Moviegoing in Hickory, North Carolina
Sigmon remembers the owner of a movie theater in Hickory who used to send a free taxi to transport moviegoers. Sigmon went weekly with his father.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Murphy Yomen Sigmon, July 27, 1979. Interview H-0142. 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
Used to be a moving picture
show in there, before they put the office in there, and a barbershop and
a cafe. And when I was small and growing up, me and my brother, we lived
up here on Longview, and we'd walk down there to the moving
picture show. And my daddy worked at the Southern Desk then; I was just
six, seven, eight years old. P. D. Short run a taxi in town then, and
every Wednesday there was a continued picture on. I don't
know whether they've got them anymore or not. Every Wednesday
they'd have episodes of it, in fifteen episodes
or… And we'd go down there. P. D. Short would run
the little picture show and owned the taxi in Hickory. And when it would
be raining on Wednesday, he'd come up and get us and take us
to the show. He wouldn't charge us nothing for taxi fare, so
we wouldn't miss the show, you know. And it was Jack Hawksy
that played in that continued picture. My daddy and we'd go
every Wednesday night. It was me and my
brother—he's three years and a half older than
me—and my youngest sister, Carrie. She was just real small
then. Pretty nights, though, we'd walk down there, and next
morning we'd ask Mama how we got home. She'd say,
"Well, you walked," and we
wouldn't know nothing about it, me and my brother.
[laughter] We'd go to sleep in
the middle of the picture show. And we moved down to the mill hill when
daddy and my brother got a job down there.