEAUCHAMP: Glass and all.
WALLACE: Did he live?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah. All of them officers, he shot . . . I
think he shot three that night. He shot Colston, Guy Wainscott
and "Slug" Noonan.
WALLACE: Well, what led to the incident? Why . . . why were .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, there was a carnival here in town and Carlos
was a young boy and he wanted to look in that girlie show, and he
clumb up on the damn tent looking down at them girls dancing down
there [laughter] and nude.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And one of these carnival men called the police and
Guy Wainscott didn't like him noway [Carlos Fallis]; so, he got
him down there and Carlos put up a battle with him, and somebody
went down there and told Uncle Johnny, and it was just a short
�
distance up there, from Wilkerson Street. It happened up there
on, uh, oh, uh . . .
WALLACE: Was it Mero and Wilkerson?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it was on up the street there a little bit, uh,
from Mero and, uh, oh, damn it, there ain't no street there now.
That Watts building took it.
WALLACE: Oh, okay. Uh, it's not Madison now.
BEAUCHAMP: Madison Street, yeah.
WALLACE: Madison?
BEAUCHAMP: Right there on Madison Street.
WALLACE: Street.
BEAUCHAMP: When Uncle Johnny got up there, well, Wainscott was
beating on Carlos on this club and he backed off [John Fallis];
said, "Don't hit him no more". He hit him again and, then,
Johnny shot him.
WALLACE: Uh-huh.
BEAUCHAMP: And he had a 45 automatic. And, uh, he got Carlos
and went on home and Colston was on the police force and he was
supposed to have been a bad man and they tried to keep him away
from down there and not let him go because they wanted to take
Uncle Johnny alive.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: But nothing happened. He broke loose from them and
�
went down there and [laughing], shit, here they come hauling his
ass back.
WALLACE: [Laughing] He'd shot . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He shot him.
WALLACE: Do you know when this incident took place? Was that
the twenties [1920s] or the thirties [1930s].
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, it was back in the [laughing] . . . back in the
thirties [1930s], I'd say. No. No, it would be . . . be back in
the twenties [1920s].
WALLACE: 'Cause Fallis was dead by '29 [1929], wasn't he,
John?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They had a hired gun got him.
WALLACE: What happened there? I do . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he was . . . them police was scared of him and
they wanted to get rid of him and, by God, they brought in a
professional killer. That's what we always believed. They . . .
a fellow by the name of Rigsby.
WALLACE: Yeah, Everett Rigsby.
BEAUCHAMP: Everett Rigsby, and, uh . . .
WALLACE: Do you know the story of the night that he was shot,
how that happened?
BEAUCHAMP: Well . . .
WALLACE: People have told me two or three different . . .
�
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, they was having a crap game down there in
one of them joints, and they got in an argument over there and
this guy said he'd made his point and, then, Uncle Johnny said,
"You're a lying little hooker. You didn't do it", and, then, by
God, he [Everett Rigsby] just pulled out his gun and shot him.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: He fell under the crap table and he walked around
that crap table and took dead aim and hit him right there.
WALLACE: Made sure he finished . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Made sure he killed him. He come down there to kill
him in the first place. He'd been down there looking for him
before because I heared Grant Fallis tell Uncle Johnny, says, uh,
"Johnny, watch yourself now. There's a man looking for you."
And Uncle Johnny says, "Well, I'll pin a rose in his ass with
that pump gun if he comes around fooling with me." And he
carried a 45 automatic in his hip pocket all the time. It was a
nickel-plated and pearl-handled. Heck, I've seen it time and
time again.
WALLACE: He didn't get a chance to draw it, I guess. He got
shot before . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. They tried to say he didn't have his gun on him,
but Chester, when he fell under that table, Chester took that gun
off of him.
�
WALLACE: Oh.
BEAUCHAMP: Chester Fallis, who was running the joint.
WALLACE: Was it the Peachtree, you think, or what . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. It was . . . called it the Wide Awake.
WALLACE: The Wide Awake.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, it was right on the corner of Gaines Alley and
Clinton Street.
WALLACE: Okay, okay. Well, you're the first one who's ever
known all the details. I'd heard he got shot around Fincel's
Meat Market [Fincel Brothers Meat Market] and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, Fincel's [Fincel Brothers Meat Market] did have
a meat market right across the street from there.
WALLACE: Oh, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Johnny Fincel. I never will forget an incident. I
had a quarter. I was working over in South Frankfort in a
grocery and I told Mother, I said, "Go down there and get us some
sausage . . . fresh sausage for breakfast." Well, when they get
heck of a [inaudible] of it [laughing], they got up there and I
got looking at it and it had bacon rinds in it, ever durn thing
in the world. I was just so . . .
WALLACE: Scraped in it there.
BEAUCHAMP: I said, "Look, just take it out there and throw it in
the trash." I said, "That ain't fittin' for a dog to eat."
�
Johnny Fincel would do any damn thing.
WALLACE: To make money?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Well, now, that wasn't the only place Fincel [Fincel
Brothers Meat Market] had. Didn't he eventually move over to
Wilkinson and Broadway or something, or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Right.
WALLACE: Yeah. He relocated.
BEAUCHAMP: He, uh, had a better market over there. He had a
grocery store and a meat market. Now, down there on Clinton
Street, he just had a meat market. They butchered their beef and
hogs out in the country and brought them in there. Them, uh,
Fincels [Fincel Brothers Meat Market] were all butchers.
WALLACE: Well, there was a lot of stock slaughtered in
Frankfort, wasn't there? I mean, people would drive in their
cattle and hogs into town and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: And take them out there on Owenton Road, back up in
there.
WALLACE: They used to have that slaughtering operation back in
where the Montessori School is now, isn't that back in where . .
.
BEAUCHAMP: I don't know what's out there now, but . . .
WALLACE: Used to have a water reservoir out there and . . .
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. It's still up there.
WALLACE: And C. C. Moore used to have his equipment company
back in there.
BEAUCHAMP: Right. Chester Moore.
WALLACE: I'll tell you one of the people I talked to is a
black woman. She said on Court Day and on certain times, they'd
drive these hogs and cattle and get them slaughtered and the men
would get a little money and the place they'd go was corner of
Clinton and Washington, to the joints down there, and, uh, find
affection and find drink and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. There was prostitutes down there, in the
business.
WALLACE: Well, was it a red-light district? I mean, is that .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, there was back years ago, there was a
red-light district down there on, they call it, uh, they called
it the Gas House Alley, which, later on, they changed it to
Center Street. And all them houses up and down there were whore
houses. And, then, [laughing] they had a joint down there on the
corner of Mero and Center Street and there's . . . all the girls
hung out down there and, uh, Rogers run a saloon there. We had
legal whiskey and beer and everything. They'd go back there and
sit down and, uh, one of these girls went over there and sat down
�
by this girl and said, "I wanted to ask you something". Now, I
got this second-handed. I've heard it several times, so I
believe it's true. Said, "I know damn well I'm a better looking
woman than you, better built and everything; but", said, "I want
you to tell me, how is it you always get the money men and I have
to take the damn poor ones". She said, "The only thing I can
tell you, I keep my ass up off that sheet." [Laughter] I've
heard that a dozen times. I was too young to remember it.
WALLACE: Well, do you remember Ida Howard?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, my goodness, yeah.
WALLACE: Can you describe . . . nobody's ever told me what she
looked like. I . . .
BEAUCHAMP: She was a beautiful woman when she was young.
WALLACE: Umhmm.
BEAUCHAMP: I remember when she come to Frankfort. Her husband's
name was Henry Howard; great big feller and a . . . and a bad
man.
WALLACE: Come out of the mountains?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Come out of the mountains and brought her down
here, and she was a lot younger than Henry. And he was so
jealous of her, he kept her in the house all time; but my uncle,
Johnny Fallis, was . . . he worked over there at that rock quarry
and he'd sneak over there. And he . . . he went with her a lot
�
of times.
WALLACE: Knocking off a piece on the side.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And, then, when old Henry, he went back up . .
. he killed a man up there in the mountains, and he went back up
there for something and, by God, they killed him.
WALLACE: They caught up with him up there.
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir, and . . . and, then, Ida, she just, well,
she just got a big house there and got a couple of girls there
and just run a whore house for years and years, and she never was
busted.
WALLACE: Well, why? I guess she had connections with . . .
BEAUCHAMP: She paid off. That's the only thing I could ever
figure out why they never did bust her. But she was right there
on Hill Street, had that big house and, uh, later on, she moved
up on Madison Street. Then, later on, she moved and she was
getting old . . . she moved up on Main Street. But, if she was
the woman, now, she'd do anything in the world for you.
WALLACE: Yeah, that's what I've heard. I . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I've heared her take in old down and outers, rent
them a room and, well, they didn't have no money to pay, and she
said, "Well, you just don't owe me nothing. I'll give you the
night's lodging."
WALLACE: Umhmm.
�
BEAUCHAMP: And give him his breakfast and, now, you . . . move
on to somebody else and get your . . .
WALLACE: You hear of a woman called Maggie, sort of the black
equivalent of . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Maggie's whorehouse [laughing].
WALLACE: Who was Ma- . . . I've never heard Maggie's last
name. Do you know who . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I never did hear of her last name, either; yeah.
WALLACE: Where was Maggie's place?
BEAUCHAMP: She was on, uh, off of Washington Street. Uh, a
little old street run through there, uh . . .
WALLACE: What, in the block between Broadway and Clinton on
Washington or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, between Mero and Clinton.
WALLACE: Mero and Clinton, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: There was a little old alleyway there. The name
escapes me now, what the name of that alley was.
WALLACE: Not Gaines Alley, was it?
BEAUCHAMP: No. It was Gaines Alley.
WALLACE: Gaines Alley.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: On . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Bowman Gaines had a livery stable there and, uh, for
�
your laundry.
WALLACE: Umhmm.
BEAUCHAMP: Bowman Gaines run that laundry.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Model Laundry.
WALLACE: Well, I'd heard about Maggie. It was this kind of
place you go in the front door, but you come out the back, or
vice versa.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: You don't be seen coming in and going the same two
doors.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: There's a man by the name of "Doughbelly", or "Uncle
Dough".
BEAUCHAMP: [Laughing] "Doughbelly" Griffy.
WALLACE: What was his last name?
BEAUCHAMP: Griffy.
WALLACE: Griffy?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: He ran a . . . a place where you could rent a room,
I guess, if you needed it.
BEAUCHAMP: Never knowed of it, and he never had a home of his
own in his life, I don't guess.
�
WALLACE: Oh, really? Tell me about . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I knowed him all his life . . . all of my life. He
was a lot older than me.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: No. I ne- . . . now, he worked on the river a whole
lot, and he'd get him up a bunch of money and he'd come in there
and stay drunk till it was all gone and, then, he'd, uh, there
was . . . you see, the Old Home Guard 'round here, old Colonel
Gaines was the head of the Old Home Guard, something like the
National Guard.
WALLACE: Right, yeah. A militia kind of thing.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And old "Doughbelly" was in that, and Wilhelm
was a captain in it.
WALLACE: Now, "Doughbelly" was a white guy?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah, "Doughbelly" was a white guy, and, uh,
Doughbelly . . . now, let's see, "Doughbelly's" name was John.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: John Griffy.
WALLACE: John Griffy.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And, uh, he had one son, and he lived with
this woman. Never was married to her, but they lived together
for years. They had one son. I played with him many a day. We
played together. Maude was her name. And old Campbell Harry was
�
a barber there on Broadway for years and he'd say, you see old
"Doughbelly" up there, tell him I want to see him. Now, why he
did it and done it, I don't know. He'd send old Dough- . . .
[End of Tape #1, Side #1]
[Begin Tape #1, Side #2]
BEAUCHAMP: . . . little "Doughbelly" went and got it. I guess
he wanted to give "Doughbelly" a beer.
WALLACE: Well, as far as, just since we're on this subject of
prostitution, houses of ill repute, somebody told me about a
place called the Eight Mile House, or Eight Mile High House.
Have you heard of . . .
BEAUCHAMP: The Eight Mile.
WALLACE: The Eight Mile House. Don't know exactly where that
is. Eva Cox.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, she was an old black woman. Now, what she
done, she rented rooms out to people.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: You go down to Eva Cox's and she would get you a
girl.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And she had a bunch of bulldogs she raised.
WALLACE: I've seen pictures of the building where she, uh,
raised the bulldogs. They said she'd sell baseball tickets, too.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, uh-huh. She would.
WALLACE: Racing tickets and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh.
WALLACE: But she was supposedly not the cleanest of . . . of
individuals.
BEAUCHAMP: No. I don't guess the old woman ever took a bath in
her life [laughter]. Yeah, Eva Cox.
WALLACE: Was Bottom a violent place?
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, it was. It was a violent place.
WALLACE: Do you remember any specific incidents of violence
that you witnessed?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, the year [1929] they killed my uncle [John
Fallis] up there . . .
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: . . .there was a man killed ever month. Was 12
people killed that year.
WALLACE: One a month almost.
BEAUCHAMP: The way . . . that's what they always say, it would
average one a month.
WALLACE: Why the violence? What . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it was a situation they was in. We was in the
Depression and, uh, temper flared at the least durn thing, and a
lot of people committed suicide. And I remember Neville Quire.
�
He killed his wife and cut his throat down there. That was a bad
thing. And, then, old man Blackwell killed his wife and killed
Bill Casey. He lived in a duplex house and he was a sound
sleeper, but he suspicioned that Bill was fooling with his wife.
And there was a . . . this duplex, they had a door that connected
them together.
WALLACE: Uh-huh.
BEAUCHAMP: He set a bucket of water against that door and he got
up the next morning and that bucket was way out in the floor.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: And he loaded up his shotgun and he had, uh, steel
balls. He loaded special shells.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And Bill come out going to the privy. It was up in
the back yard. And he killed him.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And I understand his wife said, "You killed the
onliest man I ever loved", and, by God, he turned around and
killed her.
WALLACE: I had heard about violence in connection with some of
the joints; a person get liquored up and get in a fight or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, there was some terrible tragedies happened on
down there.
�
WALLACE: Yeah. I had a story about Alex Gordon. Do you know
Alex Gordon?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He was another evil man.
WALLACE: Evil in what sense?
BEAUCHAMP: Mean.
WALLACE: Just . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He knocked a many a poor boy in the head down there
for just because he was mad about something. Just, oh, boy would
come in there . . . he sold whiskey. He had a liquor license.
He'd let them go back there and drink. Boy'd get a little in and
get a cross with him. Hell, he'd just knock him in the head.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Had a couple of blackjacks or a pistol, hit them over
the head with a pistol. Yeah, he was a evil son-of-a-bitch.
WALLACE: I'd heard where he got in a . . . got in a dispute
with some black guy over some money, I guess it was, and he . . .
BEAUCHAMP: It was over a half a pint of whiskey.
WALLACE: Was it?
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir. Alex bought a half a pint of whiskey from
him on credit and he asked Alex to pay him, and, by God, Alex
killed him.
WALLACE: Do you know when that was, by chance?
BEAUCHAMP: I don't remember the year, but that was what it was
�
all over. But, now, he was another one took part in politics,
somebody running for an office. Now, they didn't do a thing in
the world with him for killing that . . .
WALLACE: Black guy.
BEAUCHAMP: Black guy.
WALLACE: Because he had connections up town that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: It was that damn judge up there. He stopped the
court. Alex went up and talked to him.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: What was that damn judge's name. He wanted a rece .
. . to have a few minutes' recession while he talked to Mr.
Gordon. They was trying him for murder then, and he just
turned him loose. Uh . . .
WALLACE: Do you re . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I'm just trying to think of that black dude's name
is, Will Henry . . . he was a mean nigger. He cut a little rough
with Alex [Will Henry]. Said, "You promised to come pay me and
you didn't do it. I let you have it in good faith" and, uh, Alex
went off and studied about it and, by God, he went down there and
called him to the door and killed him.
WALLACE: So, the black fellow sort of provoked him, in some
respects?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, in some, yeah, I guess he did. Alex was a evil
�
man. My sister-in-law worked out there at that nursing home and
she said that man laid there for two weeks praying to die. He
had one leg off. I tell you an incident. I never did have no
use for the old man, but I'm chicken-hearted. I come by there
and he was sitting in a little old joint he was running. He just
looked like he was in so much misery. I said, "Mr. Gordon, how
you feeling?" He said, "Son, I am awful". Said, "Two days and
nights I've suffered". I said, "Well, is there anything I can do
for you?" He said, "Yeah, if you'd do it, you could take me to
the hospital and I'll get this tube changed". Said, "It's all
stopped up with sugar".
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And I said, "Well, I'll do that." So, I, I helped
him get in my car and took him to the hospital and went and got a
wheelchair and helped him out and took him in there; helped him
up on a table. And there was a young intern come down there and
he pulled that tube out, put another tube in him and, then, God,
he drawed a gallon of durn fluid off of him. Stunk, God, I never
smelled nothing stunk so bad in my life.
WALLACE: So, he was . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I had to get out of there. I was going to vomit
right there in the floor. They got him fixed up and I brought
him back down there, and he says, "That's the most ease I've had
�
in . . ." and I really didn't like the old man; but he was
suffering and I . . . and I just had to help him.
WALLACE: Help him. Well, some of the people I've talked to
said, yes, there was violence in connection with some of the
joints and . . . but, in most cases, it was not a violent place
in the neighborhoods, as far as people living close to each
other. The blacks and whites got along pretty good.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I mean, old Calhoun, we [laughing] . . . we
growed up together. Hell, we would fight one day, be back the
next day playing together. Uh, his mother fixed us a biscuit and
put a little butter and sprinkled a little sugar on it and give
it to us. And, uh, we . . . we all got along. There was a whole
bunch of them Calhouns. I think there was about eight of them
boys.
WALLACE: Yes, there was, as a matter of fact.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, there was one in there, that was George. I
still miss old George. But old George had . . . George had a
evil streak in him. Oh, shit, he [laughing] . . . he'd fight you
in a minute.
WALLACE: Well, the whites . . . I mean, it wasn't an all-black
neighborhood. There were whites living down in there.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We . . . we were mixed.
WALLACE: Was it mostly poor folk, or were there . . .
�
BEAUCHAMP: May have . . . we were all just poor, about as poor
as you could get, living from hand to mouth. I tell you, one
time, I was . . . Mother and Daddy had gone to cut some greens to
sell to get some meat to cook part of them. And I was trying to
cook some potatoes there, cook some potatoes for me and my si . .
. little sister. One little sister had died. And somebody said,
"What are you doing, boy?" I said, "I'm trying to fix these damn
'taters for me and my sis." [Laughter] Said, "Well, you got
anything else?" I said, "No, that's all we got." He said,
"Well, you want to come go up to the store with me?" And I said,
"Yeah." And we went up there and he bought us two basket loads
of groceries. I mean bushel basket loads.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And he bought a lot of candy and cakes [laughing]
and, shit on the cooking. Me and my sister and brother flew into
that candy [laughter]. And that milk, he got us a gallon of
milk, and, uh, all [inaudible] was a bunch of stuff. Hell, there
was enough groceries to last two weeks [laughing].
WALLACE: And he just did that out of the goodness of his . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. It was, uh . . . it was Elk's Lodge.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, they'd do that there once or twice a year,
they'd come down through there and help us with something. And,
�
uh, when I got old enough, I joined the Elk's Lodge and it wasn't
nothing like that. Why, shit, all they done was drink and play
cards when I got in there. And I stayed in there about six years
and I never did . . . I attended the meetings and I just never
did see nothing, just drinking and playing cards.
WALLACE: Yeah. They never . . . they had lost their purpose,
I guess, in the . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, well, another generation had it and . . .
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And there was . . . well, one thing, [laughing] one
of them damn Muccis up there was sitting there at the bar and I
was drinking a bottle of beer and he said, "I'll tell you what,
we're just getting too damn much of this riff-raff in here". And
I looked over at that bastard. I thought he was looking right at
me. [Laughter - Wallace] And I said, "Well, here's one
riff-raff will get the Hell out of here."
WALLACE: And so you . . .
BEAUCHAMP: And I quit paying my dues and Walter Rogers come up
to me and he said, Jo, you owe me for six months' dues. I said,
"For what?" He said, "Well, you dropped out of the Elks and
never did turn in your papers where you was demitting; so, we
[are] charging you for a half a year." I said . . . he said,
"I'll give you a paper and you write it down where you're
�
demitting. And, uh, if you ever want to come back in, why, you
won't have to go through all that investigation and everything".
So, I thought, well, all right. So, I paid him and . . .
WALLACE: Umhumm. Well, let me ask you about that first house
that you bought, the one John Buckner helped you get. Did you
all have indoor plumbing and electric and facilities and . . .
what kind . . .
BEAUCHAMP: We had water in the house. We had a commode. No
bathroom. I put the bathroom in myself. I worked in the pipe
gang at the distillery and I had a little knowledge of plumbing,
and I bought this entire bathtub, the tank, the heater . . .
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: For $25.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And I put it in myself.
WALLACE: Well, that's . . . a lot of people have told me that
the houses down there, a person would take pride in their home
and try to keep it up; but a lot of cases, they did not have
indoor facilities and didn't . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Right.
WALLACE: Didn't have . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, that's right. Had outside privies.
WALLACE: Would you really consider the area a slum or . . . or
�
not? I mean, was it fair to call it a slum?
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, it'd be fair to call it a slum of the town,
yeah.
WALLACE: But some people would sa- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I hate to say that because . . .
WALLACE: Well, some people say the landlords wouldn't keep up
the places.
BEAUCHAMP: No. No, old Dulin Moss owned, Hell, he owned half of
it down through there and, uh, John Buckner, he owned two or
three houses down there; but John kept his property up.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: But he wanted me to own me a home and he knowed they
was going to take the house I lived in. I didn't know anything
about it at the time, but he did. He had a farsight. He was a
smart man. And when that slum clearance come through there, they
took that side of the street and they took his house. . .
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: That I was living in.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh . . .
WALLACE: So, you were still . . .
BEAUCHAMP: See, I was done out two or three years there and they
had . . . I was fixing up my house. Well, and then they come
�
down there to taking that. By that time, I'd done built another
house in the back. I had two houses. And they said, "We're
going to give you 40, uh, $4,800 for this property," or maybe it
was $4,200. Anyway, I went ahead and took what the offered me
and the ones that held out got $2,200 more.
WALLACE: Did a lot of them hold out or just . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah, a lot of them held out; but I had a chance
to buy this place with $4,000 down.
WALLACE: Umhumm. So, you had the money from that to . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: To do it.
BEAUCHAMP: So, I went ahead and paid down on this place and . .
.
WALLACE: Well, how did you . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Let me show you this check here. I'll show you the
last check that I paid it off.
[Interruption in tape.]
WALLACE: Well, let me ask you about that. Since we're on
urban renewal, do you remember how you found out about the urban
renewal, who told you or if you read it or . . . or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, they first started, that distillery, there
was black guys at the distillery, they were pushing it. They
wanted to get rid of it because, uh, Albert Blanton was . . . he
�
was famous for his burgoo. And we were having a lot of
out-of-state people come there and they had to come right down
through the slums of town to get there.
WALLACE: To get to the distillery.
BEAUCHAMP: And they donated a lot of money to it, to clean it
up.
WALLACE: You mean the distillery donated money to the town to
clean up . . .
BEAUCHAMP: There was a . . . nobody . . . they didn't get no pub
. . . publicity or nothing about it, but I'm sure they did.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And they were wanting to get rid of all them shacks.
I see some pictures there.
WALLACE: Yeah. I've got some pictures of houses. That's
taken in 1913 of houses down by the . . . that's Wilkerson
Street, right back up to the . . . but these are real old. These
are a few years be . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, they certainly are.
WALLACE: A few years before you were born.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I was born in '14 [1914].
WALLACE: Yeah, and this is 1913, most of this, in the pictu .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: Where in the world did you get ahold of these things
�
at?
WALLACE: Well, the Kentucky Historical Society has old glass
plate photographs. You know, the real old glass ones. And they
made some copies, printed up some copies; and I thought I'd bring
them because I thought maybe they'd be . . . I don't know where
in Bottom these were, but I know they are Bottom.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Or in that section.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, you told about this John Fallis.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: His mother run a whore house and she had her two
daughters [laughing].
WALLACE: Good grief . . . in Frankfort? [Laughter -
Beauchamp] What was his mother's name?
BEAUCHAMP: I don't know. It was back before my time, but I've .
. . now, her house that she built, I've got it right down there
in the shed. I bought it when the slum clearance . . . for $25,
tore it down and moved out there and built that big shed down
there.
WALLACE: Ah. Had her own daughters working for her in a . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: House of prostitution. Good grief. [Laughter -
Beauchamp] He was an evil [laughing] . . .
�
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they were Indians.
WALLACE: Oh, really? They had a . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: They had Indian . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Hell, they said take all the damn police in Frankfort
to get her in the workhouse when she got drunk and get that damn
shotgun and get out there and shoot some . . . [laughter] They
said she was a mean son-of-a-bitch.
WALLACE: So, her house was down in the Bottom?
BEAUCHAMP: No, sir. It was on Hill Street.
WALLACE: Hill Street.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Let me ask you . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, that was the Bottom, yeah.
WALLACE: Does the Bottom just include Broadway to Mero and
Wilkerson to Ann, or do you go all the way up to Hill Street when
you say Bottom?
BEAUCHAMP: Went to Hill Street.
WALLACE: All the way on up to Hill Street.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Let me ask you more about . . . are you getting
tired? I mean, I . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, uh-uh. It's very interesting.
�
WALLACE: I want to talk some more about this urban renewal
thing. When you first heard about they was going to buy up and
tear down, how did you react to it? I mean, you remember how you
felt?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I was pretty upset over it. I didn't want to
leave. I had my home there and I had it paid for.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And I'd worked on it and, uh, had it up like I wanted
it. I had five rooms and a bath. And, uh, it was paid for.
That was the thing now. When me and my wife got that paid for,
we was up there in the Capital Candy Kitchen getting us a choc .
. . chocolate soda, and we had it all. We'd been down to the
Capital Building and Loan and paid it off and we had our deed and
everything. [Laughing] She said, "Well, they might tell us to
get over, but they can't tell us to get out, can they?" I said,
"That's right, it's ours." But they did do it.
WALLACE: Did you . . .
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh . . .
WALLACE: Go ahead.
BEAUCHAMP: This damn Jack Hulette come down there and appraised
the damn thing. It was $4,200.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, they said, "Well, we take you to court, you
�
might not get this much." So, uh, this place was up for sale and
old Ms. What-you-call-it had it, the real estate, Ms. Rooks.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And she said, "Jo, I got a house that I can let you
have for ten thousand and five hundred dollars. It's out on
McCann Lane. And you'll have to have $4,500 down." Well, I only
had $4,200; so, I went and borrowed . . .
WALLACE: The three.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, and bought it. And there . . . I had to pay
$62 a month.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: On the loan to an outfit in Louisville. And here's
what happened that I paid it off. Louis Rosenstiel had a
insurance policy on ever employee it had. Now, I knowed it, but
I didn't let nobody else know it, that I had this policy. And he
called all them policies in and paid us all off; just give it to
us. Give me $4,000.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And I took that $4,000 and paid off this house.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, it was a little over . . . that was the last
payment.
WALLACE: It took care of it.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir.
WALLACE: Did you go to any of the public hearings that they
had when the project was first announced, back in, I guess it was
'58? John Gerard was mayor.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: And they had a bunch of hearings; one at the
courthouse and one at Mayo-Underwood and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Did you go to any of them?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Didn't do a damn bit of good. They'd done
robbed us.
WALLACE: What did they say at the meetings? I mean, what were
they telling people?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, uh, well, I'll tell you what they told me.
"We're going to take it. We're going to give you so much. And
if you go to court, you might not even get that." And, uh, I
listened to them and I bought this place and took what they
offered me. That woman right next door, she said, "They're going
to play Hell doing me that away. I'll just walk out without
nothing before I'll let them tell me what to do." And she got
$2,200 . . . didn't . . . I had two houses. She just had one old
shack and she got $2,200 more than I did.
WALLACE: For holding out.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And ever[y] one of them that held out got
more.
WALLACE: Well, what kinds of questions did the people raise at
these meetings? What kind of issues did they ask the leaders who
were pushing this project? Do you remember what kind of comments
were made?
BEAUCHAMP: "We're going to clean up the slums of the town and
make it a better . . ." It seemed like to me that, uh, it was
all started up in Washington, "Beautify America".
WALLACE: Mm-mmm.
BEAUCHAMP: They did Cincinnati the same way. They cleaned up.
I don't know where in the world all them people went to.
WALLACE: So, this was . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Down there where old Crosley Field was at.
WALLACE: Did that happen about the same time that, uh . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yes. All happened, all this shit, beauty. "Beautify
America".
WALLACE: Um-humm. Let me, uh . . . there was a petition that
was circulated by a lot of the homeowners down there to try and
stop this thing. Do you remember that?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah.
WALLACE: Did you sign it, or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
�
WALLACE: But it didn't seem to do no good.
BEAUCHAMP: No good at all. They just crammed it down our
throats and did what they wanted to do.
WALLACE: Some people paid money and they got a couple of
lawyers to try and stop it.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They're the ones that held out and got more
money, but they had to pay a lot more to them lawyers.
WALLACE: Yeah. Do you remember who the lawyers were or
anything about it?
BEAUCHAMP: No, I don't. Uh-uh.
WALLACE: You didn't contribute toward that.
BEAUCHAMP: No, un-uh. I just went ahead and took the $4,200 and
. . . and I had a chance to get this place and we come out there
and looked it over and . . . and, uh, the man says, "Well, we're
just tired of living out here and we want to move to town and . .
."
WALLACE: Uh-huh.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, boy, when we got in here, the fella next door
come over and said, "Well, did you buy it?" I said, "Yes, sir.
Done paid for it and everything." He said, "Did he tell you
anything about your cistern?"
WALLACE: Oh, no.
BEAUCHAMP: I said, "No." He said, [laughing] "It won't hold
�
water. It's cracked." Well, you couldn't put over two loads in
it. If you did, it all run out.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he said, "He told me that." He said, "You'll
have city water. You'll have city water here by August." This
was in, uh, September.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: The next August, they'll have city water. We had
city water 20 years later.
WALLACE: [Laughing] Do you think real estate agents in town
were making a lot of money relocating those people that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Why, certainly, they were.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: They certainly were. Hell, they got fat on that
stuff.
WALLACE: Well, that's what I . . . one of the thoughts I had,
that there were people making money from this relocation process.
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, they were.
WALLACE: Did you get any kind of assistan . . . they . . .
somebody told me they would give payments to people to relocate,
to help them move their stuff. Did you get any?
BEAUCHAMP: I got $40 for moving.
WALLACE: Oh.
�
BEAUCHAMP: That's all I got. They allowed me $40, and my
brother-in-law went and got a truck and we all moved ourselves.
[Laughing] So, that . . .
WALLACE: Huh. Come out okay on that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. That $40 . . .
WALLACE: Well, you talked about the appraisal like you felt
like it wasn't a fair appraisal or, or . . . did they ever come
into your house to do these . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, he come down there and went all through it.
WALLACE: They were supposed to do three appraisals, three
different appraisers.
BEAUCHAMP: Nobody but Jack Hulette and I never did like the
bastard [laughter] . . . Yes, sir. Appraised me some more. I
thought I ought . . . should have got $6,000.
WALLACE: But you were out of there by 1960?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. I moved here in September of 1960.
WALLACE: Sixty. [1960]
BEAUCHAMP: September the first. We went down to . . . oh, what
. . . him and his wife both were lawyers. They were handling it
down there. What in the world was his name? She died and he's
still in law practice, I guess. There in McClure Building.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: They were handling it.
�
WALLACE: Well, how did the blacks down there feel about all
this?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they felt like they was getting robbed, too.
Them boys, that was the general opinion of all of us. And I . .
. I felt bad about it. I was years before I still . . . then, uh
. . .
WALLACE: A lot of them have told me they were led to believe
that you could buy back down there, that they were going to clean
everything out and, if you wanted to move back down in there,
they were going to build houses in there and you could buy back
into . . .
BEAUCHAMP: That was not true. That wasn't true.
WALLACE: Didn't work that way, that's . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, it didn't.
WALLACE: That's for sure. Did you have any dealings with
Charles R. Perry or Frank Lewis or any of those guys that were
employed by the slum commission?
BEAUCHAMP: There was one big old feller. I don't remember what
his name was. He come in here working with them. Oh, he was a
fast talker and trying to tell you all what a big deal it was.
And I'm sure that he got fat out of the deal, too.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: They was a lot of rip-off went on in there. Now, I'm
�
going to tell you that. Wilkerson Street School didn't have a
window light in it, no heating. They hadn't had nothing in there
in five years. There was some old wino was living in there.
There'd been no school there, Mayo-Underwood School.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: They gave them $100,000 for that damn school. Now,
you think somebody didn't get paid off out of that deal?
WALLACE: A hundred thousand for the Wilkinson Street or for
Mayo-Underwood?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, that was Mayo-Underwood School, yeah.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Then, the damn thing, they'd done broke all the
window lights out and they'd done stole all the plumbing and sold
it for junk.
WALLACE: Yeah. Mayo-Underwood. I've seen pictures after the
window lights were broken out.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I hadn't seen any pictures . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, that's the story I heard. They gave them
$100,000 for that. Well, they went right on up the street. The
Baptist Church, Corinthian Baptist Church.
WALLACE: Right.
BEAUCHAMP: Okay, they offered them $25,000 for it. No, they
�
offered them $50,000 for it and Atlanta rejected it and offered
them 25 [$25,000].
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they went to court with them. It was
Chancellors [Sarah and Chat Chancelor], that lawyer I'm trying to
think about.
WALLACE: Ah, Chancellors.
BEAUCHAMP: So, I was summonsed on the jury. And why he let me
sit on that jury, knowing that I was so bitterly against them.
Now, the deal was they were offered $25,000 and they went to
court with them. And I was on the jury and here come old Friday
up there and shook hands with me. I said, "Man, this is the
worst thing you ever done." And I said, "I'm going to get
throwed off that jury."
WALLACE: That's right. Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: But they didn't. They let me go . . . well, heard
all of the evidence and this and that and what had been offered
and what the . . . well, they don't have church there no more and
it was all dilapidated and everything, and we give them a good
price at $25,000. Well, we went back there in that room and sat
down. One feller said, "Well, I think $25,000 is fair enough."
Come over to the next person and they said, "Well, what do you
think about it?" And, uh, he said, "Well, it sounds pretty
�
good." Well, I was the next person. I said, "It don't sound
worth a damn to me." I said, "They . . . the first offer was
$50,000 and I think that is a fair price for them people." I
said, "$50,000 won't even put in the front door in another
church; or 25,000, rather."
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: I say we give them people $50,000 like the first
offer. Charley Crockett was sitting next to me and he said, and,
then, "I'll go along with Jo." And we picked up another one
going around. And it went around three or four times and got to
be a unanimous decision of $50,000. And, uh, ever time I go by
there . . . now, that church is over on Second and Murray Street.
WALLACE: Murray, yeah. I know exactly where it is.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I parked out there the other day.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, I think, well, I had a part in that church.
WALLACE: In that, saving it. Well, which judge was hearing
those cases? Do you remember which one it was?
BEAUCHAMP: Uh.
WALLACE: It wasn't Meigs, was it?
BEAUCHAMP: Meigs. Could have been. I was thinking about the
judge before him that died with the cancer of the throat. But I,
I'm pretty sure it was Meigs.
�
WALLACE: Meigs, yeah. Because I'd like to go look at some of
those old court records and see how some of those people came out
on their cases, you know. If they all did as good as your
neighbor did, you know, getting the extra couple of thousand or .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: They's one got $2,200 more. She was a widow woman
that lived . . . well, there was a house in between us. Her name
was Updike.
WALLACE: Well, what happened to those people after they got .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they . . .
WALLACE: Had to leave; did they just scatter everywhere or . .
.
BEAUCHAMP: Know where Blanton Acres is?
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: They went down there and bought her a house.
WALLACE: Huh.
BEAUCHAMP: And give her that, uh, $62,000 [$6,200] in on it. Of
course, that didn't pay for the whole thing; but, man, I mean she
had a five rooms, three bedrooms, a bath, brick.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Wilana Updike.
WALLACE: Wilana?
�
BEAUCHAMP: Updike.
WALLACE: Is John Updike her boy?
BEAUCHAMP: No. John Updike was, uh, her husband's uncle.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: You heard of John Updike?
WALLACE: City commissioner, right?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, that's a different one. I think maybe he was a
cousin.
WALLACE: Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, he was, he's connected to that . . . I believe
that was Irvin, one of Irvin's boys.
WALLACE: Well, who's the John Updike you were thinking of; not
the City commissioner?
BEAUCHAMP: John Updike was, uh, her husband's uncle.
WALLACE: Oh, okay. Okay. Well, I . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, wait a minute. John Updike was her husband's
daddy. The uncle was Bill Updike and Roach Updike. That was a
boy.
WALLACE: Well, let me be sure I'm with you on one thing. You
think this whole slum clearance thing came about because of
Washington, D. C. and the drive to clean up America?
BEAUCHAMP: Right.
WALLACE: And, uh, I've heard people say they thought it was
�
because the city fathers wanted that land down there to develop
for other purposes rather than for housing, uh, for the residents
down there. I've heard that reason given. Henry Sanders, do you
know Henry?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: He said he thought it was because the black gals
worked in the white homes and the white ladies in the League of
Women's Voters did a survey in that whole area down there in
1954, found out that there was crime and disease and everything,
and they wanted the area cleaned up because these black women
were coming and working in their homes and they didn't want any
diseases or nothing brought in there.
BEAUCHAMP: That's not true.
WALLACE: You don't think that's . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. I don't think there's a ounce of truth in it. I
know Henry. Henry's a good friend of mine. I . . . it was
Robert, his twin brother.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: I think as much of them as my own blood kin. We went
to Cincinnati time and time again to ball games together. Uh, I
. . . now, that was just his own idea.
WALLACE: Yeah, that was his own . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I disagree with him.
�
WALLACE: Talking about ball games, do you remember a "Black
Cat" Graham?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah.
WALLACE: Pitching ball for the Frankfort . . . what was it,
Frankfort Merchants or Frankfort Mechanics, or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, my God. Them were really . . . had some good
ball players.
WALLACE: Sure did.
BEAUCHAMP: That . . . that "Black Cat", man, he had a fast ball.
Yeah, and I . . .
WALLACE: Do you remember any of the other good ball players
that were . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: What were some of the others?
BEAUCHAMP: "Monkeyback" was shortstop.
WALLACE: "Monkeyback"?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, "Monkeyback". Now, I'll tell you,
"Monkeyback's" name in a minute, but we all . . . [laughing]
Hell, he done passed. Oh, Sanders. "Monkeyback" was . . . name
was Sanders. It could have been Jack or it could have been Roy.
He had two sons, and I believe his name was Jack Sanders, and we
all called him "Monkeyback". And they had a good . . . another
good pitcher. He was a left-hander. He left here when he was a
�
young man. But I'd say we was broke . . . if they broke that
colored line when "Black Cat" was in his prime, they would have
give him a contract.
WALLACE: Yeah. He was that good.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, he was a . . . he was outstanding.
WALLACE: They say one of the big social things was on a Sunday
afternoon or whenever the team was playing, is go out and watch
the ball games.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. That . . . that was the big, main
entertainment around here then. Uh . . .
WALLACE: They play the Lexington Hustlers.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, boy. The Lexington Police. Now, that
Lexington Police had a good team, too; and we had another good
pitcher here by the name of Jack Long.
WALLACE: Jack Long.
BEAUCHAMP: Great big fellow.
WALLACE: White boy or black?
BEAUCHAMP: He was white.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And he pitched against blacks. Now, he
pitched . . . that prison over there, they had a heck of a good
team in prison; and Jack Long got a job as a prison guard on the
strength to come and pitch for this team in prison.
�
WALLACE: You mean, they hired him just because he's such a
good pitcher?
BEAUCHAMP: Pitcher, yeah.
WALLACE: They wanted to bring him in on it. Ha.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Yes, sir. And he come here as a prison guard
and he got that job because he was a good pitcher, so he could
pitch for that prison team. And they almost had a killing over
there; so, they . . . these, uh, boys up here, was about three of
them . . . their names were, uh, we all called them "Frenchie"
[LaFontaine] but their names were. They, uh, back in before
prohibition, they run a saloon there. What in the world was
their names? Huh. Well, the name escapes me right now, but we
all called them Frenchies. They had a ball club and all three of
them boys . . . well, it's like Muddi- . . . Muddich got to the
minor leagues in professional ball.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: Why Jack Long never did make the majors I'll never
know. He struck his . . . he'd strike out 20 men in a game.
WALLACE: Umhumm. Well, people have told me that the games
were an opportunity to . . . to meet friends, or you could go and
buy some bootleg hooch.
BEAUCHAMP: Umhumm. [laughing]
WALLACE: And gamble on the teams and . . .
�
BEAUCHAMP: That was a big thing. Now, my uncle, John Fallis,
right . . . you know where you turn in to Stagg Distillery down
there?
WALLACE: Sure.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, right across the road was our ball park.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And he managed the Kentucky River [Mills] team, and
they were going to play the Service Motor Company, which was them
"Frenchie" [LaFontaine] boys. And, uh, Uncle Johnny had a lot of
money bet on that game. When game time come, out come the team
and here was a pitcher and catcher nobody'd ever seen or heard of
before; and they come over there and said, "Why, that ain't your
pitcher and catcher." He [John Fallis] said, "Yes, they are. I
hired them last night." [Laughter - Wallace] He called
Louisville and told them to send him a pitcher and catcher; he'd
pay them $100 apiece. And Uncle Johnny cleared $500 on the deal.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they got two or three little old scratch hits
off that pitcher. Never got a run.
WALLACE: [Laughing] He was a regular they brought in just for
that purpose.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh. Yeah.
WALLACE: When was that Kentucky River team playing, back in
�
the twenties?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They called it the KRM, Kentucky River Mills.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, and, uh, "Frenchie's" [LaFontaine] team was
Service Motor Company.
WALLACE: A lot of people speak of . . .
BEAUCHAMP: LaFontaine, that was their name, LaFontaine.
WALLACE: LaFontaine. Ah, okay. Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: There's three brothers of them; maybe, could have
been four, but I know there was three.
WALLACE: Umhumm. Did you play ball yourself?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. I never was very good, though. I . . . I
never could make it . . . the first team.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And, so, we got up a second team and, uh, [laughing]
we was wanting to get in a league and we got a team, and the
weakest team in the league, we got a game with and they beat us
18 to 1. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Oh, no. [Laughing]
BEAUCHAMP: So, that broke up the second team. No, I just never
could make the team. I . . . I could hit very well, but I
misjudged a lot of balls. They said it was because I needed
glasses.
�
WALLACE: Glasses. Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: And I never could get them and . . .
WALLACE: As a young man, you probably couldn't afford them.
BEAUCHAMP: No, I just couldn't afford them.
WALLACE: Well, let me ask you about some of the . . . I've got
names of people that, uh, were business owners and politically
powerful men and . . .
[End of Tape #1, Side #2]
[Begin Tape #2, Side #1]
WALLACE: . . . chew on it. [Laughter]
BEAUCHAMP: Whoa, me and Calvin and all of us, we got the whammy
on it, come in there and run us out. [Laughter]
WALLACE: Well, it hadn't done too good; it really hasn't.
BEAUCHAMP: No, it hasn't.
WALLACE: The Tiger Inn, did . . . now, is that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, that was, uh, predominantly a black restaurant.
WALLACE: Umhumm. Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, you couldn't go . . . a white person couldn't go
in there and sit down and eat.
WALLACE: You weren't welcome, really.
BEAUCHAMP: No. He'd tell you, "I'll serve you, but you got to
take your food and leave." He was a little old hump-backed
fellow that run it.
�
WALLACE: Ewen Atkins, right?
BEAUCHAMP: Atkins, right. I was trying to think of his name.
His name was Atkins.
WALLACE: Do you remember, did you ever go in there at all?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I've went in there and got sandwiches and left.
WALLACE: Yeah. What did it look like on the inside, do you .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it was . . . it was very nice. He kept an
orderly place. Well, I guess you in his race, you could call it
a high-class restaurant.
WALLACE: A lot of blacks speak of it very fondly.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Say it was a place for school kids to go get food, or
listen to a juke box or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Right. Wasn't no whites. You just couldn't go in
there. You could go in there and get a sandwich and get it and
leave, which I never did . . . why, I have went in there a time
or two and got a sandwich, because I knowed how old Atkins was
and I didn't like the old bastard and I didn't go around him.
[Laughter]
WALLACE: You remember Jack Robb?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, uh-huh. I remember his daddy, Robb's Funeral
Home.
�
WALLACE: Home, exactly.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I don't know very much about Robb. They're supposed
to be very fair-skinned. You couldn't hardly tell they was
black, if you didn't know they was black, you know. He wa- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, he had a sister. I think she went off from here
and passed herself off as white.
WALLACE: Oh, really?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Yeah, they were . . . their mother was that a
way. What . . . she was mixed up. Probably her daddy was a
white man.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: You take a real African nigger, he's going to be
black.
WALLACE: Yeah. So . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, you . . . Calhoun. Now, he's a real African
nigger. He's got that pointed butt.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: You could take the prettiest nigger woman in the
world and you look at her cheeks, and she's going to have that
pointed butt.
WALLACE: Well, the Robbs are people that, uh, get mentioned
very favorably by some of the blacks, particularly Jack, who was
�
an entertainer and sort of popular with the blacks and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, he was a . . . played the piano.
WALLACE: Yeah, played the piano. That was his . . . "Frog"
Woods [Huston K. Woods].
BEAUCHAMP: Right. [Laughing] "Frog" Woods run a grocery down
there on Mero Street.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And, then, they later moved around on Wilkinson
Street. He had a heart attack and they told him to get out of
the grocery business and he sold out to Nelson Barber with the
understanding that he wouldn't start another grocery, but he did.
He started one right on Wilkinson Street.
WALLACE: What . . . where Wilkinson and Mero run in together?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they criss-cross, now.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Wilkinson Street run this a way and wh- . . . crossed
it that way.
WALLACE: Umhumm. And he had one on the corner of Wilkinson
and Mero? Is that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. It was just about on the corner. There was
one house between it. I was . . .
WALLACE: Do you know when that place . . . when he was there
in business, that one?
�
BEAUCHAMP: Well, let's see. In the forties [1940s].
WALLACE: In the forties [1940s].
BEAUCHAMP: So, that would be when he moved around there.
WALLACE: What was his real name? Was it "Frog"? I mean . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. By gosh, it wasn't "Frog"; [laughing] but I
never did know his real name.
WALLACE: Well, why did they call him "Frog"? Does he have a
deep voice, maybe, like a frog, or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, he . . . I've heard him called "Frog" Woods all
of his life. I never did know what . . .
WALLACE: What . . . seems like having a nickname was real
important. Almost everybody had some sort of nickname. Did you
have a nickname?
BEAUCHAMP: No. I've always been Jo. Uh, uh, no, I didn't have
no nickname.
WALLACE: Alonzo Lewis [Alonzo A. Lewis], you re- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah; run a grocery down there for years.
WALLACE: He got bought out by a guy by the name of Butch, uh .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: Christopher. No. No, it wasn't Butch Christopher.
Uh, now, what in the world was his name? There was two of them
went in there together, and he got to fooling with a woman and
got her pregnant and . . . and they just . . . finally, their
�
wives made them sell out and leave. And, uh . . .
WALLACE: Well, those little bitty groceries, did they just . .
. what did they carry? I mean . . .
BEAUCHAMP: They just sprang up. People was just trying to make
. . . do something to make some liv- . . . make a living, and
they couldn't provide. The first, uh, serve-yourself market I
remember in Frankfort was Piggly Wiggly.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: On St. Clair Street. No, Main Street.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: On Main Street. And these supermarkets come in here
and they just . . . people got to going to them. Well . . .
WALLACE: About all the places we're talking about, just little
bitty mom-and-pop places where they served you, wasn't it? They
waited on you.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. I worked in them for five years.
WALLACE: Oh. Which one did you work in?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I worked in that one on Wilkinson Street, Ms.
Felix Poole [Felix P. Poole].
WALLACE: Felix . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Poole.
WALLACE: Poole, okay. I never heard of it.
BEAUCHAMP: I worked there for a couple of years.
�
WALLACE: What were you doing for her?
BEAUCHAMP: I was delivering groceries. Now, nobody had any
phones. You had to go to the house . . . we had a little pad . .
. and write down what you wanted and go back and fill the order
and bring it back to them.
WALLACE: Did you get a little tip or something for . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. No, they wasn't no such thing as a tip. I got
$7 a week, for six days and a half work.
WALLACE: How old were you when you were working them?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, I would say I was, uh, uh, probably . . . I told
you I went to work . . . I wasn't but about 15 years old when I
went to work at, at the hemp factory. I was probably about 17
years old. And, then, uh, I worked over in South Frankfort in
another grocery over there delivering groceries and going around
and getting it. It's like you said. And he went broke and Ms.
Poole sold out; but, before that, Roosevelt started that CCC's
and I quit her and went to the CCC.
WALLACE: CC. Do you remember Triplett's Grocery [Eugene P.
Triplett]?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah.
WALLACE: Now, they were over at St. Clair and Mero, wasn't it?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, the one I'm thinking about was out on Holmes
Street, out in Thornhill; Triplett.
�
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: There were so many little groceries right in there.
WALLACE: It seemed like they sprang up . . .
BEAUCHAMP: The Marshall's Grocery, do you have any record on
that?
WALLACE: No. Where was that?
BEAUCHAMP: It was on, uh, St. Clair Street right back down next
to hill.
WALLACE: Next to Hill Street?
BEAUCHAMP: No. Next to the hill. See, St. Clair Street run
clear through there right into the hill, and they were . . . he
was back down in there.
WALLACE: Was that "Tubba" Marshall or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, uh, no, "Tubba" Marshall, he worked on the
railroad. He never did have no grocery. All he had was a bunch
of kids.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, he married an Indian woman. Now, she wasn't
American Indian. She was from . . . her descendants were from
India.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: As I understand it, and she had . . . [laughing] I
was working out here in this pawn shop and this girl come in.
�
And I said, "Honey, I don't know what your name is now; but I
know you sure got Marshall in you." She said, "How would you
know that?" I said, "Where you think you got that pretty face
from?" Had a beautiful face. She was a . . . dark skinned. Not
real dark, but had the prettiest face.
WALLACE: And she was . . . had Marshall in her?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Marshall was her granddaddy.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: "Tubba" Marshall.
WALLACE: Do you remember Nell Sullivan's grocery?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, umhumm.
WALLACE: Where was Nell's?
BEAUCHAMP: Wilkinson Street.
WALLACE: Street.
BEAUCHAMP: And, later on, she was on Washington Street.
WALLACE: Yeah. All of these places were pretty small
operations . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: . . . weren't they?
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh. What held them up was credit.
WALLACE: How did that work?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they would credit you from one week to another,
and, uh, a lot of them over there in that south side of town . .
�
. now, that one I worked over there would run a man, state
worker, from month to month till he could get his check.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, you could bet when the administration
changed and they lost their job, you was going to get cheated out
of that month's rent. He's go up there and the house would be
empty. They'd done moved out and gone. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Moved out, gone.
BEAUCHAMP: Went on back home.
WALLACE: Well, Bryant's, do you remember Bryant's?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Bryant's Grocery. Umhumm.
WALLACE: Bob Dreyer . . . Dreyer.
BEAUCHAMP: Bob Dreyer, he was on St. Clair Street, run a dru- .
. . now, that was Ms. Freda Dreyer's daddy.
WALLACE: Oh, okay. The one you told me about was teaching
school.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Yeah. What about the Kozy Korner Restaurant, used to
be the Red Brick?
BEAUCHAMP: Kozy Korner. [Chuckled]
WALLACE: Corner of Washington and Clinton. Haydon's Beer
Garden?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Uh-huh.
�
WALLACE: You remember Haydon's?
BEAUCHAMP: Old Bill Haydon. Now, there was an evil son-of-a-
gun.
WALLACE: He was a policeman, though, wasn't he?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, and he killed three men [while] on the police
force.
WALLACE: Killed three men on the old . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir.
WALLACE: Well, wh- . . . why did he do that?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, one was old "Doughbelly", was a bad nigger.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, he went down there. They called him. He
was down there tearing up a damn joint, right there at the tunnel
where Snelling's at right now. You know?
WALLACE: Yeah. Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And he went down there and just went down there and
killed him. He said, "Hell, he was going to have to kill him
anyway; wasn't no use beating around the bush."
WALLACE: So, Haydon went down there and killed . . . who was
it?
BEAUCHAMP: Old "Doughbelly".
WALLACE: Not the Dough- . . . not the Frankfort one?
BEAUCHAMP: No. This is . . . this was a black man.
�
WALLACE: Oh, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: People used to scare their children by him. "You
don't come in here, I'm going to call 'Doughbelly'".
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: He was high evil, old "Doughbelly" was. And Haydon
just went down . . . and, then, they . . . he got a call one time
and . . . on the corner of Washington and Broadway. There was a
fellow up there shooting up the damn place, and he come down them
steps and Haydon shot him . . .
WALLACE: Without even . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He was . . . already had a pistol in his hand,
shooting him. All in self defense.
WALLACE: Yeah. Well, he ran that Beer Garden. They said that
"Black Cat" worked for him for a while.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he did. They had, uh, "Black Cat" run it for
them and it was all blacks that went in there. Then, later on,
Alex Gordon run it from him . . . run it.
WALLACE: Did they still call it the Beer Garden then, or did
they change the name on it?
BEAUCHAMP: Umm, uh, Beer Garden, yeah. And, then, old "Twenty
Grand", you never have brought him up.
WALLACE: Yeah. I . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He got it and he changed it to Blue Moon.
�
WALLACE: The Blue Moon.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Describe the place to me, will you, if you've seen
it.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it's just a . . . just a joint, a beer joint.
Now, that old rascal would fill up a couple of cases of beer
bottles with water. And he had these girls in there, and they'd
cap it off. Go out, ask a guy, "Buy me a beer." Get a beer . .
. damn bottle of water. Charging them a quarter right on.
[Laughing]
WALLACE: And, then, he gets to keep the money . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: And the girls probably got a little bit of something.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, they got a little kickback. I don't know
whatever they had. Maybe they got a date. They could go out and
fill a date. Most time, they wanted to get that date and take
them down to Ida Howard and rent a room.
WALLACE: Umm. And, uh, probably, "Twenty Grand" maybe got
some of that action, too, for setting it up, huh? What was his
real . . . does anybody know his real name?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Harvey Sarven.
WALLACE: Harvey Sarven.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
�
WALLACE: Now, was Grace his wife or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: She was his legal wife.
WALLACE: I didn't know if they ever married. I thought it was
common law.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They married.
WALLACE: And the stories on her are pretty wild, too. She . .
.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, [laughing] . . .
WALLACE: Cigar-smoking.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, she smoked a cigar and she, uh, kept them girls
in line around there.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Nothing went on unless she approved it. She'd sit
there with that cigar in her mouth, [laughing] Now, shit, old
"Twenty Grand" smoked them cigars and he got her to smoking
cigars.
WALLACE: Oh.
BEAUCHAMP: At one time, she was a fairly decent looking woman,
and a good-hearted one. Wasn't nothing evil about Grace, till
she got in with old "Twenty".
WALLACE: Well, when did "Twenty" get his place up and going,
�
about what time?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he . . . they sent him down to . . . from
Ashland, Kentucky to the penitentiary.
WALLACE: Do you know when he was in the pen?
BEAUCHAMP: It was, uh, in the thirties [1930s].
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And old man Sullivan, he was a good chair-maker. He
worked in the chair factory over there in the penitentiary. And
old man Sullivan had to leave. They put the chair factory out of
the penitentiary.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And he got a lot of them fellows out of the
penitentiary, and old "Twenty" was one of them. He was a good
chair man. And he told me . . . I was kind of a jackleg
carpenter. I couldn't call myself a carpenter because I wasn't
that good, but I could get by. Uh, I built my two sheds down
there and I remodeled a lot of stuff, and I remodeled them houses
I had down on Wilkinson Street; but I was still kind of a
jackleg. He told me, said, "Jo, I can rent that building over
there. If you'll get in there and help me, I'll get some lumber
and I'm going to start a beer joint and you'll have a place to
hang around." I wasn't married them days. So, I got in there
and built a bar and I partitioned the place off, put up
�
latticework where you could be up here at the bar and back in
there was tables and a Victrola.
WALLACE: You were doing that for "Twenty Grand"?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And he was working over at the chair factory all the
time, and he named it the Blue Moon.
WALLACE: Why Blue Moon, what . . . do you know why he called
it . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he just wanted to name it that.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And he run that and worked at the chair . . . at . .
. and, then, he sold it and went out on the Louisville Road.
And, by that time, he'd done quit the chair factory and he was
running that place out on the Louisville Road and he got me one
night and told me to come in there. And said, "I'll give you $3
if you'll come out and tend bar for me tonight." And I went out
to tend bar for nothing. [I had] All I wanted of that.
[Laughter] I give one woman the wrong beer and she wanted to
whup me. [Laughter] And two or three more, something happened.
I had a dozen damn fights and I said, "Well, when I leave here,
that's all of it." [Laughing]
WALLACE: All you needed. So, he was running the Blue Moon in
�
the twenties [1920s]?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, and he come down, back down in the Bottom where
the Beer Garden was and he took that over, and he run that for
years and years.
WALLACE: But you don't know when he was running that, do you,
by chance?
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, it was in the thirties [1930s].
WALLACE: Thirties [1930s].
BEAUCHAMP: It . . . well, it was '37 [1937] I took him out of
there.
WALLACE: Oh, when the flood came.
BEAUCHAMP: When the flood come in, yeah. I went in there and
the water was bouncing up through the floor. I said . . . I had
a footboat up to the door and I got . . . I had on boots and I
waded in there. I said, "'Twenty', you better get out of here."
He said, "Jo, it's going to ruin me. I'm going to lose
everything." I said, "Well, move everything . . . of any value
upstairs. Surely to goodness, it won't get that high." And, uh
. . .
WALLACE: It probably did get that high, of course.
BEAUCHAMP: No, it didn't get up that far. It, uh, it got right
up pretty durn close, but they saved the beer and the cash
registers and the ice boxes, and . . .
�
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, the motors off the ice box is what they took
loose and took upstairs. And, uh, but he was no good. He, he
was . . . he got worse as the years went by.
WALLACE: They said he'd knock . . . get boys liquored up and
get them knocked in the head and roll them for . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Rob them, yeah. I seen him one time roll a fellow,
and he didn't know I seen him. He come up there and said, "I
wish I could get somebody to take that old man home." Said,
"He's going to get rolled in here and he'll . . . he's going to
get rolled and he'll say he got rolled in here." And he'd done
got him.
WALLACE: All ready.
BEAUCHAMP: And this girl told me that "Twenty" got $300 off of
him.
WALLACE: Oh. Well, was it only local fellows that would go
into these places, or did they come from . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, they come from all over the country. We have
somebody come in here and want to know where they could have a
good time and have a little fun and they'd wound up down there in
the Bottom.
WALLACE: The Bottom.
BEAUCHAMP: Come from Lawrenceburg and Versailles and
�
Shelbyville. Of course, Lexington had their own crime place.
[Laughter] And, uh, Shelbyville. But, you know, most all them
durn girls down there come from Pineville, Kentucky.
WALLACE: You mean the girls that was making . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Prostitutes.
WALLACE: Pine- . . . well, why from Pineville?
BEAUCHAMP: I don't know.
WALLACE: I'd heard there was two sisters come down out of the
mountains that, uh, was working the trade. And I don't know if
that's "Mountain" Mary or who that was.
BEAUCHAMP: Did I tell you old "Mountain" Mary died about a year
ago?
WALLACE: You'd mentioned she'd passed away.
BEAUCHAMP: Eighty-four years old.
WALLACE: Uh, there was Maude Boston.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Tell me about her.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, shit, she was a booger. Yeah. She was old when
she come here. She had a lot of girls work . . . working for
her, kept a house . . .
WALLACE: Was that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: . . . of ill repute.
WALLACE: Was that in the Bottom?
�
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, yeah. Uh, I used to feel sorry for her some.
Everybody talked about Maude Boston. "Why, yeah, I knowed that
old whore."
WALLACE: Oh, and he'd have to . . .
BEAUCHAMP: And Johnny [Boston] standing there and I just felt so
sorry for him.
WALLACE: Johnny Boston.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh.
WALLACE: They've all . . . all those people have gone on,
haven't they?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah.
WALLACE: Is there any of those people left that I could talk
to that wouldn't feel awkward talking to me, you think, about the
joints or the places or the houses? Estill Smith's still around
they tell me.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, he run a place up there, Peachtree Inn, for
years.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: But I don't know how . . . Estill lives in Florida a
lot. I understand he got a cancerous throat now.
WALLACE: Oh, I didn't know that.
BEAUCHAMP: Umm, I don't know how true that is. I just heard it
second-handed.
�
WALLACE: They say Alex Gordon's daughter, Patsy Harp, is still
around.
BEAUCHAMP: Never did know her.
WALLACE: Yeah. Uh, but, as far as all the ladies of the
night, they're all gone.
BEAUCHAMP: Died with screaming meemies. [Laughter] Syphllis
and . . .
WALLACE: All kinds of . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Delirium tremors. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Tremors. Well, let me . . . I've got some other
places you might, uh, have knowledge of. You know where that
American Legion building, the big three-story, cut stone building
at the corner of Clinton and Washington?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Uh, they used to have a Washington Tea Room in there.
I've heard of that place.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Well, that what you call it . . . run the
Tiger Inn, he run it there.
WALLACE: Oh, okay. That was his . . .
BEAUCHAMP: That was all black, that America- . . . black
American Legion.
WALLACE: Legion, yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh.
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WALLACE: That was supposedly one of the better buildings down
there. It was supposed to be fine.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, it was. It was a stone building.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And that Nell Sullivan you were talking about, she
run a grocery store in there.
WALLACE: Ah, I didn't know that.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. She run a grocery store in there.
WALLACE: I'd heard they had a pharmacy in there years ago
called The People's Pharmacy.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it could have been back before my time.
WALLACE: Uh-huh. Yeah. And the blacks, uh . . .
BEAUCHAMP: The oldest pharmacy I remember, it was the Frankfort
Drug Company. And . . .
WALLACE: Yeah. Was that Main and St. Clair?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: All those are gone. Now, they got a restaurant in
there now. I'm sure you've heard of that. They put a restaurant
in that old Frankfort Drug Company building.
BEAUCHAMP: They did?
WALLACE: Yeah. Yeah. It just opened up about a couple of
months ago; but, when I first came here . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Wonder who's running it.
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WALLACE: I don't know. I don't know the man's name.
BEAUCHAMP: Another restaurant. That's been . . . that's been
how long? It was ever so long since I've been down through
there.
WALLACE: Well, it's . . . it's the one right at the corner
across from where Mucci's used to be. Remember Mucci's?
BEAUCHAMP: I know well. We, uh . . . my sister took a medicine.
Murray Brawner. He was not a registered pharmacy [pharmacist],
but he was the pharmacist there.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, the bottle cost 50 cents, the medicine she
took. Well, he would fix us a half a bottle for a quarter.
WALLACE: Because you didn't have the . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He says, "I know that child needs her medicine and
I'll just fix you a . . . " Now, Murray Brawner was a wonderful
fellow. He was sheriff here one time.
WALLACE: What's the first name again?
BEAUCHAMP: Murray.
WALLACE: Murray.
BEAUCHAMP: Brawner.
WALLACE: Murray Brawner, okay. I know Viola Brawner.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, yeah.
WALLACE: She's married to, uh . . . oh, I can't think of her
�
husband's name.
BEAUCHAMP: A fellow . . . Crowe Brawner.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Umhumm.
WALLACE: They're all kin. Do you remember a laundry called
the Suds-n-teria?
BEAUCHAMP: Yep.
WALLACE: A black place. I think John Buckner owned the
building it was in.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: That was a black-only kind of operation.
BEAUCHAMP: I was just trying to think where it was at,
Sud-n-teria. You sure John Buckner owned the Suds-n-teria?
WALLACE: I think he owned the building that it was in, but I
don't think he owned the business. I don't know who owned that
Suds-n-teria business.
BEAUCHAMP: I was thinking Fincel owned it.
WALLACE: Fincel might have? Okay. Is that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: That was over on Second Street.
WALLACE: Second Street? Okay. I'll check on it. Is any of
them Fincel's left that I could talk to ab- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, Roy.
WALLACE: Roy? Okay.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Now, that would be a good one for you to talk
to.
WALLACE: Roy Fincel.
BEAUCHAMP: Roy Fincel. I'll tell you where he lives. He lives
on Capitol Avenue.
WALLACE: Yeah? Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, let's see. I don't know whether it would be
Fourth and Capitol Avenue, but he lives right on the corner in a
big house there and it wouldn't be no problem to find it, if he .
. . I'll get the phone book here and we'll . . .
[Interruption in tape.]
WALLACE: . . . and there's another guy who used to run a
joint. His nickname was "Mug". I can't think of what his last
name was. "Mug".
BEAUCHAMP: "Mug".
WALLACE: "Mug". Oh, I can't think of it. He lives over in
Lawrenceburg now. He's one I'd like to get ahold of.
BEAUCHAMP: F-i-n-c-e-l, ain't it, Fincel?
WALLACE: Yeah, F-i-n-c-e-l-l or -c-e-l. I'll find it. I'll
fi- . . . it'll be easy. It'll be easy to find. Do you remember
a place called the 99 Club?
BEAUCHAMP: I tell you, so many of them black people had, uh, had
them, uh, little old joints . . .
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WALLACE: Nights- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: . . . and clubs and played out, umm . . .
WALLACE: If I'm keeping you from so- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, I'm enjoying every minute of this.
WALLACE: Okay. You remember "Shineboy"?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. [Laughing] Yeah. [Sound of knocking at door]
Hello, Skipper.
VOICE #1: How you doing?
VOICE #2: Howdy.
BEAUCHAMP: Okay. I'll be with you in a little while, hon.
VOICE: Come here, Whitney. Come on, hon. Let's go out
here.
BEAUCHAMP: That's my grandbaby.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: I'll be with you in a little while. He lives in
Bowling Green.
WALLACE: Visiting with you on . . .
BEAUCHAMP: "Shineboy", he was a mean nigger.
WALLACE: Was he?
BEAUCHAMP: Every time they arrested him, he'd have one or two
pistols on him.
WALLACE: He wa- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, he's another one that got out of the
�
penitentiary and stayed here.
WALLACE: You know his real name, by chance?
BEAUCHAMP: No, never did know it. "Shineboy" is all ever I
knowed him. Now, he run a little old restaurant down there, beer
joint. Uh, smoked cigar all time. Him and Will Castleman fell
out up there, got in the doorway, reaching out shooting one
another. [Laughter]
WALLACE: I've heard like cowboys out, fighting out in the
streets.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Castleman was another name you heard a lot of.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yep. He was a mean son of a . . .
WALLACE: Big, tall . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Top of the dea- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: That's the one killed Doctor what's-you-call-it.
WALLACE: Berry?
BEAUCHAMP: Dr. Berry.
WALLACE: Now, I've heard that Will shot Berry and, then, I've
heard that somebody else was in the room and may have shot Berry.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, uh, Mort Nelson. And he took the blame for it.
WALLACE: He did?
BEAUCHAMP: I know one thing. He never was the same after that.
�
You see, them blacks had a damn club they belonged to.
WALLACE: What was the club?
BEAUCHAMP: Okay, here's what it was. If you belonged to that
club, somebody done something to you, they'd get even with you.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: And Will Castleman and Mort Nelson . . . oh, old
"Doughbelly", there was a black "Doughbelly" down there, got sick
and Will Castleman called a white doctor. And Dr. Berry was
black, and Will Castleman was working for Mike Deakins up there
in that whiskey store and Berry had gone back there and said,
"You son of a bitch," said, "You . . . you called a white
doctor." He said, "Well, Hell, you was off drunk, couldn't get
you." He said, "I'm going home and get my pistol and come back
and kill you." And he did. He went home and got his pistol and
he come in that door, well, uh, they claimed that, uh, Mort was
standing there and shot him. I know he never was the same for
that. He went right on down the hill and died.
WALLACE: Mort did?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Uh, Hell, I knowed him. He was always
friendly and turned and everything. Pass right by him and he
wouldn't speak unless you speak to him. It was a stare in his
face.
WALLACE: Black guy, right.
�
BEAUCHAMP: They finally found him dead down there in the bed.
He was working for George Taylor.
WALLACE: After George bought out Mike Deakins?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Yeah. "Shineboy" is the one I'd heard a lot about.
You ever heard of a guy by the name of "Squeezer" Brown?
BEAUCHAMP: [Laughing] Yeah. Old "Squeezer". Yeah, he was a
guitar picker and a piano player. He . . . he never done no harm
to nobody, I don't guess. He . . . he'd get drunk and go play
his guitar and sing, serenade people at night.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He . . .
WALLACE: They say the story on him is he used to get all the
kids and he'd line them kids up and he'd take them down to the
Tiger Inn or someplace and buy them candies and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, if he got ahold of a little money. Now, when
he got his pension, uh, that was true there for . . . till the
money ran out. He'd have a party for them every day. [Laughter
- Wallace] Go down there and buy them ice cream. And I thought
he . . . that was about the most senseless thing I ever heard in
my day, he spent his money on children. And, course, he . . . he
drank, too. Didn't . . .
WALLACE: Do you remember, uh, a guy they used to call "Corn
�
Puddin", Charles William Chiles, a barber?
BEAUCHAMP: Yep.
WALLACE: They said he was full of mischief and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And he married a Chiles.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh. Yeah.
WALLACE: Fred Allen, was a black barber. John Davis. Uh, Bob
Martin. They were all black barbers. A place called the Silver
Slipper, ever heard of . . . that's another black joint.
CHILD'S VOICE: Grandpa.
WALLACE: Oh, you're being . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Go in there, hon. I'll be in there in a little bit.
WOMAN'S VOICE: Whitney, come in here.
WALLACE: You're being summonsed. A place called The Little
Restaurant, run by "Newt" Berry.
BEAUCHAMP: "Newt" Berry.
WALLACE: "Newt" Berry. Remember . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, I remember "Newt". That was, uh, "Papa Jazz's"
brother.
WALLACE: Was that "Papa Jazz's" brother?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I didn't know, see, that, uh . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Did you know "Papa Jazz", or heard of him?
�
WALLACE: I've heard of him.
BEAUCHAMP: His name was James Berry. "Newt" was his brother.
WALLACE: Right. Yeah, there was an article in 1975 in the
State Journal, big long article, "Interview with Papa Jazz." And
he was one of the most articulate fellows I think I've . . . boy,
he was really good, short . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He, uh, he took big part in American Legion
and VFW and he went to all these big conferences and . . .
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: . . . represented his Post.
WALLACE: Yeah. He was very, very active.
BEAUCHAMP: I was in the hospital in Lexington and he come up
there to see me.
WALLACE: Oh, really?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, I had good relationship with them black people.
I . . . Old "Newt", I used to aggravate him a lot. "Newt" was
easy aggravated, but I never did get into no cuss words or
nothing like.
WALLACE: Nothing like that.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, and I'd just do little things. We'd all wind up
laughing about it.
WALLACE: You remember Ike?
BEAUCHAMP: Ikette [Isaac Yett]?
�
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah; and his brother, Ben Yett. Yeah, I knowed
them all. I went to see old Ike there about, maybe three weeks
before he died. He was laying down on the couch and his daughter
was sitting there by him and I knowed he was on his way out.
WALLACE: Umm.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, there was a bad nigger.
WALLACE: Bad in the sense of being violent.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, he was violent. Hell, he'd been shot three or
four times.
WALLACE: Uh.
BEAUCHAMP: I tell you who shot him once, old "Monkeyback's" boy,
uh, Jack Sanders.
WALLACE: Uh.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, Jack Sanders shot Ike Yett. And Jack was in the
Marines.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: He got out of the Marines and he was [chuckled]
meaner than a striped-ass snake and him and old Ike got into it
and he shot. Ike was coming on to him and he said, "Don't you do
it. Don't come on me." And he just kept coming nigh and he shot
him.
WALLACE: Huh. You remember a place called the Grill run by
�
Will Wren?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Umhumm.
WALLACE: Tell me, do you have any remembrances of Will Wren?
He apparently is a name . . . I've heard it a lot.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he was a great big fellow, and he married this
woman here in Frankfort. I don't know where Will Wren come from.
And she had two boys. One of them's still here. Doll went to
Brooklyn, New York for years and years and, when he retired, he
come back here to live. And, uh, another boy, I worked at the
distillery with him for years and years. He died. Yeah, Will
Wren. He run a restaurant there on Washington Street.
WALLACE: Yep. And there used to be a place called the White
Spot. I don't . . . nobody seems to remember that. Bowman . . .
Bowman Gaines' Model Laundry?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah.
WALLACE: Happy Gaines?
BEAUCHAMP: Happy and Carl. Carl tried every six months for 15
years to get in the Masons. He said, "One of these days, I'll
catch that son-of-a-bitch out of there . . ." They was
blackballing him.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: ". . . and I'll get in." And he did. And he said
when he really got in, he done a world of good things for the
�
lodge. Uh, I . . . I . . . I couldn't get in. I got . . .
WALLACE: Blackballed.
BEAUCHAMP: . . . turned down. No, I didn't get blackballed. I
never did get before the lodge. The investigating committee, the
fellow on the . . . they took three, and, now, this is the honest
to God truth. That bastard that wouldn't recommend me for a
Mason owed me for working for him [inaudible] I never did get it.
WALLACE: Huh. I figured maybe because you grew up in the poor
section of town, they had something against you.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, there was a lot of them down there were Masons.
WALLACE: Oh, that got in.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, and they . . . we was all working down there at
that distillery and everybody down there was a Mason but me and
Pascal Powell and . . . and the foreman said, "I'm going to get
an application for you all to . . . "
WALLACE: Join.
BEAUCHAMP: " . . . join the Masons." Well, Pascal didn't want
to, but I kind a railroaded him into it. Said he didn't have the
money.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And I let him have $25 [laughing] and he got turned
down. I always said he got turned down on account of me.
[Laughing]
�
WALLACE: Ahh, because he was connected with you. The
junkyard, there was, oh, let me think of this guy's name. Uh,
the old man, aw, a Jew . . . a name.
BEAUCHAMP: Marcuses?
WALLACE: Marcuses. Elli- . . . now, there was Elliott.
BEAUCHAMP: Elliott's daddy . . .
WALLACE: Yeah. It was Moses?
BEAUCHAMP: Was H. C. Marcus. Moses and Hyman and Freda.
WALLACE: Yeah. Now, didn't they have a junkyard down there?
BEAUCHAMP: Right there on Washington Street.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Right beside of the old Peachtree Inn.
WALLACE: A story I heard on old man Marcus was that, uh, he
apparently lived not too far from around there and he was always
poking around looking inside of "Pap" Samuels' barber shop. You
remember "Pap" Samuels?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Black guy. And "Pap" just got tired of him poking
around because "Pap" was bootlegging, and this is around harvest
time, he cut . . . cut the centers out of pumpkins and have a
bunch of half-pints and things in there. And he just got tired
of Marcus peeking around, you know. And, so, he got him in there
and said he was going to shave him and got him in that chair, and
�
shaved him from one end [laughing] to [inaudible]. He said
Marcus never came around and bothered him again after that.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He lived up over that junkyard.
WALLACE: Oh, he did, huh?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And, then, he moved up on Broadway.
WALLACE: Ahh.
BEAUCHAMP: He began to pick up and he got up there and his first
store was used furniture.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, then, he got into new furniture. And, then, his
sons was all . . . now, me and Elliott growed up together, went
to school together.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, that desk I bought from Elliott.
WALLACE: From Marcus. Ah, okay. Well, I didn't realize
Marcus had lived over his junkyard.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They didn't have nothing. Now, him and them
Rosenbergs come here from Israel at the same time.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: And the Rosenbergs, right where the gas company is,
he started a pawn shop there.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, then, they moved out and went to Lexington. Joe
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Rosenberg.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, Hell, they owned . . . his descendents owned
a lot of property there.
WALLACE: You talking about where that Columbia Gas office is
on Main Street?
BEAUCHAMP: Right there is where Joe Rosenberg started.
WALLACE: Have you ever heard of a Jewish family, Weisenburgh?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah.
WALLACE: Well, see, now, I don't know nothing about them.
BEAUCHAMP: There were millers. They was in the flour and mill
business.
WALLACE: Oh, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh.
WALLACE: Because there was . . . when I looked at some of the
urban renewal maps, the . . . the Weisenburgh or Wiseberg family
owned a lot of Bottom. And I'll show you the map sometime. Now,
this must be another family because I don't think . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Must be, because the ones I know are over in Anderson
County.
WALLACE: Ah, okay. Well, that junkyard was a . . . George
Taylor, tell me about George Taylor.
BEAUCHAMP: [Laughing] Well, sir, he come here and working for
�
Charlie Duvall on a beer truck. And I don't know how in the
world he got his start, but he got a whiskey store of his own,
and one time he owned five. And he'd branch out. And he got in
good standing with the bank, and he just operated on the bank's
money.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Because when George died, Ms. Taylor had to sell all
that off to try to hold on to one liquor store up there on
Versailles Road.
WALLACE: Well, now, George's son's still around, isn't he?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He had one son by her, yeah.
WALLACE: Well, see, George had the liquor store and he . . .
he also owned where the pool room was and there was a little
restaurant and the blacks ran . . . ran all this stuff.
BEAUCHAMP: Ran it.
WALLACE: Will Castleman, didn't Castleman run some of that
operation for Taylor?
BEAUCHAMP: No. Uh, he could have run that whiskey store for
him.
WALLACE: Store for him.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. But Bob Knott was George Taylor's right-hand
man.
WALLACE: See, I talked to Maggie.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, Ma- . . . that was Bob's wife.
WALLACE: She, uh, she helped run the Club 99.
BEAUCHAMP: That was upstairs over the whiskey store.
WALLACE: Exactly. I talked to her a little bit. She was sort
of guarded, though. She . . .
[End of Tape #2, Side #1]
[Begin Tape #2, Side #2]
WALLACE: . . . she was sort of wondering what my motives were
and why I was doing it all.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Because I had mentioned somebody like . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I've been trying to get ready for you, Hell,
for months.
WALLACE: Well, I'm . . .
BEAUCHAMP: That guy got that recorder. I was going to write
that . . . things that I remembered.
WALLACE: Well, I probably haven't asked you any questions you
thought I'd ask you.
BEAUCHAMP: Not a one of them. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Well, tell me some of the things you thought I was
going to talk about.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I, uh, uh, things pertaining to the Bottom.
You brought it all out.
�
WALLACE: Well, like Earl Tracy, you remember . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Earl Tracy's cab.
BEAUCHAMP: He was kind of a leader amongst the blacks, uh, in
education. Now, he . . . he helped get a ball park down there.
Earl did a lot for his race of people.
WALLACE: He ran . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Good fellow.
WALLACE: Yeah. He ran his own cab company and his nephews
drove for him.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I think Henry drove for him and, uh, Bob did. Uh,
were there any major companies down in that area? You mentioned
the chair-making factory, wasn't that down there?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. There was a chair . . . chair factory run by
the Sutherlands.
WALLACE: Fred Sutterlin?
BEAUCHAMP: No. Fred Sutterlin run the ice . . . Frankfort Ice
and Coal Company.
WALLACE: Okay. Was that on down the river?
BEAUCHAMP: No.
WALLACE: On the same side . . .
BEAUCHAMP: That was on, uh . . . out on Main Street, down by the
�
river, yeah.
WALLACE: Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: But it was up, come through Main Street clear to the
river and he was down there. He had a big refrigeration, made
ice and sold it, and he sold coal.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Frankfort Ice and Coal Company.
WALLACE: Company.
BEAUCHAMP: Then, later on, he added a slaughter house to it.
WALLACE: Would that have been in behind Liberty Hall and
Orlando Brown and all of that?
BEAUCHAMP: Right in there, yeah.
WALLACE: Yeah. Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: I'll tell you what's there now. There's a big
lawyer's office in there.
WALLACE: Yeah. Kentucky Bar Association.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, right. That's right there was the old
Frankfort Ice and Coal Company.
WALLACE: Uh-huh. There was a lot of logging, a lot of
lumbering done, wasn't there?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, at one time there was. Let's see, it was one,
two, three . . . it was four sawmills in Frankfort. That was the
main thing here at one time.
�
WALLACE: Whereabouts were they, down by the river?
BEAUCHAMP: Right where you was at over there at Calhoun's?
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: That was Banning Sawmill [Leland G. Banning]. There
was a lot of the . . . some of the trees are over there right
now. There right Calhoun's sitting at was the Banning Sawmill.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: All right, you come on down, Kenney's [T. E. Kenney
and Sons], uh, Sawmill. Down the river. Then, Congleton's
Sawmill.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And let's see what was the name of the other one.
There was four here at one time. Well, there were logs backed up
the river clear up to Big Eddy.
WALLACE: Yeah. These Eastern Kentucky boys that ride these
rafts down out of the river . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yep. Why, I met a fellow up in the mountains when I
was up there in that CCC, remember?
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: He said that he come to Frankfort to get him a
Deerfoot knife, [inaudible] Deerfoot knife, and he went over to
Beattyville and offered his services on a . . . for his board, to
ride them logs to Frankfort. [He went] To Goober and Newcomb
�
right on Broadway. Paid 75 cents for that knife.
WALLACE: Knife.
BEAUCHAMP: And he told me, said, "I've still got that knife."
And he was gone two months. He walked all the way back home.
WALLACE: Good grief. I've heard stories about those
mountaineers come in and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, you . . . in them days, you could stop and
tell a fellow you was traveling and where you was going and he'd
give you a night's lodging and a meal.
WALLACE: A meal. Ah, days are gone.
BEAUCHAMP: You know, I'm afraid if you'd do that now, they'd
call the police.
WALLACE: Or they'd cut . . . cut your throat. [Laughter]
Remember Forrest Moore's . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah.
WALLACE: . . . liquor store?
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir.
WALLACE: Where was that?
BEAUCHAMP: On Broadway.
WALLACE: Broadway?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Forrest . . .
WALLACE: Now, he'd serve black and white, wouldn't he; blacks
in the back?
�
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, he had a place in the back . . .
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: That he let . . . no white person went in there. And
he had a bartender back there. He was a black bartender, and he
let the blacks go back there. He . . .
WALLACE: When was he in oper- . . . is all this taking place
during prohibition or after prohibition?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, during prohibition, he run a grocery store
there.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And, now, it was a saloon before prohibition come in.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Forrest Moore's daddy run a saloon there.
WALLACE: Then, when it came in, he converted to grocery.
BEAUCHAMP: Had a grocery. And, then, when prohibition was
repealed, Forrest put the saloon back in there.
WALLACE: Did you know any of the bootleggers that were working
down there during prohibition?
BEAUCHAMP: [Laughing] Shit, all of them. In fact, they caught
my stepdaddy making whiskey. [Laughter] Yeah. Uh, well, my
stepdaddy bootlegged. I knowed them all. I tell you what
happened. My uncle was bootlegging up there, and he'd paid $8
for a gallon of moonshine whiskey, and he wanted to get away and
�
go to Louisville. And, uh, he said, "You want to make some
money?" I was just a young fellow, 16, 17 years old. Uncle
Truman Cantor. I said, "Yeah." He said, "Now, I'm going to let
you have this gallon of whiskey and when you sell it, you can pay
me for it." Said, "Now, you go get you some bottles, wash them
out clean and use new stoppers, now, and come back and let me see
them so I'll that they're clean." Said, "You should have 16 half
a pints. And when you sell it, you should have $16." Well, I
had 16 half a pints and about a half of a half a pint over.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: When I got back up there, he said, "I just had some .
. . " I wasn't . . . he made me bring the bottles up there and
seen they was all clean and everything before he'd let me have
it. And I bottled it up. He let me have a funnel to bottle it
all up. And I put a couple of them in my pocket and walked back
up the street there and he said, "I just had a bunch of company
to come in," and, uh, he said, "I ain't going to be able to get
away." Said, "Let me have a couple of them," and he give me $2.
WALLACE: Huh.
BEAUCHAMP: So, I went back and I got some more and stood around
awhile and, directly, he hollered for me, and he wanted a couple
more half pints. I so- . . . and I'll say in five hours' time, I
sold him them 16 half a pints back, [laughter] and when I sold
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him the last, I handed him $8 and he cussed me. "You ought to
give me part of that money." Now, I'd worked all week at that
hemp factory down there for $7 and I made that $8 there in about
five hours.
WALLACE: It was no wonder people were bootlegging. You could
make good money.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, damn, you had to wear a badge just to keep
yourself [laughing] from [bumping into] one another, there was so
many of them. Home brewed beer, every other door up there, you
could buy. Everybody had home brew beer.
WALLACE: Well, wasn't the police cracking down on these
people?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah. They'd catch one once in a while, when
they wanted some beer. They'd take your beer and keep it, the
damn rascals.
WALLACE: But you could get it fixed up-town, couldn't you? I
mean, that's . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Ah, well, now, I never did know of it. I'd heard a
lot about it.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, a fellow told me one time, said, "Now, if
you want to . . ." if you don't believe what I'm telling you and
you think of some rising citizen that police has . . ." Said
�
you'd be down there Monday morning in Alex Gordon's place about
eight o'clock and you would see them in there talking to Alex.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: And I . . . I made it a point to be there because I
had so much faith in this fellow. I mean, I wouldn't call no
names. It would embarrass his people.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: He was there and him and Alex went off on . . . the
back room, and this fellow told me, he said, "Now, didn't you see
him do that?" Said, "Didn't they go off on the back room?"
Said, "Alex's paying him off."
WALLACE: Off. Protection.
BEAUCHAMP: Said he was a pick-up man. That's what he is. I
just couldn't believe it till I went down there and seen it.
WALLACE: Shake your faith to see it happen.
BEAUCHAMP: Umm.
WALLACE: Well, did you . . . how would you peddle your stuff?
Would you just be walking the street and somebody would walk . .
.
BEAUCHAMP: No. Most of the time, they'd come to the house and
buy it. You could be out on the street. In my case, that was
the only time I ever did it.
WALLACE: Yeah.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Because my uncle let me have that gallon on credit.
WALLACE: [Laughing] You mean John Fallis, now, or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, it was Uncle Truman Cantor.
WALLACE: Truman Cantor, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, then, now another time, I was working over
there in the South Frankfort for Cy Currens [Cyrus Currens], and
he was wholesaling to them bootleggers, and on Saturday, it
closed at six o'clock and they said, "Would you like to make a
little money?" Said, "I want to get away for a while." Said,
"I'll give you 50 cents on the gallon. You sell . . ." Said,
"Now, you sit here by the phone and they'll call you and you
deliver it."
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, I'd worked all week for him for $7. Damn if I
didn't make 50 cents a gallon. I made $15 that night.
WALLACE: In one night?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. That's the onliest time he ever let me do it
because he didn't want me to get in trouble.
WALLACE: Well, know, the profits were pretty big, then, huh?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, shoot, yeah. It was tremendous. Now, Cy
Currens, did his name pop up in there in your . . .
WALLACE: I don't know anything about . . . what's the story on
him?
�
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he was a bootlegger and he wholesaled. He'd
buy it by the 1,500 gallon and, then, he would wholesale it to
the small bootleggers.
WALLACE: Well, what kept the police from shutting him down?
Was he paying them?
BEAUCHAMP: I know that he paid them because I had took the money
to them. I knowed it was money. Now, this fellow that's a
prohibition officer, uh, he told me, said, "You pull up at Second
Street School. There'll be a man pull up there and you hand him
this envelope." I felt that envelope and I knowed there was
money in it. And this durn fellow pulled up there, and I handed
him that envelope and he pulled off.
WALLACE: Where was Cy [Cyrus Currens] operating out of?
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, well, he had a place in the Bottom.
WALLACE: What was . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He had a grocery store where I worked for him on
Steele Street.
WALLACE: Ah, okay. Where was his place in the Bottom, do you
. . .
BEAUCHAMP: That old brick that you was talking about in there.
WALLACE: Kozy Korner, or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Kozy Korner. That was Cy Currens' joint.
WALLACE: Joint. Now, I had heard the name, but I didn't know
�
nothing about him. I'm glad you told me about him.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, yeah. He never did have . . . he . . . he
could've . . . there's going to be another name. I don't know
whether you've got it in there or not, Les Humphrey, do you have
him?
WALLACE: No, I don't.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, he was another one never could make a dollar
legally.
WALLACE: Huh.
BEAUCHAMP: He always had to have something underhand going,
bootlegging or something like that.
WALLACE: Les Humphrey.
BEAUCHAMP: Les Humphrey.
WALLACE: Did he run a place or just . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. But he always had to get somebody else. He
never could get no license in his name.
WALLACE: Huh. What . . .
BEAUCHAMP: They turned him down.
WALLACE: What were some of the places that people were running
for him? Do you know the names of any of them?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, that Kozy Korner was his.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he had that in his wife's name. And they'd
�
fall out and fight and she'd jerk the license off the wall, and
would run everybody off. "We're closing up," and . . .
[laughter] And, uh . . .
WALLACE: Well, we've talked about some of these.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And he could get somebody else to run it . . .
now, them police just wouldn't let Les have nothing. He tried
everything legally and he just couldn't make a dollar no way he
turned.
WALLACE: So, a lot of these people weren't necessarily bad
people. It was just a way to make money quickly.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: When you think of some of the tough men, uh, the
bouncers or the gamblers or men with reputations for being, well,
bad men or tough men, who comes to mind?
BEAUCHAMP: Calvin Stewart was a bouncer.
WALLACE: Well, somebody told me he bounc- . . . was at the
Blue Moon.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He was bouncer, just throw them out.
WALLACE: Yeah. Now, he . . . he, uh, later became the jailer,
didn't he?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: County Jailer? I remember . . . see, I used to work
for Jim Bell at Cable 10, that cable TV station they've got over
�
there on, uh, Clinton Street?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: And I remember going over to Fiscal Court meetings
and setting up my camera and tape recording, and Calvin would
come in and make presentations in front of the Fiscal Court
people; but I had no idea he was a bouncer down there.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He was a bouncer down there for years. He's
throwed a many a poor boy out. They'd beat him up.
WALLACE: Was there a lot of gambling going on down there in
those places?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, yeah, crap games.
WALLACE: Dice and cards.
BEAUCHAMP: And poker games, yeah.
WALLACE: Well, was there any time of big-time crime
connection, or is all these people independents? I mean, there's
nobody out of Chicago or anybody coming down out of . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Never knowed of it.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, I'm sure there wasn't. It was just all local.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, Cy Currens and Alex Gordon, uh, old "Twenty
Grand", they were about the biggest operators ever come down
through there.
�
WALLACE: Who was the guy they called "Pickle"?
BEAUCHAMP: "Pickle" Wilson.
WALLACE: What's the story on him? I don't know anything . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, he was one of Cy Currens' boys. He was
always working for Cy.
WALLACE: Ah, okay. See, there was a black taxicab driver that
was killed, uh, Ray.
BEAUCHAMP: Ray. I know who killed him.
WALLACE: Well, I've heard a couple of different things. I
heard that white girls were attracted to Ray and, apparently, one
white girl that, uh, was attracted to him, some white boys were
interested in her and they set it up for him to be killed. Now,
it's not the way I . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I don't . . . I don't know for sure this is the way,
but Paul Moore called in for a taxicab to pick him up out here in
this old rock quarry. The road goes right through it now.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Okay, when he got up there, he robbed him and shot
him.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, that's the story I always heard in that.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: That Paul Moore killed Ray.
�
WALLACE: Yeah. I'd heard it was either "Twenty Grand", or
"Pickle" had a hand in . . . nah.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it's . . . Cy Currens used to say he believed
"Pickle" killed him.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: But, uh, and, then, again, I heard that Paul Moore
killed him and robbed him; called him up there to pick him up and
he robbed him up there and killed him.
WALLACE: It was a set-up operation, regardless of who did it,
uh.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, uh, Cy always said he believed that "Pickle"
killed him, over that one woman that you brought up that lived
with my uncle.
WALLACE: Oh, really? Now, I didn't know what the woman . . .
who the woman was.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: What was . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Old "Pickle" was going with her. See, Uncle Johnny
had done been killed then and, uh, she was living down there and
old "Pickle" was going down there all the time.
WALLACE: Was that Johnny's . . . that wasn't Anna Mae
Blackwell?
BEAUCHAMP: Right, Annie Mae Blackwell.
�
WALLACE: It was?
BEAUCHAMP: She was a beautiful woman.
WALLACE: R. T. called her the Sophia Loren of her day.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, she was a beautiful woman, yeah.
WALLACE: I have yet to see any . . . see a picture of her. I
got to find a picture of this woman because they . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Hell, she married again when she was up in her
seventies.
WALLACE: Uh. She must have been . . . must have been
beautiful.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, there was a whole bunch of them girls. I was
trying to think, the other day. There was four boys and six
girls, I think; or five girls.
WALLACE: All in this same family?
BEAUCHAMP: In that same family.
WALLACE: Would she . . .
BEAUCHAMP: There was nine or ten of them children.
WALLACE: Ah. Is any of those people left, or are they all
gone on?
BEAUCHAMP: There's three of them girls left. There's Charlotte
Burke and there's, uh, Beatrice . . . I think Beatrice married an
O'Connell her last marriage.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Joe O'Connell. But they're separated. I don't know
whether she kept his name or not. And, then, there's, uh, Betty.
Was it Betty? Don't sound like . . . there's three of the girls
left.
WALLACE: And they're still here in town?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. I seen them up in town here awhile back.
WALLACE: Right. And their sister was Anna Mae, right?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I just wonder about talking to them sometime, if that
would be the diplomatic thing, or not to, because I don't know if
they have hard memories about all that or not.
BEAUCHAMP: I don't think it would be advisable to talk to them.
I think they would want to forget it.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, now, their daddy worked on the railroad. They
had a little bit better of life than the biggest part of us.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh . . .
WALLACE: Well, that's what I've heard, a railroad job was a
good job.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He was a track walker.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: Old man Isaac Shearer. And he, he, uh . . . well, he
�
just never was very neighborly.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And they moved up on, uh, Maryland Avenue. Got away
from down in there in their early years. And he owned about
three houses down there and he sold them all and bought that
place up on Maryland Avenue. See, we all went to school to the
Wilkinson Street School together.
WALLACE: Ah. So, you went to school with Anna Mae or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. Anna Mae was way ahead of me.
WALLACE: Me.
BEAUCHAMP: She was a lot older than I was.
WALLACE: But the other girls, you . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Me and Beatrice and . . . and, uh, Matthew, we went
to school together.
WALLACE: Do you remember Antonio Papa?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah, old Tony Papa, "Ice Cream" Tony.
WALLACE: Yeah. I heard . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh.
WALLACE: . . . a lot of good things about he had a push cart.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And, then, he had a horse and cart and, then,
he got a car and never did get it out of second gear. [Laughter
- Wallace] He billed them all the same way, though, all his ice
cream. I've eat a many a cone of ice cream. Get a big cone for
�
a nickel.
WALLACE: Yeah. Yeah, I want to . . . he's got some daughters
left around. I want to see if . . . a couple of them live on Ann
Street.
BEAUCHAMP: Yep.
WALLACE: I want to go see if they'd talk to me a little bit.
Let's see, we've talked about a lot of these people already. Dr.
B. T. Holmes?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, and black doctor.
WALLACE: Yeah. I don't know if you ever had any dealings with
him.
BEAUCHAMP: No.
WALLACE: Dr. Underwood?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. I knowed him. That's who the Mayo-Underwood
School's named after.
WALLACE: Yeah. There's a dentist by the name of Dr. Gay.
BEAUCHAMP: I never did . . . was very well acquainted with him.
Dr. Underwood and Dr. Holmes, I knowed them. And, then, there
was another do- . . . black doctor here. One time, there was
three black doctors in Frankfort. And, then, there was a Dr.
Washington. He . . . he was a surgeon. He come here when they
had that . . . that hospital on, uh, Murray . . . on, uh,
WALLACE: Second.
�
BEAUCHAMP: . . . Second Street.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: I remember there was Scott [Winnie A. Scott
Hospital]. Remember . . . had . . . of course, after they built
that big hospital over there, they combined them then.
WALLACE: Let's see here. There was a Dr. Biggerstaff, was a
dentist. And Dr. Withers, who is a dentist, black . . . black.
Dr. Coleman, a white doctor. I don't . . . I don't . . . you're
grinning. Why are you grinning?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, sir. Dr. C. T. Coleman. He was a poor man's
friend. You know, when that man died, he didn't have no money.
His daughter told me that he didn't have nothing but a stack of
bills where people owed him money, where he's signed notes and
paid them off for people.
WALLACE: I've heard he was mayor one time, wasn't he?
BEAUCHAMP: Hell fire, he was mayor five or six times.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: Hell, he was a . . . aw, he was a poor man's friend,
that doctor was. There'll just never be another doctor qui- . .
. I tell you, Dr. Ramsey comes as being a doc- . . . another Dr.
Coleman as anybody I ever knowed of.
WALLACE: Just in being good-hearted . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir.
�
WALLACE: . . . and letting people run up tab and . . . what
about Ward Oates and Glenn Purdy? Do you remember . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They were real estate men.
WALLACE: Yeah. They did pretty well on the . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: The reason I wrote their names down, several blacks
said that when they moved out Broadway, out to Missouri and
Langford and all that, it was Oates and Purdy that sort of
developed that area and moved them in there.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They got into developing and, then, they built
Blanton Acres down there and Orville Shuck got in with them. And
Orville Shuck was the plant manager down there at Schenley.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, Ward Oates had a coal yard and they got in
there and he bought all that damn Western Kentucky coal and come
in, and it wasn't worth a damn.
WALLACE: Humm.
BEAUCHAMP: Course, they, uh, they was getting a kickback on it.
WALLACE: Do you remember Henry Mack, black guy?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. [Laughing] Mack Miller.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Mack Miller. Yeah, he drove a, uh . . . well, we'd
call it a station wagon now, and hauled, uh, the office force
�
backwards and forwards to the distillery for years and years.
Picked up the mail.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: He's just a handyman around there. Mack Miller.
WALLACE: Elizabeth Oglesby had a beautician shop, black gal.
BEAUCHAMP: No.
WALLACE: I've done run you pretty hard on these things. Uh,
as far as the churches, we talked about Corinthian. There was a
Bethel Temple. Do you remember Bethel Temple up at the corner of
Washington and Clinton? Uh, there was a Baptist Mission.
BEAUCHAMP: That's where I belonged.
WALLACE: Oh, really?
BEAUCHAMP: I was practically raised in the Baptist Mission.
WALLACE: Just . . . where exactly on Wi- . . . that was on
Wilkinson, wasn't it?
BEAUCHAMP: Wilkinson Street.
WALLACE: It was on the river side of Wilkinson, wasn't it?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: As you're going out past Hill Street?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Be on the left . . .
WALLACE: Left. Wilkinson Street.
BEAUCHAMP: . . . going down Wilkinson Street.
WALLACE: Wilkinson Street.
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Who sponsored that mission? Was it Fi- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: The First Baptist Church.
WALLACE: First Baptist did?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Do you remember Vivian Fallis, Bixie's [Benjamin's]
second wife?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: She's a holy roller preacher.
BEAUCHAMP: Preached, yeah. Bixie [Benjamin] was my first
cousin.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: That's right. That's right. Well, she told me about
going in the Bottom and going from door to door preaching and
evangelizing. [Laughter - Beauchamp]
BEAUCHAMP: Full of shit. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Oh, really? [Laughter]
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: What do you mean? She really didn't do that kind of
thing or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, she did some of it, but she . . . I just never
did have no faith in her. [Laughing]
�
WALLACE: Ah. Well, they said that John Fallis' wife was a
very religious woman.
BEAUCHAMP: That was Josephine. That was . . . that was my aunt,
Aunt Annie Fallis. Her name was Annie Thomas. My name is Joseph
Thomas. Mother give me part of her name.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. She was a holy roller. She . . . she would
preach for you in a minute. [Laughing]
WALLACE: They said people would write her and ask her to lay
hands on her.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And send a handkerchief to pray.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And mail it back to them.
WALLACE: They said she was preaching one time at some church
or building and John came out and drug her out by her hair.
BEAUCHAMP: I never did know of that. She took her religion very
seriously.
WALLACE: Seriously.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Yes.
BEAUCHAMP: And . . .
WALLACE: Well, as far as the politics go, did you ever work
the polls or . . .
�
BEAUCHAMP: No. I've been officer down there and . . . time or
two and . . .
WALLACE: In the precinct down there?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, on Wilkinson Street, yeah.
WALLACE: Where on Wilkinson Street was the precinct?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, most of the time, it was there on Wilkinson
Street back of the Mayo-Underwood School there.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: And, uh, now, there used to be two precincts. The
Kenney's Mill precinct and the Wilkinson Street precinct and,
then, they combined them.
WALLACE: Okay. Where was Kenney's Mill precinct?
BEAUCHAMP: Well, it was on up the street there. Umm, uh, it was
there, the Kenney's Mill precinct, that was the old Kenney's Coal
Yard.
WALLACE: Oh, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: T. E. Kenney. He was sheriff here at one time.
WALLACE: They said, uh, when the politicians would come down
in the Bottom, they'd have big speechifying [laughter -
Beauchamp] and buy booze and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Pass out money and all kinds of things. Is that true
in your experience?
�
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Uh-huh.
WALLACE: Do you remember . . . did you ever attend any
political rallies down there or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, yeah, couple of them. Have a big burgoo and,
hell, we'd have one fellow fix that burgoo.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And they'd have a political rally and hash out
something. And always have a sad story and, then, "Here's a
piece of money. You may have some sickness in the family.
Remember me when you go to the polls." [Laughter] They had
their reasons.
WALLACE: They . . .
BEAUCHAMP: If they got elected, you wouldn't see them no more
till the next election. If they didn't get elected, you wouldn't
never see them no more. [Laughing]
WALLACE: They said when "Happy" [A.B. "Happy" Chandler] was
running back in '55 [1955] that he went down there and went in
one of the joints and threw down $50 and set the whole place
there up, and patting people on the back and shaking hands.
BEAUCHAMP: He done it. I had a cousin voted for him nine times
first time he run. [Laughter] And he voted for him two or three
times in Versailles. [Laughter - Wallace] He voted nine times
for him that day.
�
WALLACE: Good grief.
BEAUCHAMP: They'd take him one precinct. They'd give him two or
three dollars [laughter] and he'd just walk in them papers.
WALLACE: So, uh . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, Hell, they took me and voted me over there in
that old Rock Quarry precinct when I wasn't but 12 years old.
WALLACE: Good grief.
BEAUCHAMP: I voted for a damn sheriff. I can't remember his
name now. [Laughter] [Inaudible] Moore.
WALLACE: Ah, okay. Okay.
BEAUCHAMP: No, sir, it wasn't Benny Moore. It was John Lucas.
WALLACE: Ah. Well, that's . . . if you were 12 years old,
that would have been like 1926, then, and '27 [1927]. [Laughter
- Beauchamp]
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. After they'd con- . . . they'd do ever damn
thing, boy. I mean, he come down there, took a whole carload of
those kids over there and voted it.
WALLACE: Huh.
BEAUCHAMP: It, uh . . . they called it the Rock Quarry precinct.
WALLACE: And nobody was checking to see . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No.
WALLACE: . . . if you was registered.
BEAUCHAMP: They was all in together.
�
WALLACE: I guess in those days, they could bring you out the
ballot and you could fill it out, couldn't you, and send it . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, that's what they done. Hell, I never did see
the ballot. All I done was sign the book. [Laughing] I never
did see the ballot. They voted who they wanted to. Give me a
dollar.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Shit, I didn't care who it was long as I got that
dollar. [Laughter]
WALLACE: Dollar. Well, I talked to one guy and he said,
"Hell, we voted people that didn't live there, didn't have no
connection there, nothing."
BEAUCHAMP: William Crain voted the first time "Happy" Chandler
run for Governor and voted for him nine times. I think when it
was all . . . the smoke cleared, we had about $15. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Well, when you talk about political strongmen or
political factions, they talk about, uh, the Sullivans, Pat and
Paul Sullivan, running Frankfort, basically; being powerful
fellows. And Earl Harrod and Fred Sutterlin and all that crowd
sort of sticking together. And, then, there's Bob Yount and his
. . . his crowd.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Is that . . .
�
BEAUCHAMP: Now, there was a fellow, when I needed some kind of
financial advice, I always went to Bob Yount. Now, I done well
by his advice.
WALLACE: Oh, really?
BEAUCHAMP: I had a little money and, uh, I wanted to invest it,
and I went to Bob Yount and he told me, said, "Now, Jo, don't put
all your eggs in one basket. Put a little here and a little
there." Says, "This place might go broke and you'd lose it. If
you had it all in there, you'd lose it all."
WALLACE: Everything, yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And, now, I done real well. Don't you know, there it
sits out there in the driveway. I finally got $20,000.
WALLACE: That big Caddy out there?
BEAUCHAMP: That Cadillac out there. [Laughing]
WALLACE: That's a beautiful car. I saw it.
BEAUCHAMP: Paid $26,000 for it. [Laughing] I had a Buick.
They allowed me $6,000 on it and they said, "Give me $20,000." I
went up there to get me an Oldsmobile and they . . . that Buick
had caused me so much trouble.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Everybody I knowed that had that Buick Regal . . .
WALLACE: Just a mess, isn't it?
BEAUCHAMP: Everybody had trouble with it. And I said, "I want
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a Oldsmobile, an eight-cylinder." Said, "Don't make it in
eight-cylinder no more." I said, Well, I don't want no damn
six-cylinder. That one there done sickened me out. He said,
"Jo, get there in that new Cadillac." Said, "I'll sell you that
one. We want to close them out." Said, "I'll sell you that one
to keep you [inaudible] automobile. Come over there and get it
and drive it as long as you want to. Keep it a day or two."
Shit, I never did get out of it. [Laughter]
WALLACE: It's a fine looking machine, it really is. Well, the
reason I brought up the political factions is that the told me,
like, the residents of Bottom would vote as a block; like
Castleman and other people would work the vote.
BEAUCHAMP: He controlled the black vote.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Did they have a white counterpart down there who
controlled the white vote? Would Fallis be . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He was a big shot in the white vote, yeah. Yeah.
"See John Fallis. He's the one that's got the money."
WALLACE: Anthony Thomas, do you know . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: He was a politician down there.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He took part in it. Anthony is a fine fellow.
�
WALLACE: Yeah. I want to tal- . . . I'm trying to nail him
down. He . . .
BEAUCHAMP: He was a deacon in my church.
WALLACE: Oh, really?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I'm trying to get to talk to him because he knows a
lot. He's very . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, sir. He lives over on Fowler Street, and I'm
sure he would open up and tell you anything, and he'd be glad to
talk to you.
WALLACE: I'd like to. I've tried to reach him a couple of
times. I've . . . I've had . . . you know, not had much luck
with it. Umm, we've talked and talked. I'm trying to think what
we haven't touched on. Uh, I got a few more women's names I
might run by you and see if you know these gals. Uh, Dorothy
Wright?
BEAUCHAMP: Dorothy Wright.
WALLACE: Black gal.
BEAUCHAMP: No.
WALLACE: Uh, Louise Evans? Julia Miles?
BEAUCHAMP: They must all be black, ain't they?
WALLACE: They're all black, pretty much.
BEAUCHAMP: No.
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WALLACE: Uh, Mamma Bryant.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, Ma Bryant. Made the best chicken pies of
anybody in the country. You go by their house and see a coal oil
lantern hanging onto the porch, you could go there and get . . .
for a quarter, you could get all the chicken pie you could eat.
And it was good. That was on the corner of . . . of Clinton and,
uh, Gashouse Alley.
WALLACE: Well, see that's what Calhoun was telling me, that
they called them festivals for some reason. They . . . and they
might be three or four going one night and you could go from
house to house if you had your money and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I was looking for Annie Stanley to come up there.
She was another black woman that had a lantern hanging, you could
go to her house. She . . . but nobody could make that chicken
pie like Ma Bryant.
WALLACE: Bryant.
BEAUCHAMP: She had her own recipe. Now, Calhoun's good.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: He's good on that chicken pie. Calhoun is a good
cook.
WALLACE: Yeah. Yeah, he was telling me about his daddy being
in that business; you know, cooking for . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, he . . . old . . . old man Jim Calhoun, that's
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all he ever done. He had eight sons and they've all cooked.
WALLACE: Cooks.
BEAUCHAMP: Why, Hell, Calhoun was cooking in a boarding house
when he was only eight years old. Had to stand up in a chair.
WALLACE: To cook. [Laughing]
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: Oh. Well, I had not heard of this other woman that
you mentioned as being a good cook. Uh, Anne Graham, do you
remember Anne Graham? Worked at the Kathryn Shoppe was "Black
Cat's" wife?
BEAUCHAMP: I never did know her name, but I knowed her. That . .
. yeah, it was "Black Cat's" wife. Now, she was a light-skinned
woman.
WALLACE: Yeah. She was a seamstress. Said she could sew
anything.
BEAUCHAMP: And she got two sons, Paul and Jimmy.
WALLACE: Jimmy. And I've talked to Jimmy. We ha- . . . I had
a good conversation with Jimmy.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. He should have give you some pretty good
information.
WALLACE: Yeah. He knew all the black joints . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: . . . and the people down there. Ms. Ruby Jackson?
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Another black gal.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, I knowed her. Ruby Jackson.
WALLACE: I don't know anything about her. I just know her na-
. . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, I don't know anything about her. I just know her
Ruby Jackson.
WALLACE: Let's see, we've talked about . . . Nellie Harris?
BEAUCHAMP: Nellie Harris. I knowed a lot of the Harrises, but I
can't single out no one woman.
WALLACE: Nannie Oliver. She was a bootlegger, black woman.
Had a boy, Little Willie, Little Willie Oliver.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh. Yeah, I was trying to think of her husband's
name. Oliver. Do you have his name in there?
WALLACE: No. I don't have his name.
BEAUCHAMP: I knowed of her.
WALLACE: A story on her was they picked her up for bootlegging
and she said, "Aw, Judge, what am I going to do with Little
Willie?" Said, "We'll fix it to you can take Little Willie to
the workhouse with you." [Laughter] They locked him up in the
workhouse, too.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I ought to re- . . . damn it, I don't know why.
Aw, Willie Oliver . . . [laughing]
WALLACE: Do you know anything about the workhouse? I don't
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know nothing about . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Old Emil Haldi.
WALLACE: Who now?
BEAUCHAMP: Emil Haldi.
WALLACE: Holiday.
BEAUCHAMP: Holiday [Haldi]. He come from Switzerland.
WALLACE: Huh.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They said he . . . [laughing]
WALLACE: What did the place look like or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: It was a jail.
WALLACE: Just a jail?
BEAUCHAMP: It was a jail, and, then, they worked them. When
they fined them, they worked them out there in that rock quarry,
crushed rock to put on the streets and the roads.
WALLACE: The one that's right in there on, uh, behind the Post
Office, the face of that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: On up in there, yeah.
WALLACE: Yeah, because Calhoun was telling me they would blast
rock and the rock would come down. Small rocks would pelt his
house.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Umhumm.
WALLACE: You know. Back in the twenties [1920s], I guess, is
when they was working it; maybe before then.
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BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And, then, they stopped quarrying and they put
them, all them prisoners, out to picking up trash and cleaning
the streets and sweeping the streets.
WALLACE: Yeah. Well, that workhouse, would you get sent there
for what, bootlegging or prostitution or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: And public drunkness.
WALLACE: Did you have to pay a fine to get out or they just .
. .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, if you couldn't pay your fine, you had to go up
there and serve so much time. Dollar a day.
WALLACE: Yeah. They said that there was a big old wash tub
and they'd throw you in that tub and scrub you.
BEAUCHAMP: Give eight or ten baths in the same damn water. Old
man Holiday'd [Haldi'd] take a damn scrub brush and scrub you.
Why, he ruint . . . that old bastard cause of one woman's death
up there.
WALLACE: How did he do that?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, he . . . he blinded her. He squirted some damn
sheep dip on her and it got in her eyes and blinded her. And,
let's see, what was it? Somebody else's death he caused up
there. It don't . . . it escapes me right now, but, oh, he was
an old bastard.
WALLACE: When was he running that place?
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BEAUCHAMP: Why, Hell, he was up there for years and years.
WALLACE: Yeah; but, you know, John Hamilton took it for, oh,
ten years, at least.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Well, they put old man Holiday [Emil Haldi]
out and John Hamilton had it. But Jo- . . . Highsong had it
after Holiday [Haldi].
WALLACE: Highsong?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. And he mistreated people. Well, it was a job
you got aggravated with. John Hamilton had it and, then, Forrest
Hoover had it. You know, I think Forrest Hoover had it when they
transferred it to jail and put them all in jail.
WALLACE: Yeah. Mistreated people in the sense that they
didn't feed them well or didn't, uh . . . they beat them if they
gave them any lip or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, they'd lock them up back in there and put, oh,
12 or 15 in the same damn cell and you had to sit on the floor
and had an old bucket in there, no plumbing and . . .
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Had to use that bucket. Some of them get mad and
grab the damn bucket and sling that old stuff all over the damn
place.
WALLACE: Would they keep men and women in the same ce- . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No, just men. The women, they kept them in different
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cells.
WALLACE: Cells, oh. Yeah, I'd heard of the workhouse, but
I've never talked to anybody who really knew too much about it.
Calhoun said he milked cows, uh, brought the milk for the
workhouse, if I remember right.
[End of Tape #2, Side #2]
[Begin Tape #3, Side #1]
WALLACE: . . . Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: If you see him on television, you look on his right
shoulder and you'll see that emblem.
WALLACE: Yeah, the four stars on the shield.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh-huh. That's the Ameri-cal Division. I was in it
in World War II. I guess he was in the Korean War and the
Vietnam War in it.
WALLACE: Well, did you join up or were you drafted or how did
. . . how did . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. I always told the story there was three of us
went, me and the two MP's that drug me. [Laughter]
WALLACE: Oh. That's funny. The reason I asked, a lot of the
people I've talked to said the war was a big turning point in
their lives, that, uh, sort of moved up in the world, I guess, is
the way some of them talk about it, that, uh . . . it was a stim-
. . . stimulus to do better, I guess.
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BEAUCHAMP: Shit. I'll be damned if I thought so. All the damn
. . . I got to be a Sergeant.
WALLACE: Where did you serve, in Europe or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: No. In the South Pacific. All that disease and
hardship down in there; shit.
WALLACE: When did you go in, '40 [1940] or . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Forty-two [1942].
WALLACE: Forty-two [1942]. You were in there for three or
four years.
BEAUCHAMP: I was in there 26 months.
WALLACE: Whew. Did you see, uh, combat in . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Bo- . . . Bougainville.
WALLACE: Ooh.
BEAUCHAMP: I got the combat badge.
WALLACE: What was your specialty? I mean, did you have . . .
BEAUCHAMP: I was a rifleman in the Infantry. Yeah, it was a . .
. in the 132nd Infantry, Chicago National Guards.
WALLACE: The Chicago National Guards.
BEAUCHAMP: Sure. I was sent overseas as a replacement and got
put in that. They had a re- . . . they going to have a reunion
this year. I went about four or five years ago up there. And I
just couldn't . . . I spent . . . why, I spent close to $500
going up there to . . . and I can't afford that.
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WALLACE: You know, it's funny, but I . . . you never thought
of a day when there would be fewer and fewer World Ward II vets;
but I . . . it's been now . . . it's almost 50 years, going on 50
years since the war was over now.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: It's a long time.
BEAUCHAMP: I think about how them bastards coming over here,
living off the cream of the crop, getting all kinds of loans, and
how they mistreated every American. That Death March.
WALLACE: Bataan Death March.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah, and how they raped them American nurses in
there and all this.
WALLACE: It's a different world now than what it was.
BEAUCHAMP: [Inaudible]. Oh my goodness.
WALLACE: Well, when you came back from the war, did you go
back to the distillery?
BEAUCHAMP: Yep.
WALLACE: Went right back in there.
BEAUCHAMP: Went right back. They give me my same job that I had
when I left there.
WALLACE: And you went back to that house on Wilkinson Street,
then, right?
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Yeah.
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WALLACE: Had Bottom sort of tamed down by that time, after the
war? Was the wild days pretty much gone? Or was it still . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I . . . yes, I'd say it tamed down some. Most
of the bad men had been . . . died off or killed off. Uh, there
wasn't really what you'd call real bad men back down there like .
. .
WALLACE: After '45 [1945]. . .
BEAUCHAMP: Now, that Henry Howard, Ida Howard's husband, he was
. . . he was a bad man. Evil son-of-a-gun. He had got killed.
And it . . . yeah, it had tamed down a whole lot.
WALLACE: Lot.
BEAUCHAMP: The police had a better hold on it. I remember one
incident down there, this girl. The police had an old Model T
touring car. She'd drank poison. They got her up there to the
hospital on Main Street, there by the cemetery.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: Pumped her stomach. And that had to happen, not . .
. I know of a couple of times, and maybe three times. The last
time they got a call come down there, Dee Dee had drank poison,
they drove around a couple of hours. Said they couldn't find the
house. [Laughter] When they got down there, it was too late.
She was . . . Hell, she was gone.
WALLACE: Gone.
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BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. They were just tired of her.
WALLACE: Tired of running her out there.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. Yeah.
WALLACE: Yeah. Yeah, the . . . that's what I figured. You
know, when urban renewal came in there, one of the reasons they
justified urban renewal was that this was such a crime-ridden,
violent area; but, by that time, by the fifties [1950's], a lot
of that, it had settled down.
BEAUCHAMP: It had quietened down. You very seldom ever heard of
a murder then down in there.
WALLACE: I think they used this, this image of Bottom being a
violent place, to try and destroy it, to justify destroying it.
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah. It . . . it had quietened down quite a bit.
WALLACE: Let me ask you. If a place like Bottom existed
again, would you live down there?
BEAUCHAMP: No. Uh-uh.
WALLACE: You would never go back to something like that.
BEAUCHAMP: No. I'd never . . . I wouldn't. But I'll tell you
this. I was raised down in there. I never was robbed. My house
was never robbed. Now, a bunch of thieves, robbers, prostitutes,
all around me; but my house was never robbed.
WALLACE: Yeah. Well, a lot of people tell me stories where we
. . . umm, Isaac Fields and a couple of others. They didn't even
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have locks on the doors.
BEAUCHAMP: No. Now, I moved out here. This is supposed to be a
middle-class neighborhood, anyway.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: I've been robbed five times here.
WALLACE: Five times?
BEAUCHAMP: I had a knife collection that I had to . . . I expect
took me 25 years to get it together.
WALLACE: And somebody . . .
BEAUCHAMP: It was worth $6,000. I got robbed.
WALLACE: Broke. Broke in here and stole it.
BEAUCHAMP: Broke . . . broke in my house. Broke in that window.
Come in that bedroom window.
WALLACE: So, as far as crime, there wasn't a lot of crime, at
least in your case, down there; uh, crimes against personal
property like stealing things like that.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, you didn't trust nobody. You wouldn't try . .
. you didn't have nothing for them to get, anyway.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: It wasn't worth breaking in.
WALLACE: Well, I've asked about a lot of things. Is there any
story that you wanted to tell me that, uh, you thought of but I .
. . we haven't touched on? We touched on . . .
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BEAUCHAMP: Well, it looks like we've about touched up on
everything.
WALLACE: Well, I'm plumb out. [Laughing] I don't know about
you, but . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: I was looking at all my cards to make sure.
BEAUCHAMP: I hope you found something that was worth your while
to come out and talk to me.
WALLACE: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I've got a lot of good things,
a lot of good things. I . . . I just can't help but believe when
we . . . when Bottom was gone, that we lost something that was
special, something different that's never existed since that
time. Blacks and whites living together in relative harmony.
You know, people bound together by adversity, by poverty. A lot
of these people said, "Once I got out of there, there was people
I'd see every day of the week that I don't never see again." And
they feel like they lost a lot of friendships and neighbors and
the neighborliness. Some . . . Henrietta Gill, I don't know if
you knew Henri- . . . a black woman.
BEAUCHAMP: I would probably know her if I seen her.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: But the names, that's something that . . . I forget a
lot of the names.
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WALLACE: She said, "I'm just a black woman out here in this
white neighborhood all by myself, and I don't drive or nothing,
and I don't see none of my friends I used to see." Apparently,
you know, there's . . . you could walk within three or four
blocks and everything was right down there, you know. You didn't
need a car. You didn't . . . very few people had cars. I don't
know if you all had a car early on or not.
BEAUCHAMP: No. I worked . . . walked to that distillery for
years. Finally, things got to going. We got a raise down there
and, uh, the credit union would loan you money.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: And they said, "Jo, if you want to buy a car, why, go
around to one of these places and pick you out a car and bring it
down here and we'll, uh, have our appraiser to evaluate it and
we'll see, uh, if we can loan you the money." And I picked out a
Chevrolet coupe and we went down there. Troy Singleton, over on
Second Street.
WALLACE: Umhumm.
BEAUCHAMP: Uh, and they had this fellow to get in it and drive
it and everything and said, "Yeah, we'll loan you the money to
buy it." Told me how much a month I'd have to pay on it. So, I
bought it. Well, I got it paid for and I wanted a better car;
so, I went over . . . I wanted a Plymouth. And Troy give me a
�
price on a Plymouth and I went up to another Plymouth dealer and
I told him, I said, I got that coupe there I want to trade. And
he said, "You ain't going to trade that damn thing in." Uh, he
said, "Hell, I owned that car. I bought it over at auction in
Louisville." [Laughter - Wallace] I said, No, not that car,
because Henry Singleton told me some old fellow out in the
country owned that car. Said, "Bull shit. [laughter - Wallace]
I bought it over at auction." Says, "It was so damn bad, I
wouldn't even sell it." Said, "I sold . . . Troy offered me a
bid on it and I sold it to him and lost money on it."
WALLACE: Uh.
BEAUCHAMP: But I drove it three or four years and it was . . .
it was never no problem to me. Now, I drove that damn thing all
over the country. [Laughter]
WALLACE: Let me . . . one thing I meant to ask you and I
forgot. As a young man growing up, what things did you do for
recreation? Surely, you must have had some time to just play and
be with your friends, when you weren't working and . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Our . . . our biggest recreation was fishing.
WALLACE: Ah, okay.
BEAUCHAMP: Well, I enjoyed fishing and going to ball games and,
uh . . .
WALLACE: Did you make your own pole and string it yourself and
�
just go down and sit on the riverbank?
BEAUCHAMP: Biggest part of the time, we did. And the biggest
part of the time, I just had a line and a hook. He cut me a
willow switch and we got down there and fished with that.
WALLACE: Yeah.
BEAUCHAMP: And I did that for years and, uh, then, we'd go to
ball games. I went to see my first major league ball game in
1937.
WALLACE: Ah.
BEAUCHAMP: The Cardinals in Cincinnati. It was the day . . .
the heydays of bean boys.
WALLACE: So, you went up to Cincinnati to see that?
BEAUCHAMP: Took all day long to go up there and back and see the
ball game. It was after dark when we got back.
WALLACE: Oh, that was a big deal.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, it was a big deal. Spent $3. Bought my dinner
and the ball game tickets. [Laughing]
WALLACE: Whew. That was a pretty good amount of money, too,
for that . . .
BEAUCHAMP: Well, yeah. Well, heck, yeah. I wasn't making but
$14.40 a week.
WALLACE: Well, I've . . . talking to some of the people, there
was a place called the sandbar that a lot of the blacks would
�
play at. They had a ball- . . .
FEMALE VOICE: Do you all want anything to drink or anything?
BEAUCHAMP: No, we're just about . . .
WALLACE: No. But I'm about to get out of your hair.
BEAUCHAMP: We're about to wind this thing down.
FEMALE VOICE: Well, Skipper ain't got but about 20 more minutes
[inaudible].
BEAUCHAMP: Okay.
WALLACE: Okay. Well, let me . . . I'm sorry, I didn't
realize. Let's go ahead and . . .
[End of Interview]
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1:00