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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Alice P. Evitt, July 18, 1979. Interview H-0162. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Mill town recreation

For fun, Evitt and other mill workers listened to records and the radio and went to baseball games.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Alice P. Evitt, July 18, 1979. Interview H-0162. 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

JIM LELOUDIS:
I just wanted to ask you about a few more things about life in the mill village. What type things did people do in their leisure? How did you entertain yourself after work?
ALICE P. EVITT:
Everybody had a radio or something. They'd play that. Play records-talk machine they'd call it then. We'd have a crowd to come in-just right around us-play the records, and they'd all enjoy them records. When I lived in the last house down there, I had one. This people lived on the front rows-boys and girls and all-they'd come in and play them records and enjoy. Didn't have television or nothing. Didn't have radio part of the time. It's come in then later. We used to have an old talk machine with an old big horn-called it "mornin' glory horn"-big old horn about. . . .
JIM LELOUDIS:
Did you listen to WBT here? Is that the radio station you listened to?
ALICE P. EVITT:
When I got the radio we did, yeah.
JIM LELOUDIS:
Did you have favorite shows or favorite entertainers on there that you remember?
ALICE P. EVITT:
We'd go to ball games a heap. He'd go there and sit there till midnight and look at ball games if they'd tie up, then get up at 4:30 and go to work. That's what we used to do! Grady Cole, then, was gettin' to put on the radio.
JIM LELOUDIS:
Broadcasting the games?
ALICE P. EVITT:
Um-hm. That's when I seen and knowed him from way back then in the 20's. He got killed the other day in a wreck. A man hit him from behind and killed him. We used to go to the ball game all the time. We'd enjoy that.
JIM LELOUDIS:
Were these ball teams that were organized in the mill, or the Charlotte teams?
ALICE P. EVITT:
No, the Charlotte. . . .
JIM LELOUDIS:
The Charlotte Hornets?
ALICE P. EVITT:
Un-huh. We went when New York and different ones would come through here. We'd go over there and see them. Everybody'd go. I didn't know much about ball games then. I didn't know nothin' about and I couldn't see no sense in it. My husband-we had a car-and he'd take a whole load of these from here. He'd take them. Some women'd, they'd want to go and some of the little girls. He'd take them over there to the ball game. He took Mrs. Askew, and one night she said, "Why don't you go with us?" I said, "I can't see no sense in that." I went, and she called everything as they done it and learnt me what it was. From then on, I was worse to go than they was [laughter]. I didn't understand it, and you didn't enjoy it. After somebody took pain enough to learn me, I loved it. We'd go at night and then get up and go to work. I'd a-done it lots of times. I couldn't do that now. But we enjoyed them games.