Naomi Trammel talks about entertainment in the mill village.

Audio Transcript

Allen Tullos

ALLEN TULLOS: When you-all were back at the Victor Mill in Greer, what kind of things would you do for entertainment or recreation? They had baseball—

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

They had just had ball games, you know, and box suppers, and things like that. It’s about all they had.

Allen Tullos

Do you remember any musicians in the community? Any people that played guitars or fiddles, or had dances in people’s houses?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I used to go to dances at Henry Greer’s, he was a real dancer. Henry Greer. We’d get up a gang, you know. Garvin Sellers, he was the manager of the ball team, and he’d get up crowd of girls, and we’d go to that dance. Well, if Mr. Gwin said I could go, I’d go. And if he felt that I shouldn’t go, he’d find out who was going. Well, he’d tell ‘em, and that’d be the last of it. And if he said I’d go, I’d go.

Allen Tullos

What would happen at a dance?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Well, they’d just dance, you know.

Allen Tullos

At somebody’s house.

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

At somebody’s house. That the only place they had, you know, then. They didn’t never go to the halls for dances.

Allen Tullos

And people would move the furniture out of the room?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Yeah. [laughter] In living room. Just clear it up, you know, and have a dance. We wouldn’t only go to Henry Greer’s, we’d go to other places too. If it was all right. But we’d all go in gangs.

Allen Tullos

Would there be a fiddle player, a guitar player, banjo?

Naomi Sizemore Trammel

Yeah. Yeah, fiddle player. Yeah, just ordinary music, you know, like country people have.