Entertainment in Swepsonville, North Carolina
For entertainment, the people of Swepsonville organized baseball teams, held community parties, and threw square dances. When they wanted other activities such as the movies, they went to Burlington.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Josephine Glenn, June 27, 1977. Interview H-0022. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- CLIFF KUHN:
-
What did people in Swepsonville do for entertainment in those days?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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They didn't do anything much. Went to the movies or something like that.
That had a community center there. Once in a while they'd have somebody
over there to entertain, or maybe have some kind of gathering over
there, or something up at Alexander Wilson School sometimes. And church
activities. That's all there was there. And they had a ball team.
Usually they had the juniors in softball, and then for several years
they had a men's baseball team.
- CLIFF KUHN:
-
Did they recruit the baseball players?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
-
Yes.
- CLIFF KUHN:
-
How did they do that?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
-
There was right many of the employees that had played in school, and
. And they built a real nice ball park down there
at one time. Had the bleachers and the lights and everything. It was
nice. I don't know what happened. I don't know whether they lost
interest or what, but they quit. But the smaller ones kept playing, and
they'd have softball and basketball sometimes, square dances once in a
while .
[Laughter]
- CLIFF KUHN:
-
Did you ever come to Burlington around that time, other than to go to
work?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
-
Oh, yes.
- CLIFF KUHN:
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What did people come to Burlington for?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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They came to Burlington to shop, go to the movies. There was no place
down there to shop other than little grocery stores there in the
country, and you just didn't buy all your groceries at a place like
that. You went to the chain stores or a bigger store to buy your
groceries.
- CLIFF KUHN:
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You never thought about moving to Burlington?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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No.
- CLIFF KUHN:
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Why was that?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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I don't know. We lived in Graham for a little while one time, during the
winter of '39 and '40, and we didn't like Graham.
- CLIFF KUHN:
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Why was that?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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It wasn't home.
[Laughter]
- CLIFF KUHN:
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During all this time, did you always have a garden?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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No, not always, but sometimes.
- CLIFF KUHN:
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Was there much communication between people who worked in the mill and
people who stayed in the country, the farmers?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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Yes.
- CLIFF KUHN:
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Were most of your friends farmers or mill workers?
- JOSEPHINE GLENN:
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I had friends in the country and there in the village, too. And the other
people did, too.
