Oral History Interview with Sheila Mason Burton

MASON: … community memories book, did some more interviews with me… so one I let him [Doug Boyd] handle it and we interviewed two sisters, and of course they don’t like for you to do two people at one time but we were desperate, we needed some quotes. And they were the Barnett sisters and they were talking about a prostitute, you know Doug [referring to Doug Boyd, former director of the Kentucky Oral History Commission] did his thesis on the Bottom, of his doctorial dissertation, and so they lived in the bottom as kids and they were talking about a prostitute down there and they were trying to think of her name… and they said her name was mmm, her name was… she was a white woman and her name was… and Doug spouted out her name. And they said, yeah, that was her name. How did you know that? And I couldn’t resist, I said, his Daddy told him! [laughter] But if you’d seen the look on their face when he spouted out this woman’s name, like were you there?

HAY: He’d done his research, hadn’t he.

MASON: Because they didn’t know he’d done all this research on the Bottom. So that’s my favorite Doug Boyd story. [laughter]

HAY: You know his little daughter Charlotte was born, just has he finished his Ph.D. you know he was hurrying to finish it before she was born, and when he got his stuff submitted to I.U. and when he got his PhD certificate back the date they issued it was the date of her daughter’s birth and I thought that was..

MASON: That really was neat, yeah, I miss him. I do already!

HAY: So here we are, we can just continue our conversation, like we’ve been chatting away here. So, tell me what you felt when you first walked up here again.

MASON: Well, I guess I felt a feeling of nostalgia, well, I’m at the age now, where you do a lot of reflecting and I just spent a lot of time here. I can remember times with friends. I lived in South Frankfort and I had protective parents and a lot of us had protective parents and so there was always permission to go to the show, we called it the show, not the movies, to the show. And basically that would be during the daytime or on a weekend and I wasn’t here on Friday nights or Saturday nights as a kid because my parents just didn’t allow that. So I don’t remember many Friday or Saturday nights here, but certainly weekdays during the summer and on weekends during the day. I remember a friend of mine, Pat Hunter, had a birthday party once. Pat lived on Washington Street, which is just right around the corner, really on the upper part of Washington Street and where she lived now has been replaced by probably the federal building and the YMCA, right in the area. But she had a birthday party, girls only, and I can remember her mother fixed up all this food and we ate, and then the treat was to come to the Grand Theatre. And her mother paid for us all to come see a movie, I can’t remember which movie it was, but you know that was a Sunday afternoon outing.

HAY: How old were you?

MASON: I think, let’s see I was still at Mayo Underwood, and so I think I probably was eleven, ten or eleven. Ten would have been fifth grade, so probably eleven or twelve. And we just walked up here. But even living in South Frankfort, I remember this was a… I think I… my first boyfriend… you know, you know really, well boyfriend, was probably in ’67 and I remember that we used to come to the movies every Sunday night. First it was convenient, I lived on St. John Court, it was a nice walk, we didn’t have cars, as teenagers, and so it was convenient just to walk. Actually, I said ’67, it was ’65. We would walk to the Grand Theatre and see a movie and walk back and my parents felt real comfortable with that because it was always a seven o’clock movie and you’d be home by nine.

HAY: How old were you?

MASON: I would have been sixteen, seventeen, because I remember I was a junior in high school. But it was fun. It was fun coming to the movies because generally there was a good movie you wanted to see, but people were here, it was a social outing, it was a way to congregate and you know to go back and talk about who was with who at the movies. Sitting in the balcony, you can see how small this is. You couldn’t hide in this building. You know, it was just fun. But I also remember coming here with my mother. I remember my older brother and I, there were five of us, and I don’t know if the younger ones were born or not, it’s almost like my mother had two sets of kids. I have a brother who is about two years old than I, then it’s me and then six years later there was another child born and then six years later there was another child born and then two years later another child born. So it’s almost like two sets of kids. But I remember my brother, my older brother and I coming to the movies with my mother on a Sunday evening to see “Love Me Tender, ” it was the Elvis Presley, “Love Me Tender.” And I don’t know why that stands out except that I remember my mother trying to keep from crying [laughing] and just the banter that was going back and forth between the three of us and now and in reflection she was trying to keep from crying because I think it was a sad ending to that movie. And then I remember coming here another movie that stands out is “Old Yeller.” And I remember crying at that… I just remember balling my eyes out and again that was another time I came with my mother. And I think I remember coming with an aunt that stayed with us, she was an older aunt, she actually raised my mother, so she was more like a grandmother, so we had these generations living in my household. And I think we came to see “Back Street,” as I remember it was “Back Street” because I remember her getting really emotional and trying to play it off as... and generally when we grownups are trying to conceal our emotions to kids… we just sort of push them away. And I can remember that. But you know, some of the other movies that I can remember coming to see were just fun, like “The Fly” you know it was a science fi movie, a scary movies in its day. And I think I saw “The Blob” here and again, it didn’t really matter what the movie was. If you hadn’t seen it then it was an occasion to come to the Grand Theatre.

HAY: So really, you would come with friends, you’ve told those stories, you’d come with your mother, your aunt, it was a special outing across all combinations of social and family…

MASON: Absolutely, yeah. But you know there weren’t a lot of avenues, there weren’t a lot of places to go, that were in walking distance back then. And again, our parents had cars, but generally these were one car families, you couldn’t afford to have two cars, and you know our parents generally worked two or three jobs, so the car was seldom at home and if you wanted some entertainment, you had to find something to do where you could walk. And I grew up on Second Street at the lower end of Second Street right there at the intersection of Second Street and Paul Sawyier Drive. And so, you know, that walk from there to here was nothing in those days. Now we would probably make a big deal out of having to walk those distances, but that was nothing.

HAY: Would you cross on the Singing Bridge or… the Capital Bridge, was more recent, right?

MASON: The Capital Bridge was there.

HAY: That was there.

MASON: It was there, yes. [laughing]

HAY: See, I don’t know Frankfort enough.

MASON: Yes, thank goodness I don’t precede that. Yeah, we would walk across the Capital Bridge, probably both ways. You know I went to school at Mayo Underwood and I would really have to get from that point over to Mayo Underwood which is situated, was situated where the tower building is now, that was the site of that school and so, our parents, my parents would bring us to school in the mornings on their way to work. But we had to find our way, we had to walk home. And that was always, well this is not really a Grand Theatre story, except that we would, we had these excursions. It was a time to well, to flex our freedom, because we didn’t have a lot of freedom to just wander around, so there was always the trip through the Bottom, just to walk through the Bottom, and then at some points we would go up to the… Robbs Funeral home sat right behind the old Capitol, so if there was any activity there we would go see who was dead, to see if there was a body there, and then go up the steps to the Old Capitol and we always…. That was always the point when we had to use the bathroom, even though school was just fifteen minutes away, but we’d stop in the Old Capitol and then we would head across the Singing Bridge and then down Second Street. Sometimes we would change our itinerary and we would still stop in the Old Capitol but then we’d walk down to the Lt. Governor’s Mansion, because Mike Fields’ mother cooked there and she would have cookies and things for us and we’d stop in there and then head across the Capital Avenue Bridge. So, the Grand Theatre sometimes was on our route just to see what movies were playing, we weren’t into reading the newspaper and that’s the only way we knew what movies there were.

HAY: So it would be listed on the Marquee or in the window?

MASON: In the window, yeah. And you know, we didn’t stop in any stores or anything because we didn’t have any money. But at least once a week we would walk by the Grand Theatre just to see what the movie was and whether we were going to start putting pressure on our parents. To come to the movies during the weekends.

HAY: Who would be walking with you? Would it be your brother? Would it be your friends?

MASON: No, it wouldn’t be my brother, it would be friends, it would be you know, generally a bunch of girls and generally one or two guys would stroll along with us. I know, they were friendly walks, there were rarely any problems along the walk. Occasionally there would be a situation that was a little threatening, because again, we were dealing in times that… I remember once we were walking and it probably was one of those days when we passed the Grand because we decided to walk across the Singing Bridge and just as we got almost to the end a group of guys, some white guys, drove by and threw a snake at us. Well, you know, I can’t swim, but they had to keep me from jumping into the river, I am so terrified of snakes and actually, it was dead, because it had been gutted, so it was a dead snake. But oh, gosh, I remember that then we decided that maybe we should, that a boy should walk with us and the teachers were making sure that some boy was assigned to walk with us across the bridge every day, but.

HAY: What an interesting story. The dead snake almost making you want to jump into the river.

MASON: Oh, gosh. I am just… I have a snake phobia. And it might be… to emphasize how phobic I am about snakes I guess I was going to chose death to facing that snake, because I cannot swim, or I couldn’t at the time.

HAY: So you had wonderful walks, after school it would be sort of three to four, two to four, that kind of time? Was your sort of free… you wouldn’t be expected home yet?

MASON: No because the parents were at work, you know. So, what would be a normally for able bodied children would be a twenty minute walk at the most, would be a two hour walk. [laughing] You know, we, but you know, that’s great, because the place that we were stopping… I mean I know some kids now that have never been in the Old Capitol, you know, they just have never, and they grew up in Frankfort. But there’s no reason to be there and to be quite honest with you I was almost an adult before I stepped foot into the new Capitol. Because I never passed that way.

HAY: Your route didn’t take you there.

MASON: It didn’t take me there. We’d go up there and play on weekends but the Capitol was closed and…

HAY: When you’re walking and with your friends your on the streets at the buildings and you feel it and its part of you and now every body’s in their cars zipping from A to B.

MASON: Right, I think these kids have missed a lot of what Frankfort has to offer. A couple of organizations I work with are trying hard to get kids to slow down enough just to take advantage of some of the things that are here. That are really quite nice.

HAY: One of the things we did here and another thing that’s happening next week is children’s plays, Lexington Children’s Theatre is coming next week and a thousand kids are coming from the schools. But the first time we had the kids from Second Street and Good Shepherd, they could walk. And I just love that. We are such a car oriented society and that they could walk from their school to come to a show, play ( ).

MASON: I don’t know, I think I’d like to at some point maybe bring some of the kids over here from one of the organizations that I’m involved with, The King Center and let them see this before and then bring them back for the after. But you know, one of the things, a lot of those kids are black kids and one of the things that we struggle with as black parents is how much of the story do you tell. You know, I mean, you don’t want to tell the story in a way that brings about the resentment of the past that our parents felt and that some of us felt but yet you don’t want to conceal the story because there is so much strength in the story. And you know, I think it would be kind of neat I think for the to see this balcony that most of their parents and grandparents sat in at one time out of necessity but you know, things have changed! The fact that we have this appreciation for this place. I remember that when we started doing the community memories book and the first draft that we had got an historian to write, when we read it, it was negative. It told the story and it was accurate and there was nothing factually wrong about it but the tone of it was not what I was hearing when I was out doing oral interviews. When I was out doing oral interviews and I’d sit down with an older person and they talked, their memories were positive, I mean sure they said, we didn’t have any food sometimes, etc. but you know they would talk about, the stories would be really neat, you know, funny, full of love and full of strength and I didn’t see that in the draft, and we rejected that because we realized that generally when you have someone to talk about their memories their going to talk about some of the positive things that they remember. I think we’ve finally gotten to the point where some of that stuff that we felt when we were going through the situation, and it’s very real, and it was OK, and we don’t dismiss it, but that’s not what we choose to remember. 17:50

HAY: It’s the tone, the tone is so important isn’t it. The choice of words…

MASON: Exactly

HAY: …and it can so easily be misunderstood when you lose the pers… like the person in an oral history you see the person and their eyes or you hear the tone of their voice…

MASON: Yeah, and you want, you know, whatever’s… what we wanted was the text to reflect that and we think we accomplished that but we found out that we had to do it ourselves, we couldn’t, because we, we did the, we knew what we were hearing so we were better able to reflect that in the text than hiring somebody to do it.

HAY: Before we forget, if you want to bring the kids here, just call me, and we can arrange something, and the sooner we do it, the better.

MASON: I agree, we probably will do that.

HAY: We should do it before… sometime in November… we could do it.

MASON: Alright

HAY: If the funding goes through they’re just going to start… renovations…

MASON: right away…

HAY: … it’s prepared and I would love the groups to come and see it before…

MASON: Well, I’ll tell you, just this tour today has been somewhat… I didn’t have a big… problem with the Grand Theatre, because, again, in most of my memories here are very positive memories… you know, I use… an example I use is high school… there were some things going on in high school that actually made me wipe high school from my memory. I just chose not to remember those four years as I went through life. And I said earlier that we just had our 40th high school reunion, and I went. I didn’t go to the 20th one and I didn’t go to the 10th one… I went to this one. And you know, it was like a period of reconciliation for me. I just enjoyed it, I enjoyed those folks, you know it’s like it brought it all… I finally reconciled myself to the fact that… those were good years. There were some bad things that happened you know, during those years, but those were really good years. But I don’t have that about the Grand Theatre. All of my memories about the Grand are very positive. Yes, I remember that I couldn’t go downstairs. And I remember that sometimes as we kind of passed on the sidewalks that there were words exchanged that weren’t very nice. But, my parents dealt with that more so than I did. I was a child. And even in my high school days, I didn’t get bent out of shape about that. I didn’t like it, but it didn’t diminish at all the fun that I had in this building. This was a place to come and when the lights went out you were just in another world. And when you emerged into the real world, it still was a good world. So…

21:00

HAY: That’s beautiful… ( ) So, Frankfort High… tell me the name of the school… the elementary school.

MASON: Mayo-Underwood [she spells it out].

HAY: And so you went there from…

MASON: Kindergarten through the eighth grade, because the elementary schools were not integrated. Mayo-Underwood went from Kindergarten to the 12th grade but I think after Brown vs. Board of Education, a couple years later, then the high schools here were integrated, but the elementary schools were not.

HAY: I didn’t realize that.

MASON: Yeah. Elementary Schools were integrated in 63 or 64. So, I remember graduating from Mayo-Underwood, from the 8th grade in 62. It’s kind of funny, I told you where I lived, I lived in South Frankfort on Second Street, you know, two blocks south was Murray Street School, which went from one to four and you know, right down the street, on the same street that I lived on, several blocks down was Second Street School and so we passed…. We said, Gee, we were bussed and they didn’t even provide the busses. But, you know, great experiences at those… I wouldn’t trade those experiences at Mayo-Underwood for anything in the world. I mean, you know, that’s just, that was life back then.

HAY: It’s your friends, it’s what you learn…

MASON: And you know, it was, I mean, it was special. It was a special school. I liked the… well, the teachers knew you… they were in your life, in your face and you know, it’s kind of funny. I sent my child to Capital Day School. Which of course, we couldn’t go to back then, it was the private school here. And somebody asked me why, well first, I liked the strong academics there, I was a little guilty about that, because I am so philosophically in tune with the public schools, but it was during the time when we were just getting into the primary school years and you know, it was a lot of confusion about what was going on with education reform in those primary years. So… plus I needed an all day kindergarten. And that’s the only place I could get it. And then once you’re in the kindergarten, the academics were so good out there, that I said, well, we’ll go first grade, we’ll go second grade. But at any rate, the other reason though, was because I liked the fact that those teachers were just on your case. That reminded me of Mayo-Underwood. And they are so different, you know… an all black school back in the 50s and 60s and this, what’s considered by some, to be an elitist school, in 2000. But what I liked… it just reminded me of those teachers that were going to call my parents, or send a note home or were going to be on my case… accountability. And I don’t think folks realize that Mayo-Underwood had that. And Rosenwald, which was another black school that was here for kids out in the county. I mean, I liked the fact that you were accountable for being not only your academics but your character. And I think only because these smaller schools today can do that because they are small. It’s not that the other schools don’t try and want to do that, and they need that support, but the smaller schools can do that. And Mayo-Underwood was small! All the black kids in Frankfort went there, but it was still a small school.

HAY: So how many would be in your grade? How many kids?

25:25

MASON: I’d say maybe 20-30.

HAY: … in your grade, and would you all be in the same homeroom?

MASON: Yes,

HAY: … by grade

MASON: …by grade

HAY: Would there be multiple home rooms for the same grade?

MASON: No. Generally just one.

HAY: So 20-30?

MASON: Yes, I’d say about 30 at the most, maybe 35. That seems kind of high. But there was one 8th grade and one 7th grade and so forth. One teacher. But obviously when we got to the upper grades, the 6th, maybe 7th and 8th, there was switching of teachers for various subjects, but you know otherwise those classes were very contained. And in fact, I remember4, my first and second grade classes were combined.

HAY: Then you went to Frankfort High for high school and those would have been in the early or first couple of years of an integrated Frankfort High?

MASON: No, actually, I think Frankfort High was integrated in the late 50s. So, maybe within four or five years. I started Frankfort High in ’62. September of ’62. And graduated in ’66. But there were four or five classes ahead of me.

HAY: And you’re saying that Frankfort High, high school, was not a pleasant experience.

26:57

MASON: It was not because of… not so much because of the students. You know, one or two things can taint your experience. I just remember as a freshman, I can remember Mrs. Doris Pearman who was my homeroom teacher came to me one day and said, I had been sick and missed a class and needed to make up a test, and she came to me and said… you know if you make up this test, you’ve got all As and Bs you’re going to make the honor roll why don’t you try to make up this test so you won’t have an I and you can make the honor roll. And I thought that was so nice of her. And so I did, and I got an A and they wouldn’t put me on the honor roll. [laughs] It just made me mad. And then I remember an experience…

HAY: Why didn’t that occur? Why didn’t you get on the honor roll?

MASON: I just didn’t, it was their call.

HAY: But if you had the grades… it wasn’t a numbers… I mean… if you had the right grades and the right numbers…

MASON: Well you know, I could, things that you can’t explain are things that, you know, I mean, I couldn’t find an explanation, but you leave it alone, you know, I’m a black kid and I left it alone…. And I also remember that at Mayo-Underwood we were very, Mrs. Alice D. Samuels, was just a master of English and we came out, I came out of there, most of the kids, just real good, I was a real good English student. I mean we diagramed, I could write, that was her, and if she liked you she really spent a lot of time with you. And I get to Frankfort High and I write a book report and the teacher asked me if I plagiarized it. In front everybody. Gosh, from that day forth I just couldn’t wait to get out of that school. And then other incidents... it just… I think it culminated with being called in to say that, you know, Sheila, you have the grades to make the national honor society and you have the character… the four things… character, grades, something else and leadership. I didn’t have the leadership. I was in organizations, but I wasn’t an officer… well, they didn’t elect black kids. So, you know, those are the situations that probably, they’re petty, but boy, a young, impressionable person who is trying to deal with… still, some segregation. Obviously, you remember I was a kid when the poor little girls in Birmingham were, you know, they were my age and we’d grown up with this and those kind of experiences coupled with what we thought were unexplained experiences… Martin Luther King coming to town and the principal saying “any of you go and we’re going to suspend you.” Those things just clouded my high school experiences and I couldn’t see beyond those situations. To see that there were some very positive things about high school.

30:10

HAY: Well, it was a time, an era of high tensions, it’s when things really shifted.

MASON: it really was.

HAY: And in a southern state, we’re in Kentucky.

MASON: But I tell you, I do think that being born, being a baby boomer, I can’t think of a better… oh, every body probably says this. I think we were born at the ideal time. We saw the advent of mass communication, I can remember our first TV. We saw, we can appreciate radio, and some of those older things, we saw technology just take off. We saw the beginning of space exploration. We saw Watergate [laughs] and just so many things, that this has to be the perfect life span. But who knows. [laughs]

HAY: It’s a good perspective! Very good perspective. I was born in 1965, in England. My parents are English and we came to America when I was under two and my Dad was the Chaplain at Norton Hospital in Louisville. I grew up in Louisville. Louisville is a very different community than Frankfort.

31:28

MASON: Oh, yeah, I’m really familiar with Louisville.

HAY: So for me to live in Frankfort, and I’ve lived here since ’91 and of course with the Hays, a very old family entrenched in Frankfort, it’s been an interesting learning experience for me to see a whole different sort of community and I’m very curious about it all.

MASON: I spent my summers in Louisville because we had, when I was a kid, because the aunt that I mentioned earlier, she lived in Louisville. And then we she, had to, she was so much disabled, but after, you know, well, I guess, renovation… she lived out on Preston Street, right across from the hospital. Which I don’t think is there any longer, it was the old city hospital. But I just remember that the neighborhoods were very ethnic. There was a Lebanese grocery, at the end of the street, and so very different from my Frankfort neighborhoods that I grew up in. Not quite as friendly and the doors not open like they were here. Actually, the houses were different, you had to climb stairs sometimes to get to the houses, so. But Louisville’s always been a place that I thoroughly liked. I wouldn’t want to live there, but I thoroughly have liked it.

HAY: Did you leave Frankfort at any stage in your life?

MASON: I certainly was going to. Obviously. Everybody was going to leave. [laughs] And after I finished, I went to Kentucky State. And I got a pretty decent job for those times after school, after I graduated from Kentucky State. But I still had these plans to leave and then my mother got real ill and then she died. And I had these younger brothers and sisters and you know, I mean in retrospect I was so glad I was here during that illness. It would have been tough not to have been here. But when she died I still had my two youngest brothers, youngest brother and sister were still in elementary school. Well, Kevin was in high school, sister was in… It just wasn’t in the cards to leave.

HAY: You needed to be there.

33:53

MASON: Yeah, I have no regrets, I think Frankfort’s been a great place. What I would do is, I always said that Frankfort is great to live in, great place to grow up in. But then I thought there was a period in one’s life where you probably needed to get out. Because it can be a vicious little place. I remember when Rosalie Carter was first lady and somebody asked her about Plains, they asked her, how does it feel being the wife of the President, everybody knows everything you do, focusing on everything you’re doing, she said, “you know, I lived in Plains, Georgia, everybody’s always known everything that I did.” Well, the same with Frankfort. [laughs] So maybe there’s a period of time, where maybe you just need to leave! But certainly I think it’s a great place to come back and grow in. Or grow older in and die in. But I have no regrets.

HAY: Your kids, what are their names?

MASON: I have one child and it is a she. Her name is Tyler and she is a junior at K. State. I hope she stays around. I have one grandson, who is two years old.

HAY: What’s his name?

MASON: His name is Mykell. And he’s a joy.

HAY: Do you spend a lot of time with him?

MASON: I do.

HAY: Tell me, we skipped by your mother, you talked a little bit about your mother and your siblings… can you tell me everybody’s names… your Mom’s name.

35:34

MASON: My mother’s name is Juanita May Brown, that was her maiden name, and she was born in New York, but her paternal grandparents lived here in Frankfort. And they lived in Hickman Hill. Hickman Hill, a lot of folks don’t realize, used to be, well, it’s out 421. It’s out where Ducker’s is now. That used to be a black neighborhood. A rural neighborhood. So they lived out there for years. When she got ready to go to school, she went to Rosenwald, a school attached to Kentucky State. Model school. Their training school. Then when she got ready to go to high school, obviously there was no high school for kids in the county, so she went to Mayo-Underwood, so what she had to do was find a place to live in town, so she could go to high school. So there was family down… and that’s where she met my Dad, my Dad’s family has been here for generations.

HAY: And his name?

MASON: Mason, Andrew Mason. And he’s still alive and he and his twin sister will be 80 years old in April. What’s her name. We call her May, it’s Annie May. Back then they named kids things like Annie May. May Sanders. At any rate, my fathers family are the Masons and my mothers family are the Browns.

HAY: So what you’ve told me is that if you lived in the county there was no high school you could go to…

MASON: as a black kid.

HAY: So what happened to most of the kids that lived in the county? Did they not go to high school?

MASON: They did, they went to Mayo-Underwood, but they just had to find…

HAY: They had to come in to town and find a way to do that.

MASON: They had to find a way to get to school or to find a place to live in town…

HAY: And everybody didn’t have cars.

MASON: No.

HAY: It made it more difficult.

MASON: But that wasn’t unusual back then. I remember Dr. Winona Fletcher who is she was born in Virginia. Lived in Virginia, grew up in Virginia. I remember her telling me about having to find a way to get to high school, because there was none where she… I believe she was the one that was speaking of that… so it seemed to be pretty much, pretty common in the south for black kids to have to go out of their way to go to high school. And I’m not sure of that, because some just didn’t go… because there was a lot of pressure back then, I imagine, for those kids to work anyway. What I found in my generation… all parents want things to be better for their kids… some of these kids are going to be so pampered because we all try to make things a little bit better for our kids, but…. My parents, and I think most of my friend’s parents were very protective of us. Trying to protect us from those situations and even though they might have been fighting for, in whatever way, some very subtly and some more openly for integration, we weren’t involved in it. They stilled tried to protect us from that. The fact that I had to go to Mayo-Underwood was not ever a big “issue.” I never heard any negative stuff about it. Even though I know they resented the fact that I had to pass two schools to get to a school. I think they saw the positive in Mayo-Underwood and what was there. And kept us out of those kind of battles.

39:50

HAY: Didn’t give you that negative angst about what was going on. When you’re a kid you just life in the moment, don’t you?

MASON: That’s true. Now, but remember, I’m a child of the 60s. Right there at the time that all that social revolution started I was at the prime age.

HAY: You came of age in it!

MASON: Yes, I did, and the militancy came along with that. But that’s just the way to be. You wore your afro and you just went with the times. So I did go through that stage.

HAY: It had to happen, then too, it had to. We wouldn’t be where we are today…

40:32

MASON: Some of that was just for… I’m not trying to minimize it, but I remember being at K-State doing some rioting up there. We decided [chuckles] one day that no white persons were going to come on campus. Just for the heck of it. So we met the white kids at the gate and said no white people coming on today, and they said, oh, okay, they were glad [laughs] they got out of school that day. So it was nothing malicious about it at all. It was just probably an extreme way to be mischievous… inappropriate, obviously.

HAY: And pushing at the boundaries.

MASON: [laughs] Yeah…. But not going over them.

HAY: Those doors are starting to open and change…

MASON: It was fun.

HAY: Tell me about your siblings…

MASON: Oh, yeah. My older brother is Andrew Mason Jr. but when he was a baby, there was a song out called Tootie Pie, and they started calling him Tootie Pie and to this day he is Tootie Pie Mason and he’s 59. So, I have my older brother, Andrew Mason Jr. and then my brother next to me and he worked for state government for 40 years I bet. He graduated from K. State. He was in the computer technology field, even though at that age… And he recently retired and so he’s enjoying his retirement. He spends some weeks in Florida and then he’s here and so, he’s a great guy. Then my next brother, the one six years younger than me is Steve Mason. Steve worked for several years as a budget analyst for LRC and then he graduated also from K. State. And he retired and he was the executive assistant to Dr. Bill Turner when he was president of K. State. And of course, Bill Turner was placed from that interim spot by Dr. Mary Sias. Steve worked with her for a while, so he is her executive assistant. So, he really enjoys it. He feels a great deal of satisfaction being back at his alma mater. He really thinks the world of Dr, Sias. Thinks she’s doing a great job up there. Then the next brother is Kevin Mason. He’s 12 years younger than I. Kevin graduated from Eastern. He is a budget analyst at LRC but he got his degree in marketing. He worked for the Department of Education for a while and then he came to LRC and worked with the economists office and handled some bonded indebtedness questions and then moved on to the budget area. So, he’s 12 years younger than I. Then the youngest is Juanita Gay Lee. She graduated from Kentucky State. It’s funny, all of my siblings, the younger ones, have their masters degrees and I remember when the last one, Gay, was the last one to get hers, after my mother died, my older brother and I helped Dad put them through school. So we… because you know, you just do that… And so I remember calling my brother and saying you know, all our younger brothers and sisters are better educated than us and have better homes. [laughs]

HAY: And you certainly helped them get there.

MASON: And they’ve always been very appreciative kids, they realize that. But anyway, Gay is in Lexington. She’s the only that’s moved away. So they’re all doing well. My folks, I think, feel very blessed that they had five kids and we all finished college and they were able to educate us, because my parents did domestic work. My dad was the bartender for a while for the VFW, always worked two or three jobs, and then he had his own little business, a grocery store that he ran. They were able to raise five kids and instill in us… we always knew we were going to go to college. It was just not a question. Because they hadn’t gotten to do that. Those were things they were pushing us toward. Not so much the material things…. They wanted us to put ourselves in a position to have a better life than they had. Although, I think they felt like they had a blessed life. My mother was young when she died. So, she didn’t live long enough to see the fruits of her labor but I think she’d be well pleased.

45:54

HAY: How old was she when she died?

MASON: She had just turned 50 She had cancer, yes. And it’s funny, I think 50 was a lot harder for me to go through simply because I was thinking, gee, she got here and that was it for her. But I think 50 would have been harder to go through had I realized that after 50 come all the aches and pains [laughs]… you don’t know that, I shouldn’t even tell you that, I’m sorry [laughs].

HAY: I was feeling them yesterday, I’m like, is this what being 41 is like?

MASON: But anyway, my Dad remarried, a wonderful lady who’s been just a great step-mom for…. My parents were married 30 years when she died. And my Dad and my step-mom have been married twenty-something years. And I just remember that when my Dad’s friends started having their 50th wedding anniversaries, he was saying, “well, I’ve been married 50 years.” I said, yeah, Daddy, but not to the same person. [laughs]

HAY: What’s her name? Your step-mom.

MASON: Her name is Mary Lillian Mason. She lived in Louisville, grew up in Louisville. Again, she’s just been, we’ve been very blessed. We had a great Mom and we have a great Step-Mom and my dad was the type of dad that back then, you brought home the bacon. So. he really wasn’t in to going to church. He’d go to church every now and then. Mothers basically took care of stuff. And then all of a sudden she dies and leaves him with two kids. We would go to Louisville and spend the summer and then come home and he hadn’t washed a dish. They would all be piled in the sink – he didn’t do anything like that.

HAY: Plus he was working two or three jobs…

MASON: Two or three jobs, well, I’ll give him that excuse. At the time my mother died I had an apartment. So there Daddy is with two kids. So he started cooking. Every day he cooked macaroni and cheese. My little sister would call and say, he cooks macaroni and cheese every day and he burns it every day. Within three or four years he was catering! He learned to cook!

HAY: He shifted gears and did what he had to do!

48:19

MASON: He sure did! He’s a great Dad.

HAY: That’s great. What a wonderful family. Are you OK on time still? This is all wonderful. Do you need me to get you any water?

MASON: No, I’m fine.

HAY: Tell me about the importance of arts in community. What do you feel is the role of the arts in community.

MASON: I think the arts really give you a chance to live multiple lives. When I was five or six years old. I took ballet lessons. [rolls her eyes] Down in the bottom. You know, you hear all this stuff about the bottom, but folks don’t realize that there was a lady, a black lady down there that was teaching ballet lessons.

HAY: Do you remember her name?

MASON: I do not remember her name. I need to find out her name, just for history. And then, later on, when I was older, maybe in 7th – 8th grade, again I took ballet lessons from a, I remember this lady’s name, her name was Marcie, a white lady. She had a studio on Second Street. We took ballet and tap. I developed, more then, an appreciation for that art form. Although I remember when I was reading Angela Davis’s autobiography years and years ago, I remember her saying something about… “I never understood why my mother made me take those hideous ballet lessons.” Well, you know, I really was a fat little girl and her I was, rolly polly, taking ballet, but it was okay, I really wasn’t self-conscious about that then, I appreciate that experience. Then, when I was in the 7th grade at Mayo-Underwood, a gentleman named Clayton Fugate, who was the band director at Frankfort High decided that he wanted to give black kids a chance to get into Frankfort High School band. And he couldn’t do it after that got to that… So, he volunteered to come to Mayo-Underwood twice a week if our parents could buy some instruments and teach us how to play! So, my brother and I said yes, we wanted. So I played the clarinet and he played the trumpet. So when I got to high school I was in the band! Being in a high school band you get to really appreciate music. Because those Sousa marches during football season and during the concert season, you’re playing classical music. I really developed.… the French Horn is my favorite horn, and now when I listen to an orchestra, I’m really tuning in on various instruments. And so you learn to appreciate that kind of music.

51:48

HAY: It’s like a language. That if you haven’t been exposed to it, at some point, it just sounds muddy. But if you’ve been in it, in the orchestra, you can hear the different parts of it.

MASON: Exactly. That’s right. At Mayo-Underwood they used to put on these elaborate end of the year programs and they would be musicals. And so each class would have their role. They would be really elaborate productions. Costuming, etc. And some of the kids had dramatic parts in it. So, I learned to appreciate drama, acting, plays! And so, when I get to the point where I…. Plus my parents were really jazz fans. I grew up with good music in the background. So I sit here today and I appreciate all of that. I can, on one hand, turn on the radio and you punch one button and it’s WEKU and they play fantastic classical music just about all day long. Then you punch another button and it’s Mike Davenport’s 102.1 jazz. Jazz is my favorite music. Then you punch another button and it’s that station out of Lexington that kind of plays pop music?

HAY: WUKY

MASON: That’s not that it, but music like the BeeGees. Then you punch another and it’s 107.5, hip hop. Not a big fan of hip hop music. I like the beat. I’m not a big rap fan. Simply because I can’t get to some of the language. And the other thing is that it confuses me. I don’t want to think. I want music to be something I don’t have to think about. I’ve got to closely listen to figure out what the devil are they saying? Why are they saying it so fast? But still. You do get caught up in the beat. And I’m a fan of gospel music. I contribute all of that to being exposed to arts as a kid. I think its real important that these kids are exposed to good art forms. I wish I had talent, but….

HAY: Well, and I guess here, in Frankfort, there has been a minimal amount of live performance, theatre, at a certain level. The schools are doing programs, but of course their funding has been cut back. There are some small violin programs, but not much ( ). And I guess what we’re hoping, when we have 430 seats here, again, those school kids can all come and be exposed, and not be afraid of live theatre, and know that it can carry them away. What did you say… give you the chance at two lives…?

MASON: To live multiple lives. Actually, I can remember taking my daughter to Lexington to children’s theatre. Because there wasn’t really an outlet here. I think something that’s no longer going on. Well, Karen Kimmel used to do the…

HAY: Greatest Christmas Pageant?

MASON: Yeah, that was great. My kid was Gladys one year! But that was just good for those kids.

HAY: Someone wants to do it again here. I can’t remember her name but she… was talking about doing it this year, but it may be getting a bit late. But that’s a wonderful experience for kids.

MASON: Yes, I think the arts are just critical to being a well rounded folks… and I didn’t name some art forms that just… literature, I mentioned Alice Samuels before who was the principal at Mayo-Underwood school and we had to learn poems. And so, I can sit here right now and probably recite the “Psalm of Life.” Because she made us learn that poem.

HAY: Can you recite it?

MASON: Tell me not in more for numbers, life is but an empty dream

For the soul is dead that slumbers all things are not what they seem… I’m getting a little fuzzy here… Life is real, life is ernest, but the grave is not its goal, dust thou art to dust returneth… was not mentioned for the soul…. Something like that! I mean I’ve got some…. But we had to learn to appreciate poetry and I don’t know if kids do that now or not.

HAY: I don’t think they make them memorize…

MASON: I know there’s this disdain against rote. Just teaching kids to memorize, but that’s an area where you learn to appreciate… because as you get older, you say, I remember that from elementary school. Then you start to realize how this poetry really plays out, how it applies, how you can relate to it, in a different way.

HAY: And it’s part of the common cultural database of why this poem is important if a whole generation knows that poem, then that’s something of common…

MASON: That’s the way classics live on. And I kind of fear for the classics. I know my child had to do something called the great books series, so some of that’s stuff that I was reading back then, she was reading there. But as far as poetry goes, I really am concerned that some of these classics aren’t going to just die out. Obviously they are going to live on through people who are in the field. And who are artists. And the Richard Taylor’s of the world. I am just a common person, just a patron of the arts and those things are very alive in me, but they are not in my daughter.

HAY: You know what might happen (well, my hope would be) that they’ll morph into some other sort of art form. The printed poem on the page is hard for younger generations to bring that to life, but people might do it in multi-media. That might take an amazing poem and make a multi media… or a song.

59:02

MASON: I hope you are right… and that might be what rap is all about. That’s the one thing.HAY: That’s poetry.

MASON: It is poetry and I have to acknowledge that and I can’t discount it because it is a way that kids are learning rhythm and rhyme and… but…

HAY: It is its own art form.

MASON: MmmmHmmm [laughs] yeah.

HAY: I am about to run out of tape here… let me just switch tapes.

TAPE 0005JTH_DV ENDS

START TAPE 0006JTH_DV

MASON: About an hour into an oral interview, Sheila Burton asked Millie Combs if she had any final words to say, she did, and talked another two hours because Bobby kept having to change, first he ran out of tape, then his battery ran down, but she was worth taping, so.

HAY: One thing I wanted to ask you… we have you up here in the balcony and we can see the way the chairs were painted around, behind you, so we can see, a sort of feeling of where the chairs used to be, and of course, it looks sort of dilapidated behind you, could you talk for a minute about just the balcony and maybe can you remember any different places where you sat, or what…

MASON: You know, we’re sitting here… this first aisle… I think this was my favorite aisle, I guess, if you’re facing the left hand aisle… my favorite one to come up, I don’t know why, but that was a good spot for me, right there. And maybe it was because you didn’t have to climb over folks to get there and it kind of gave you a good, maybe one or two seats up, that way you could get a good view of what was going on and if you were really interested in the movie, it really was a good spot to sit. I believe, that the night my mother and brother came and we watched “Love Me Tender” there weren’t a lot of folks in here, it wasn’t a crowded movie theatre, so we had our pick of seats, and I believe we sat right there. So, I don’t know, maybe that’s why I kind of remember that spot. I suppose I’ve sat all over this place. I never rally liked sitting on this front row, you know it wasn’t comfortable, I was short, and you know it wasn’t a good view of the screen and I thought sitting beyond, this, right here was better. I do remember that when folks had to get up and leave, and there was always a lot of activity in the movies, because half of us weren’t there to see the movie, but just be there and or to be seen. And I never was one that wanted to be seen, but I always like to see, and so that was a good spot there, too, because folks when they got up, generally they would have to go across there, so you knew your view was going to be blocked every now and then, but, you know, you got to see who was at the movies! So, but again, this was just a fun place to come. This was… I think when I… I can’t remember the first time I went to the Capital Theatre, I can’t even remember when it was integrated. But I just remember that whenever I went, I always went to the balcony. I didn’t have to. But I always went to the balcony. And I don’t think it was because I felt like, this is where they want me to be, it’s just a good place to sit, in the movies, so… honestly, I think we had the best view in the house. So there were doing us a favor… we probably should have expressed that back then and them maybe we would have been sitting on the floor. Getting the popcorn…. [laughing and making a throwing gesture].

HAY: That’s right. Well tell me about, tell me who came to the Grand Theatre, tell me about all of the different people who came.

MASON: Oh, gosh, every body came… The older guys and girls came, again, I don’t know who came on Friday and Saturday nights because I wasn’t allowed on Friday/Saturday nights, but I presume that that’s when the older, older being four and five years ahead of me, because they didn’t mess with us young kids, they didn’t want to be bothered with us. Particularly if they were in the movies and it was a date, they didn’t want young kids around, and that’s okay, because our parents didn’t want us out at those times anyway. So, generally when I came, it was kids my age. And I can remember coming here as early as seven or eight, maybe I came before then, but I just don’t remember back that far. On through high school. And you know, during those later years, during those high school years, generally when I would come it would be a Saturday or a Sunday. And again, I think there was an overlap period when we could go either to the Grand or the Capital I’m just not sure about that. Obviously when we got to the stage, when I got to the age when I could date, there weren’t very many movie excursions with the girls. But I really, but that’s when I was 17. My parents didn’t want it and it just didn’t happen before then. You know, up until that point when I came to the Grand Theatre, it was generally girls day out girls night out… we just had a ball. But again, it was sometimes to see the movie and sometimes to see who was at the movie. Who was out. Just some place that your parents felt comfortable for you to come so you took advantage of that.

HAY: Were there any other places you would go? Other sorts of places you would go to gather with your friends?

MASON: You know, there were a lot of house parties back then. Folks would open their, parents would open or let kids open their homes to parties. So every weekend, somebody was having a party. And they were really very mild things. You didn’t, we weren’t into drugs and then every now and then, there might be some beer sneaked in, but they were very innocent parties and fun. And parents knew where you were. I won’t say that they were chaperoned and that someone was sitting in the room, but they were safe places. I also remember that the American Legion used to have a dance every, just about every Saturday night for teenagers. The American Legion on Versailles Road. I don’t know who had it, but that’s where it was held. And sometimes with a live band. That was a very popular place to go. You had to pay to get in. They were integrated, the dances, they weren’t segregated at all. So that was a safe place that parents didn’t mind kids going to. There used to be a skating rink down at the Old Y. I never did learn to skate. Kids talked about going there but. The schools, used to have different recreational things that the kids could frequent. There was a community center. It was called the First Corinthian community center. During the summer, and Ms. Helen Holmes who was a teacher at Mayo-Underwood ran that and actually there is still a remnant of that left, it’s the South Frankfort Community Center that is in existence now, really started over here in North Frankfort in the bottom, in the 1950s, I guess. It’s a much different organization than it was then… but that was the genesis of it. It was something to give kids the opportunity to do something. Obviously we played a lot in the streets. The old Red Light Green Light and Mother May I and so those were the group games and you know, we had to make our recreation activities. We had to make them up. And we didn’t have a bad, we didn’t do a bad job doing that, I mean we would… marbles, marbles and jacks were big back then. And in fact, I’ve been going to yard sales every now and then, looking for some of my childhood relics. And so, last year, I picked up some marbles. Somebody had a jar of marbles, and I found a cap gun cause we used to play, a lot of the movies were westerns, and so we were big into cap guns back then. I can remember my Annie Oakley outfit for Chrsitmas, and guns and so I find caps and capguns and we had fun doing those kinds of things. I remember when I was doing the Community Memories Oral Histories, I interviewed a guy named Glen Jones and he talked about the Grand Theatre. I excerpted a portion of that for the book, but there’s an oral history on file at the History Center of his comments. But one of the things he said is that when they would go to the Grand Theatre, that whatever, what movie was playing that day, that’s what they played when they got home. So if it was a western, when they got home, they played Cowboys and Indians and I think we probably did the same thing.

HAY: Your so influenced by that.

MASON: Yes, because, I don’t know, you’re probably too young to remember how big westerns were. Not only in the movies, but on TV. Generally, in homes, you only had one TV, so you know, you watched, unlike today, you watched what the parents want to watch. The parents don’t watch what the kids want to watch. And Westerns were big.

HAY: What year did your family get its first television?

MASON: I think it was 1954. Something like that ’53 –’54. And I just remember the day it came. It was black and white, obviously, because back then, for color, what you did was paste a piece of cellophane with different colors on it, and that was your colored TV. I don’t know if in your community you’ve ever heard of that, but in my community, you’d go to these homes and I think green would be at the bottom, you know sometimes it would work out. Sometimes there would be a scene where the sky really was blue and sometimes you just had green faces. But people pasted that… so that was the color you got if you had Color TV. Black and White was perfect.

HAY: That’s really fascinating, like sheet of cellophane… very artistic too! [laughter]

MASON: Yeah, somebody made a mint selling that kind of stuff.

HAY: My parents were odd, we didn’t have a television, so I grew up in the 70s without…

MASON: without a TV.

HAY: We watched at our friends. Do you have any memories of when the Grand Theatre closed? Do you remember that? Did you have any thoughts at the time? Or impressions of downtown… downtown was really changing, going way down… urban renewal and the downtown decline.

MASON: I can’t remember what year exactly the Grand closed. I guess it closed around ’68 which would have been while I was in college and really, when I was just getting into my period of militancy. Just that, something I had to go through, so I’m thinking that perhaps, I probably had no qualms with the closing of the Grand. But I tell you what else was going on at that time that was… troublesome, and that we were in the midst of urban renewal, if I remember, well, I know we were. And they were tearing down you know some of the places that I grew up in. Even though I lived in North Frankfort, [she meant South] everything, a lot of things were over here, you know, socially, educationally, etc. that I had, the institutions that were part of my childhood were over here and they were being torn down and people were moving and you know, folks weren’t happy. The neighborhoods were, some were forming, some were splitting up and I remember folks thinking and I remember some of this because I talked to people during my oral histories about how they felt about the urban renewal process and they loved their homes, but they missed the community. So that was going on about the same time that the Grand was closing, so there were a lot of emotions. I think if I had focused on the fact that the Grand was closing, yeah, I probably would have been a little remorseful about it, but at the time, I could go to the Capital, so it wasn’t like I was missing out on anything or losing anything and by that time I had a car, so, you know, I could go to Lexington, well, I didn’t go to Lexington much, I didn’t like Lexington, but I could go, I could go, I wasn’t confined. I think it’s after you get to be a little bit older that you just start being a little more reflective about the importance of things, of institutions, of places, of people even in your life and how much they really meant. So, you know, I’m more probably, this is probably a bigger deal to me, just being here now, and reflecting on my good times, than back then when they actually closed the place. And it probably went unnoticed to me, I was probably looking for the next riot to support, you know! [laughing]

HAY: Yeah, so if I’d asked you these questions when you were 24 or 22, there’s no perspective… you were in the middle of it all.

MASON: I probably would have said you know, “that racist place ought to have been closed,” no I wouldn’t think that. [laughter]

HAY: Time gives perspective.

MASON: Oh it does. Yeah. And clarity to what was going on. And I understand what was going on.

HAY: The bigger picture.

MASON: The bigger picture and things were just a lot more complex then. I mean it was easy to look at things back then in a very simplistic state and think that this is wrong and this is GOING to change and I think now, you look back and you say, that was wrong and that had to change and change sometimes is a process. And when you’re young and caught up in it, change is not a process, change happens, it’s instant. Life teaches you that’s just not true!

HAY: And the way you learn that change can ease in rather than be slammed in. Sometimes you need the slamming, and other times you need the ease.

MASON: That’s true.

HAY: We touched on this already, but maybe again. The idea that buildings can hold positive or negative feelings and can represent an era, and I was just wondering whether there were any other downtown, we talked a little bit about the Y, were there any other buildings downtown that represent positive or negative, strong either way…

MASON: You know, I mention the Old Capitol, which just was a stopping point, almost on a daily basis, a stopping point. How many can look at Daniel Boone’s gun, you know, but we’d do it. But again, there was a that’s not a building that had a lot of meaning to me for what it really I should have been thinking, back then, now, I look at it in a different manner, but I still have that memory of stopping by there every day. You know, the two grocery stores, the two ten cent stores, I’m sorry, Newberry’s and Woolworths, they were almost side by side and you know, I just kind of remember it was exciting to go in there. You know, it was cluttered, things were in bins, side by side, multiple erasers and pencils, etc. and you’d pick one up. Things were generally ten cents but it was exciting! I was a kid, it was an outing! It was shopping. The churches that are here, there were three black churches that were downtown. One on Mero, that was First Corinthian and then St. John and First Baptist were both and are still on Clinton Street. And it didn’t matter what church you belonged to, those were your churches. So that the vacation bible schools, I was a Methodist, I grew up a member of St. John AME church. But I went to the Baptist Church, the school was really right down the street from those churches and when those churches would have revivals and particularly First Baptist there was not that big separation between school and church that there is now. And so the teachers would gather some of us and say, if you want to go revival tonight, meet us and we’d go as a group and really that’s where I accepted Christ in one of those revivals that Ms. Samuels had taken a group of students to. So those churches, even though I was a member of one, I had three churches down here. That I felt very much at home in. Again, with those three major churches and Mayo Underwood, this is where the black community came together because these were where are institutions were, even in the Bottom The Tiger Inn and some of the restaurants, because we weren’t allowed to eat in the restaurants on Main Street. So I don’t have a lot of memories of Mucci’s or you know some of those other restaurants that were here, because I never had a chance to eat in them.

HAY: What was the name of the one in the Bottom?

MASON: The Tiger Inn. And you know, Mayo-Underwood at one time, when it was a high school it had a cafeteria and in my later years there they did not. And so you had to get your lunch somewhere else. And Tiger Inn was replaced, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Ewing Atkins ran it. And he was a friend of my Dad’s, he was a friend of everybody’s but my Dad knew him from a club that they were in. Everybody knew everybody, so, I could go there and get lunch, and Mr. Atkins would get the money from my Dad later. You know, lunch on credit. The original credit card! [laughter]

HAY: so you wouldn’t normally pack a little brown bag lunch, or you would normally…

MASON: Sometimes. Sometimes, but basically it was more fun to run to the Tiger Inn… and get… he had the best hot dogs!

HAY: So everybody would do that?

MASON: A lot of folks would. A lot of the kids lived right around, near the school and they could go home.

HAY: A little too far for you to walk.

MASON: Yes, since I lived in South Frankfort. But you know, I mean the old train depot, I remember that. When it was a train depot. Because my grand dad worked on the railroad and I can just kind of remember coming down sometimes picking him up, my parents obviously, picking him up from work….

HAY: And he’d come in there?

MASON: Yeah, that would be, you know, he’d get off the train to get off at this. I can actually remember that. And I remember it also as a Greyhound Bus Station. And probably my more vivid memories are of it as a Greyhound bus station, because I was older. You know, other than the Market House, obviously was a, it was a grocery store, but we didn’t frequent the Market House that much because I lived in South Frankfort and where our current police station is is where the Kroger was. And where Pic Pac is now on Second Street I think there was a Winn Dixie or something there. So those, I remember more about downtown South Frankfort than down here, because the only time I actually got here were on my travels back and forth to school, or if I was coming to town with my parents or mother or aunts or something. South Frankfort I could roam, freely and not violate the “don’t go across the bridge” and there was a lot in South Frankfort. I remember the Second Street strip. You know, there was Bond’s Garage, my Dad worked there, Whitaker’s Garage, I’m sorry. But as you go down toward the Southern Hotel, I mean, I had relatives that worked there, so I remember the Southern Hotel and right beside was a big ice cream, where the liquor store is now, was an ice cream shop. And then of course there was the Kroger and right beside the Kroger was another 10 cent store. And I mean, even, folks talk about this part of Downtown Frankfort not being as vibrant as it was. Actually, Second Street isn’t either. It was filled with retail places.

HAY: And now it’s completely gone, or virtually.

MASON: Virtually gone.

HAY: The Lamp Shop. That’s a big change.

MASON: A big change. I forget what was at the Lamp Shop. But I believe there was another ice cream place right there where the Lamp Shop is. I believe that there was.

HAY: So I can see you, with all your little stopping points you could have.

MASON: Plus there was a man that used to stand on the corner of Second and Capitol Avenue with a peanut stand. He would roast peanuts and sell peanuts there. I’m allergic to nuts so I never bought the peanuts but I just remember that was a staple there.

HAY: So people would walk by, was he there for the kids? Walking home from school? For the state workers going to and from?

MASON: You know, I just remember him being there. It was almost like he was there all the time, but surely he wasn’t. So, not for any special occasion, it was just his spot. But Rebecca Ruth was right across the street, and not where it is now, but there’s a parking lot there now where Rebecca Ruth was, the original Rebecca Ruth, well at least original for my lifetime. And you know, there was a flower shop on the adjacent corner where Investor’s Heritage is. So, it would not have been unreasonable for that gentleman to have… that was just his spot!

HAY: And a lot of people coming and going? I was going to ask you when people first started talking about saving the Grand, what were you first thoughts. Or what was your….?

MASON: I didn’t have any negative thoughts about it. You know, I was kind of, I’m going to be a little frank here. I was almost like caught between a rock and a hard place. I supported the effort, mentally. Some good friends of mine were part of the effort. But there were two things going on. First I was, well, maybe I won’t go there… I was involved in a whole lot of activities, on a lot of boards, and just kind of overly taxed, so I knew I could not physically support this effort. I just didn’t have the capacity to do it. And I was in the mode of trying to cut back and was not being very successful with it. And, the other phenom that I sensed was happening, was maybe a rivalry developing between the effort to save the Grand Theatre and an organization that I was very much a part of and at one point was president of, and that was the Frankfort Arts Foundation. And I really thought there was a misunderstanding going on there. I thought there was an element of folks who over emphasized, over played what they saw as resentment from Frankfort Arts Foundation. I didn’t think there was any resentment there. I thought there was some need for communication, so I thought this so-called dispute was not really a dispute and not labeled by everyone as a dispute but in some corners it was considered a dispute. So that was kind of awkward for me, particularly during the point at which I became president of the Frankfort Arts Foundation. The Grand Theatre effort was already going, etc. And you know, I thought there were some statements made that were just kind of misinterpreted on both sides. So, I didn’t want my lack of time to be involved to the extent that I felt that I needed to be involved to be interpreted as being that I was caught up in the so called dispute that was going on. So I certainly support and have always supported this effort because, you know, I’ve been to other communities where I’ve seen these type of little theatres that really brought a lot of life into a community. And again, all my memories of the Grand Theatre are very positive. Because I don’t think about the era, I think, I was at the Grand Theatre, and I saw this movie and I was with this person, etc. so there was no reason for me not to feel very positively about this effort to Save The Grand. You know, we live in a small city and everybody's competing for funds and I do have to say that there were a time or two that I thought maybe Save The Grand was competing for some funds that I wanted for another organization, but you know, that’s just the way it is. So, that there were all these dynamics going on that seemed to pull me away from the Grand, but the only reason why I wasn’t here joining Save The Grand Committees was because I just didn’t have the time.

HAY: We’re all like that. But that’s very interesting and I wasn’t aware that you were involved with Frankfort Arts Foundation when I asked you that question. And isn’t it interesting how so often, just lack of communication…

MASON: I think that was totally it. Lack of communication. Because I think there were some things on both sides that were a little bit misunderstood and I won’t go into this on the tape. I think those are being worked through. And I’ve very pleased to see the Henry K. Leadingham Prose and Poetry event is going to be held here. It is good. Now, I have to say that I can’t think of a better place to hold it than where it being held at one time and that was at the Old Capitol.

HAY: I agree 100% I went to that several times!

MASON: And the ambience there is just overwhelming. But I think they can capture that here.

HAY: It’ll be different. There was an intimacy over there that isn’t anywhere!

MASON: That isn’t anywhere, but I think you know, it kind of lost some of this intimacy with other venues that they were tried. So I think, and you know, that’s where I’d love to see these… there are some events that cannot be held, that Frankfort Arts Foundation puts on, that cannot be held here, simply because they have to room for, in case everyone who bought a ticket shows up.

HAY: In which case Bradford Hall, we have Bradford Hall.

MASON: Or some other venues. I think the problem is that the Frankfort Arts Foundation, the way we sell tickets, you know, puts us in a mode of having to prepare for what probably isn’t going to happen, and that’s a full house, except for on given days, Nutcracker will always be overflowing. And you know you can, you have to use a larger space. It used to be frustrating to me to have a class act and be in Bradford Hall and it not be representative of what I thought the act deserved and to know that in a smaller, quaint place that it would be a great show. And by the way, I’ve been over to the Kentucky Theatre for some of those Woodstock [Woodsongs] things and you know, it’s just a great… I saw Tuck and Patti over there. And we had Tuck and Patti here in Frankfort a few years ago and you can’t ask for a better performance by two more world renowned artists and you know, it looked like only a handful of people there, only because of where we were.

HAY: Where did it take place?

MASON: It took place in Bradford Hall.

HAY: It looked so small.

MASON: It looked small, there were a decent number of folks there, but it looked so small.

HAY: That place has so many seats, what does it have?

MASON: A thousand, I believe. But yet, at the Kentucky Theatre when I saw them there, it was great! Because you could really get in to it. Because…

HAY: What I’ve noticed this year, the occupancy license has been here since January, so ten months, and it’s really been a big experiment with every… when we first started to have things go on here, we had no idea if anybody would show up. Little sort of test test test test test, that’s what this year has been all about. And what’s happened is, as the year has gone on, instead of people involved with the Grand coming up with ideas, ooooh let’s get, the puppet show from Cincinnati, that people here are coming with their programs, like Bluegrass Theatre Guild. The Grand Theatre is the venue, all the other creative ideas, is the way this will work… we’re holding out hands, saying, here’s a space, what do you want to do here?

MASON: Which is what a community theatre ought to be about? It ought to reflect the sense of the community in two ways, in what you want to see, and also what you want to do. HAY: So, Frankfort Arts is doing the Leadingham. Let’s try the Leadingham this year and we’ll see…

MASON: I hope that works out, I mean, it’s a double edged sword, I hope everybody that buys a ticket doesn’t show up. [laughter] But I hope it’s well attended. You know they have this great big artists party the Friday night before the book fair and I got to go. I remember leaving and I said, to get back here, do I have to write another book? And they said, Yes. And I haven’t been back!

HAY: Tell me about your book.

MASON: It’s called Community Memories and it’s and I’m just a corroborator on it. We did editing. Wynona Fletcher and I co-authored the book, but the book is a compilation, it started out with us asking folks to bring in photographs that they had kept in their private collections, just bring them in and let us see them. We took pictures of them. Actually, we did it for a project for Historic Frankfort. John Gray’s organization. And from that, what we did, they blew the pictures up and we had this big exhibit over at, in the Old Capitol, and we also did some oral history. And we had quotes, kind of blown up, and just a display, and it went over so well, and I said, we ought to do a book. I said that seriously, but you know, not seriously. So, we decided to test the waters. So, the book consists of these pictures that folks brought in that we took pictures of and gave them back to them, and oral histories. We did several oral histories and then we combined the two. We segmented the book into five different chapters, if you will. Education, Community, Religion, Workplace and something else… what have I left off? At any rate, each chapter, or each segment of life is, we wrote a three or four page text, just to set it up and then you see the pictures and the oral history quotes and so that’s why we’re editors, because actually, the folks’ memories wrote the book.

HAY: That’s a huge project!

MASON: Oh, it was, it took forever! It took forever. But with the help of the historical society and Jim Wallace and Mary Winter helped us with the photographs. Doug and Kim Lady helped us with the oral histories and you know, so, we felt more like editors than writers, because, again, the oral histories and the pictures tell the stories and its called Community Memories!

HAY: But you did it, you took the project to its full completion…

MASON: Yeah, it’s a publication!

HAY: …that’s great… and I know what effort that takes.

MASON: Oh, gosh.

HAY: I do not what effort that takes!

MASON: But, so, I’ve got to write another book to get to the book fair. You caught me at a year when I didn’t write a book and I’m not invited to the authors’ so I can come to your party!

HAY: Except, ours is the, let’s see, the Saturday, the Friday night is the authors’ party and that’s the night that Patricia Neale is here.

MASON: So your event is Saturday? [interruption]

HAY: Is there anything else you’d like to, any other comments or?

MASON: I don’t want to do a Millie Combs on you!

38:46 END OF INTERVIEW WITH SHEILA MASON

THIS TAPE CONTINUES WITH A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH CONNIE PARRISH

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