JACK PALMER

TRANSCRIPT
(Completed June 19, 2009)

Interviewee: Jack Palmer

Interviewers: Emily Killian
Darlene Gravett

Interview Date: March 5, 2009

Location: Jack Palmer%u2019s Home
161 Columns Circle, Shelby, NC

Length: 59.57 minutes

EMILY KILLIAN: Your full name, date of birth and place of birth

JACK PALMER: Okay, my full name is William Jackson Palmer.

EK: And then your date of birth?

JP: May 8, 1918

EK: Very good, and your place of birth?

JP: Shelby, North Carolina

EK: Very good

DARLENE GRAVETT: Smile again.

JP: [Laugh] Okay.

DG: [picture pings] Okay, let's see if I didn%u2019t blur it, yeah, I think that one did it.

JP: That's the good thing about a digital camera. You look at it immediately.

DG: Yeah, isn%u2019t it great? Perfect.

JP: I bought a digital camera and used it about a month and I went back, went to

Charlotte and told them I wanted an old time camera that used film. [Laugh] I couldn't get used

to the darned thing.

DG: See, it turned out just perfect.

JP: Oh, that's not bad. [Laugh] That's something.

EK: Well, let's see--.

JP: How do you want me to start? Where do you--?

EK: Well, I'll probably ask a few questions--.

JP: O.K.

EK: And then I'll just let you cut loose, so that's kind of the plan, you know if you object

to a question and just don't feel like answering something that's fine, it's not going to hurt my

feelings. [Laugh] A lot of people say no over the course of the years. I guess we've already

established that you were born in Shelby. What were some of the circumstances and the things

going on at the time of your birth?

JP: Well, I don't quite remember the day I was born. I was just told it was May the

eighth,[laugh] but I was born across from the court square, on the corner of Marion and

Washington Street, which is now across from an empty lot, which is across from Central

Methodist Church. [cleared throat] My mother and father lived with her grandmother, and she--

well, it's hard to remember much from that time. The first thing I remember about it was that my

mother died when I was two and a half years old. I remember very little, only what I was told,

probably the reason I remember anything at all. I remember the big old house, big two-story

white wood frame house. The whole lot there all the way down DeKalb Street belonged to her%u2014

belonged to her grand--her father really. See, Durham, who was the first Clerk of Court in

Cleveland County back in 1840 or '41, there was some discussion as to when the county was

legally established; I guess you knew that. But then I remember going to the court square when

my mother pushed me in the carriage, I was told, over to my dad's place of business which was on

the corner of, on the south side of the square where they are remodeling the building now,

making apartments out of it upstairs. That's where the Leatherwood's place used to be. It was

the Parogan Furniture Company, which was a furniture company and also the funeral home

combined. The only thing I remember about Daddy is one time I was in the place running

around and went out to the back door, and I caught my foot in a big old rat trap. It kind of

squooshed my toe; that's about all I remember about it. And then when I got a little bit

older, I remember one day I was walking down the street as kids did back in those days. I

was about 4 years old then; my mother had already died, and I had a Buster Brown type haircut,

you know, long hair and all, and walking down the street somebody hollers, "Look at that little

girl!%u201D kidding me you know, and said "Little sissy.%u201D Was that G.P. Austell%u2019s Barber Shop

just across Dale Street on down further from Parogan? And I went into the barber shop and told

Mr. Austell I wanted my hair cut. So [laughing] he cut it off; Daddy didn't know it. And so

that's about all I remember about that. And the next thing I remember, we, Daddy married Ferris

Patterson from Patterson Springs, who was my stepmother, of course, and she raised me. And

really she was a mother to me because I never really knew my mother.

And when Daddy went on his honeymoon, they went up to Blowing Rock, and they

carried me along because they didn%u2019t want them to know they were newlyweds. So we got up to

the Flack Hotel at Blowing Rock, and the next morning we got up; Daddy and I were downstairs,

and he said, "You go call Ferris and tell her to come down." And I said, "What should I call her?%u201D

loud up on the staircase, see, and he said, "Well, whatever,%u201D and I hollered, "Aunt Ferris, come

on down!%u201D and, of course, it gave them away. And the reason I called her Aunt Ferris was

because down at Patterson Springs, where she was from, all her nieces and nephews--and I'd go

down and play with them--that's what they all called her.

But anyhow coming back to Shelby, we moved over to a rooming house on North

Morgan Street, right off of Sumter. Daddy and she lived there for awhile, and we ate over at Mrs.

Lineberger's house up on the corner of Sumter and Morgan Streets. Mrs. Lineberger ran a

boarding house there. And about the next thing is, on a few years later, we would move on

further down Morgan Street, a big house there that's across from what's now the nursing, what is

it? White Oak Manor or something, used to be White Oak. We lived there up %u2018till I was about

six, a little over six years old. In fact, in those days my mother was from Texas; my grandfather,

her father, was from Shelby, but her mother was from Houston, Texas, and when my mother died,

of course, I would go out there to visit them about every other summer. I remember riding out on

the train. Daddy would take me over to Gastonia and put me on the Pullman cart. And the boys

that worked the Pullman, a lot of them were Afro American, they call them today, from

Cleveland County. They knew Daddy and he'd give them five dollars to look after me till we got

to New Orleans, and help me cross the station in Atlanta and change trains and all, and anyhow

back to Shelby. The depression came along in '32 roughly and, of course, Daddy, along with a lot

of the rest of them, had a hard time, actually declared bankruptcy due to the lack of income. He

was owed more than he owed, but people wouldn%u2019t pay their bills. During that time I worked, I

went to school, I started Marion School, which is--went there in the second grade, because the

first grade was the old high school. You know where it was located, where the tennis courts are

over at what they call the middle school now? That's where the big high school was. You've

seen a picture of it, beautiful looking building, but went to first and second grades there, then

transferred to Marion when Daddy moved a little later. If you'll wait just a minute, my mouth is

getting so dry I can't talk--.

EK: That's all right, do you want to get some water?

JP: I take blood pressure medicine-- if you don't mind.

EK: Oh, yea, that's fine. [Cuts off recorder while getting water]

EK: There we go. I'll let you continue.

JP: Okay [cleared throat]. I think I failed to mention that in the Parogan Furniture

Company, their slogan was "Parogan on the Square" and when Mr. Lineberger and Mr. Spangler

and Daddy split the business up, Daddy took the funeral business part of it and moved over on

Marion Street actually for awhile, then later moved over what is, was behind Cleveland Savings

and Loan, where their parking lot is, what is now known as Centura Bank, I believe. But, so we

lived there, and we lived upstairs over the funeral home in a big two-story house also and, let's

see--

DG: Excuse me a minute, how do you spell "Parogan%u201D?

JP: P- A- R-- Paro-- P- A- R- O- G- A- N, I believe; is that not correct? Phew. It's getting

hot [Laugh] Okay, but while we were there at the funeral home right back of the row of

buildings across from the First Baptist Church, there was an A&P store over there, and I hung

around over there a little while and they gave me a job. And I worked over there in '32 on

Saturdays and Friday after--, and sometimes in the afternoons, just fooling around, and I made

seventy-five cents a day. Went to work at seven o'clock in the morning and worked until seven

o'clock that night whenever we closed up. And then when Roosevelt got into office they brought

up the child labor laws and all those things, and the minimum wage was established at twenty-

five cents an hour, and so they could work me only three hours a day and I made seventy-five

cents. I thought I really had it made then. Seventy-five cents for three hours of work, but I had to

hang around more than that. You didn't buy beans already sacked; I'd sack dried beans, weigh

them up in a pound in a pack, and rice, and packed sugar in one and two pound bags, and they

sold flour by the hundred, a hundred pound sack of flour and it was ninety-eight pounds instead

of a hundred pounds, and the flour sacks were made out of material that the ladies could take and

when they used the sugar, wash them and make skirts of them or underclothes really, rather more

than anything else. And they sold bacon by the slab, rather than by the cut, fat-back rather than

bacon. And I used to cut hooped cheese and weigh them up a pound to the pack. I got to where I

could cut a pound or two, and for a kid that's pretty good.

But anyhow I went on to school and stayed in Shelby High until 1934, and 1934 was the

year I would visit my grandmother. I went out there every other year at Easter and while I was

out there dad wrote me a letter. Back in those days you didn't pick up the phone and call; it was

too expensive, so they'd spend two cents or three cents to write you a letter, and he told me, said

Son, said they've had to cut the schools in North Carolina to eight months and the local units, if

they wanted to, could vote in monies or bond to have the extra month of school, but said Shelby

voted it down. So, instead of nine months they are only going to have an eight months school.

Said, %u201CWhy don't you stay out there your senior year and see if you can maybe get an education

or let you get in college? Your grandmother will let you live with her,%u201D and she agreed to it, of

course, and the school wasn't but about three blocks from her house, a big school. And I stayed

there my senior year and finished at San Jacinto High School in Houston. But in going to Texas,

here you only had to have sixteen units to graduate from high school, but when I got out there you

had to have twenty-one, and I was in a fix because I already had fourteen units and I was going to

coast through my senior year here. But I had to take Texas history, of course, and civics, which

they didn't require in Shelby. They should have, and I had to take two courses of algebra, no, a

course of algebra and another course of geometry which they didn't require here, and other

subjects, and anyhow all that worked out fine. And I stayed in Houston and finished the

University of Houston in 1939. But back to Shelby, then the war came along and I joined the

Army. Now for the next, 1946 I didn't come back to Shelby except to visit, so there's an area in

there of, from %u201934 to %u201845 that I was away from Shelby, and that time was spent in the Army in

other places.

EK: Now I heard that you were in the Cavalry?

JP: Yeah.

EK: Yeah. So how did that work?

JP: Well, while I was in Houston, Texas, there were three friends, two friends of mine

and a doctor who worked at the Methodist hospital, and we all were around the same age; the

doctor was a couple or so years older. But we decided to join the--he was a member of the Texas

National Guard--and so he talked us into joining. And I had been working in the fighting

company for about a, less than a year really, and we decided to join the National Guard in the

medical detachment. So I did, and it was a Cavalry Unit, the 124th Cavalry Regiment. And we

had horses; now we weren't mechanized. People don't realize that. But I was telling my son

about it one time, and he said, "Lord, Daddy, I didn't know you were in the Civil War!"
[Laughter] Anyhow, they activated us about six months or so after we joined and went to active

duty in El Paso, Texas. Stayed out there six months, and went back, came down to Brownsville

and stayed in Brownsville, Texas, for twelve months; that's when the war broke out. That's where

I was December 7. So knowing being in the Cavalry, we weren't going to be riding horses very

long, and they were going to put boots on us, to throw a rifle on our shoulders, so we all decided

to go to OCS and a couple of them got into, in that Medical Service Corp. And they were filled

up, so I joined, signed up to go to Quartermaster; I went to Quartermaster School in Camp Lee,

Virginia, got out there in '42 and went to Kingman, Arizona.

Stayed out there for over two and a half years, and we couldn't get out; they wouldn't

transfer us. We wanted to go over and fight, you know how a young buck is, and I didn't know

how fortunate I was. But anyhow, after the war I decided to sign up, and by that time I was a

Captain, and I was going to be Regular Army. I wasn't coming back to Shelby, but we got to

Travis Air Force Base, at Oakland, my father had a stroke, and I had enough points to get out, so

I rejected everything and was able to come back home and help them out at the funeral home.

And then, got married in '46, met my wife at Central Methodist Church. She was in the

choir and Preacher Hardin was our minister; Paul Hardin later became a bishop in the church.

And after service I went up and asked him, I said, "I understand that girl in the choir sitting in a

certain place is not married and I'd like to meet her.%u201D Now this was while I was home on leave,

so he introduced me to Louise Taylor, who was the first educational director at Central Methodist

Church, graduated from Greensboro College in Greensboro. And things were--.

Let's go back to the Depression; things were very tough during the Depression here, but I

wasn't old enough to really realize how bad it was. A lot of people in Shelby declared bankruptcy

in order to keep the creditors off of them, for the same reason they do today. Back in those days,

when you filed for bankruptcy, you could only keep a very small amount of money; I believe it

was about five hundred dollars. And you'd lose your house, lost everything; you don't do that

now. But Daddy had a nice house out in Belvedere around where, you know where Dr. Ferrell,

where he lives? Anyhow, it's a large two-story house. It's into Belvedere on the right just before

you get to Belmont, which goes all over toward the old Catholic church.[cleared throat] But we

lived out there where there used to be a big rock quarry. I don't know whether you're familiar

with where that is or not? Well, it's on the corner of Graham, let's see, Graham Street and Kings

Road. Do you know where they come together at the bottom of the hill at the Star office?

EK: Yeah.

JP: Over in there on your right.

EK: Oh okay, over there where the little park is now.

JP: Back of the park.

EK: Okay.

JP: And off of Kings Road. You can't see it because it's all grown up. But they'd blast the

rock; we'd be out playing and they'd always blow a whistle when they blasted and we'd all jump

behind a tree, and you could hear the rocks and pebbles would fall a half a mile around, you

know, fell around, but you know kids; it didn't bother us. We had a big time. Then on going

down further toward Marion School there used to be a little mica mine in there, and we'd go

down and play in that. It wasn't very deep; it was a surface type thing more or less.

And off of Graham Street extension--D.A. Beam and Company--they hauled their bones

there from the laboratory; they called it the slaughter house. And they'd stack the bones, and then

they'd have those ground up and make bone meal out of it. But when the wind was blowing the

wrong way, you could smell some of those fresh bones pretty well [laughter] where we lived

along in through there. And we'd go from there over to what is now Peach Street and in that area,

and there was nothing there but one big old house, and it's the house where, you know where

Jim Taylor lives, on the end of Peach Street? Before you get to Winter Drive? But, it's a white

house right in that area, and there was only one in that whole section, and we had ponies and

they had horses out there in the big stable back of where we lived, which was a community

stable. We'd ride our ponies down to Kings Road and ford the creek; there wasn't a road going

over so you had to ford that creek. And we'd ride up all through there, and they had a donkey in

their yard and we couldn't slip up on the Wilson house because that donkey would begin

braying, [laugh] and they'd hear us; they'd hear us coming, you know. Of course, they were all

friends but we all had a big time. We'd go on over and there was a creek; we'd go down in the

creek and we were adventurous and we made out we were exploring and all that. It had big

banks, and we'd crawl the banks. It was a lot of white clay in them; we'd carve in those and catch

little goldfish down in the creek, and that's how we entertained ourselves mostly.

But [cleared throat] other than that in Shelby, you know all the government,

branches of county government were in what is now, they call the museum. Everything,

and now, you know, we have several buildings full of governmental units, but the Register of

Deeds was in one corner, Treasury was in the other; and there were four units downstairs and

upstairs the courtrooms and, of course, I didn't know much about all of that back in those days.

But later on came back, like I say, we got married and had our family, and I decided to run

for the General Assembly in 1958 when one of the members that'd been in there for quite a

while retired , B. T. Falls, Jr. decided not to run again. So I went and talked to him and asked

him about maybe if I could run and he said, "You go ahead, I'll help you," so I did and won the

election, served for three terms and then stayed out of politics for a while, and came back and

decided that I'd run for county commissioner, and did, and served for twelve years and the

chairman for ten years, which I enjoyed very much. It really was; it was a lot easier than it is

today. The boys have a lot tougher time than we did.

EK: What were some of the biggest issues that you can remember?

JP: The same issue that we've had for years, taxes, [laughter] which we'll always have I

imagine. It got so bad [cleared throat] my last term, that they, there were three of us on that were

up for election, Coleman Goforth, Hugh Dover, and myself, and they came out with what they

called an ACT group. I've forgotten what it's an acronym for--Action against County Taxes or

something like that. And they got up and ran against us, and they had meetings and all, and we

had meetings and had hearings on it--about we had to raise the taxes; that's all it was to it to

meet our obligations. We had meetings down in what is now the converted--now it's called the

courthouse; back then it was the jail and everything else moved in there but the courthouse.

[coughed] Excuse me. [took a sip of water] We had a meeting in there, and then the room was

full, I mean jam-packed, and they were very upset, and one of the fellows wanted to have the

police stand by, and I told him I didn't want to see a police officer around there in uniform. You

know that just causes problems when they see that. And so we held the meeting, and I told

everybody, "You'll have two minutes if anyone wants to speak. At the end of two minutes,

we'll cut you off." And so most of them did, and it kind of calmed down. When they thought we

weren't going to let them say anything, well that's bad, so we just let them have their say and

they did. Then they ran three people against us, and there were a lot of write-ins, more than we

anticipated, of course. When the election came up in the next four years [cleared throat] and

they--just a minute, let me see--oh, the write-ins were close and they protested to the local

election board because they couldn't read part of them or couldn't figure them out. And they ruled

in our favor, and then they protested [to] the State Board of Elections, and they came in to do

some counting, and I told them, and the other boys agreed, I said, "You go ahead and count every

vote on there; if you can't figure out who they meant for it to be, let it vote for them; we'll just see

how it comes out." But in the long run we won, and won by not a great deal, but we won by a

good amount. And we finished our four years and that was the last time I've been--I served

three terms in General Assembly and three terms as a county commissioner. And I think that's

long enough. You know, you get in too long and we have some now, I'm not naming anyone,

but they get in and they found them a home, I think, and stay in too long, and I think you need

to let other people have a chance at it, you know, but anyhow, you ask me some questions; I

ramble and forget.

EK: You're doing great.

JP: My wife says I do a good job at that; she said if you didn't slow me down, I'd talk too

much.

EK: No, you're doing good. In terms of politics, have things, things back then, I mean,

were elections pretty heated other than that one or I mean, what was it like on the campaign

trail, if you will?

JP: Well my first campaign I'd never run for an office and I didn't know what to do, and

so, also I had to work, and I'd get out when we weren't busy and go to the county. Back in the

fifties you had a lot of country stores, and I'd go to every country store in the county, go in and

talk to the people and all; and a lot of them, most of them, we ran, incidentally we were

Democrats, all of us were. Republicans were a scarcity back then around here. And, I hear you

laughing--[laughter in background]--that's the truth, but going to these country stores, that's where

everyone gathered and so you went. I knew most of them really, except I didn't realize how

large the county was until I started out politicking. I'd never been up way in the north end of the

county; I'd been up there, but not all the way up. I'd been to Casar and Dirty Ankle, and I learned

a lot of places, way on up towards South Mountain. Up in there, any little country store, if I'd see

somebody on the porch, or something I'd drop off, and I had cards. A friend of mine printed my

cards for me, and I paid the filing fee, and a man sent me a check for seventy-five dollars, and

that's the only money I had to spend. That's all I spent. And I ran a few ads in the Star; I spent

less than four hundred, less than four hundred dollars running. We didn't put out signs and all

that like they do today. And that happened and I won, and I think there were ten or

fifteen running for county commissioner and I was the only runner that did not have to run in a

run-off; the other two did.

And it wasn't only me, my daddy and family obviously have lived in

this area all their life. They started in Rutherfordton, up around Polkville, and my great-

grandfather was Dr. B.J. Palmer and he was respected and his sons were and all the rest of

them, so I was well known through my family--you know, the name, if anything. [cough] Daddy

was Jack Palmer and I was Jack Palmer, Junior. Even though I wasn't a junior, Mother said they

always messed up by naming me William Jackson, and Daddy was Valentine Jackson, and it

ruined the rest of the boys%u2019 names for later on. [laughing] But we didn't have any heated--one

year we did have some--that same year there were some fellows on the commission that I didn't

think were doing a job; they were fussing among each other. There was two on one side and

three on the other and I just thought the county ought to come closer together and the

commissioners should. You don't always vote together and you agree to disagree. But you can

disagree in a manner to where you don't fuss and all and where it comes out in the paper or

something. [sipped water] And they say things they really didn't probably mean to say, but it was

misinterpreted a lot of times. But we met and, talk about what, how was politics? You know

where we met, the county commissioners? You've probably never been in the room. Have you

ever been in the present museum? Well, you should go in there. You got the first floor and the

second floor, and you've got a third one up there, and it was so small and everybody--they all

smoked back then; they had to put in a fan in the window to draw the smoke out. And you could

seat the five commissioners and the clerk of court, and the manager when they had one and then

about three people could come in at one time. The others had to sit out on the landing, and if they

wanted to say something to the commissioners, and you'd leave the door open so you could hear,

that's how small it was. Well, we met up there until this courthouse was built, and we moved

down there, had so much room we didn't know what to do hardly. But, and politics wasn't bad, I

enjoyed it; I thoroughly enjoyed my term in the General Assembly and enjoyed my time with the

county commissioners. In the General Assembly I was the last group that met in the capital

building, and the first group that met in the new legislative building. And that's the reason how I

got a hold of that chair.

EK: That's incredible. So you didn't have any political experience at all before you ran for

the General Assembly?

JP: No.

EK: You just said, %u201CThis is what I want to do,%u201D or how did that come about?

JP: I thought I wanted to do that, sure. Well, when Buzz announced he wasn't going to

run again, I just started to think about it and talked to a few people. I went up and talked to

him, and of course talked to my wife and my mother, and my father had died then; he died when

he was sixty-three years old. And they said go ahead and so I did. We were very fortunate to

win. We got nine, let's see we got six dollars a day, and once a week travel time back and forth

from Raleigh. And that six dollars was for a hotel and meals, and now they get a salary. We didn't

know what a salary was, and they went up to nine dollars a day on us, the '63 session, and the

hotel went up to nine dollars, so we decided not--and had to pay three, seven days a week so

we decided to go to another place. So the three of us that went out to what's the Velvet Cloak in

Raleigh and made a deal with them. They said "Well you can stay here for the nine dollars a

day. We'll only charge you for the days you are here; we can't guarantee you the same room,"

but you know we had the same room there all the time. On the ground floor [cough] and the

ones that went out there was--see myself, and Jimmy Greene, who was later lieutenant

governor, and Lacey Thornburg, who is now a federal judge up around Jackson County. And just

a fellow born in Lincolnton, we just decided to pal around together, back then. The Republicans

today, and not throwing off on the Republicans, but I told some of the Republicans, I'm good

friends of them, Tim Moore and that crowd. But I said, "We never did have any trouble with

Republicans down here,%u201D I said. "When we got ready to, when something passed, well we all

worked together and got it done.%u201D They said, %u201CHow did you do it?%u201D I said, "Well, Lord, we didn't

have but twelve Republicans, the rest of us were Democrats!" [laughter]

%u201DY%u2019all sat on the back row and we didn't ask you anything but we went ahead and did

what we wanted to.%u201D And now you know it's split pretty well, and at the federal level it%u2019s split so

much, they vote on party lines all the time, which I don't agree with, but they have to do it I guess

to stay in the good graces. The other party would outlaw them if they didn't. Ask me something

else now; keep me on the track.

EK: What are some of the things that make you proud in the community?

JP: Of Cleveland County?

EK: Uh-huh.

JP: Well what makes me proud today is the way that they are working [clears throat]

together. You know we have some people who don't agree with Destination Cleveland County's

having the theatre, spending that money, particularly turning the old courthouse into the Earl

Scruggs Museum. That really, honestly, rubbed some of them the wrong way. But I admire those

that have gotten into it and taken this upon themselves, and we really have some outstanding

people working on it, several of them. If it weren't for them, that courthouse would still be

sitting up there, nothing happening to it. A lot of people objecting to what is being done have

never been all over that courthouse to look at it, and they think it's a beautiful building, and it

does look pretty good outside, but it's only a shell. It's in terrible shape inside, and actually it's--

the top of it is in bad shape also. It's dangerous really in a way, and it can be made into a

beautiful, a beautiful thing, I think. And it will be some of the museum in there; I've been

assured of that, and that was one my main goals in staying with it, is to be sure that part of that

museum is exhibited in that building. And also if the economy wasn't so bad, we could get a

building close to it and move that museum in it. And I know the building that I'd like for them

to be able to get, but the county just doesn't have the money now. And we've got a lot of

exhibits; we%u2019ve got a lot of beautiful things. We%u2019ve got a lot of stuff that you could consider junk

maybe, but they've still, they've catalogued every bit of it and they%u2019re going to save it, as you

well know. But I think the cooperation of the majority of the people is what's going to help

that part of it.

Then, our county--[clears throat]--even though we haven't grown much, it's hard to

say why we haven't because we have some of the best people in the county as folks, as workers

of any. That's been proven by any industry that's moved in here; they all brag about their

employees. The majority of our employees do not want to be union members and the majority

of them want to work and give a good day's work for a good day's pay, and if they're treated

right, they are great employees, both black and white. We also have a lot of Hispanics in the

community, I understand now, more than I realized really; and they're good workers, very good

workers. Those that are illegal, though, I think need to become legal or move back, but you

know good and well some of our people wouldn't do the work that they do and work as hard as

they do, so there are pros and cons on that.

We have a good education system; I'm proud of the educational system, and I'm so happy

they've combined and have one system, but I wish they'd do away with some of the administrative

buildings they have and get down to the basics. And I don't know why it takes a lot of paper

work in anything, more so than I think is necessary. Of course, when I was in, on the county

commissioners, the school board would have to--members would appear before us and ask for

monies--and the boys on finance would inform us as to what they were asking, because we

couldn't review those requests as closely as they could and they%u2019d tip us off to some of the things.

And what used to irk me is that they'd have a school up at Fallston that the roof was leaking and a

bathroom that you could hardly use, yet they wanted to do something fancy down at another

school, not naming any; but one time they wanted to build a track down at one of the high

schools and pave it, and they put in the budget for the track, and have pom-poms for the

cheerleaders and all that. And they didn't know how I found out, but I was tipped off to all that,

and so I asked them about it and I told them, I said, "We%u2019re not going to give you the money for

that.%u201D So we cut it and I knew all along that they were going to do that anyhow; they'd use the

money for somewhere else, but anyhow we took some money away from them, those things that

we didn't think were necessary.

EK: Are there any places in Cleveland County that have special meaning to you?

JP: Well, my church is about the main building I can think of [coughed] offhand; that's

Central Methodist Church. I do remember we lived, when we lived across the street and we

stayed there even after my mother died for awhile and when we moved across from the, where

the Methodist Church was, and that was on the other corner of Marion Street where Gragg &

Gragg is now; you know where I'm speaking of, the old bank building? I remember the old

school, the Sunday School class, we all marched over in 1930, 1924 I believe, from there over to

the new church. I remember that. Now we didn't live there; we had moved over on Morgan

Street by that time. [drank sip of water and set glass down] But that church, and then, of course,

the old home place would have meant something to me, but it is no longer. My grandfather sold

the property, the whole block, to B.T. Falls, the father of the man I replaced in the General

Assembly really.

EK: Tell me a little bit about just how the mortuary business worked when you

were younger and how it's changed over time.

JP: Well, when I went in--came back to go in with my father and to help out, and he

died--my mother and I ran it for a long time, and we were in the ambulance business also, which

was a losing proposition. But it was a way of advertising kind of, and we'd answer the wrecks

and handle all of it. There were three funeral homes in Shelby later; at that time there was only

two, Lutz-Austell and Palmer, and then there was Clay--another funeral home, Clay Barnette,

Lutz-Austell and Palmer Mortuary. And we handled all the wrecks and all the ambulance calls in

the Shelby area and all the way up into Lattimore and Boiling Springs and everywhere. And how

in the world we did it I don't know because, now, we didn't go out every time somebody

scratched their finger or something either, and now I think they do. But that was difficult and

we'd have to get up in the middle of the night and make the ambulance calls. I'd take the

ambulance home with me. I'd take it to our bridge club, or when we'd go out and play and stuff.

You know if I got a call, one of the fellows at the club would help me go out and make an

ambulance call while the rest of them stayed there. [Laughing] It was entirely different, that part

of it was; other than that, the funeral business is the same today. I think people are, well, it's kind

of hard to say, they're a little more, I guess, modern in the funeral business than they were back

then as far as the families were concerned. A lot of the families would get very emotional and

show it more at funerals back then than they do today. We would open the caskets in the church,

sometimes after the service was over. We did after the service was over to let the family go up

and view for the last time. And we'd have a time with some of them; we always carried smelling

salts with us and stayed right close up. [cough] There would always be at least three of us on the

funeral, and you'd have one man at the head and one man at the foot, and then I'd be standing

there so I could watch the family and grab hold of one of them when they fainted. And I've had

people faint; they'd fall down and they'd raise up and look out of one eye to see if somebody was

watching them. [clears throat] And we'd give them some smelling salts and bring them to real

quick [laugh], and we've had them to say, "Oh, let me crawl in the casket with him,%u201D and stuff like

that, and I've actually had some of them to try to do that really. But you had to hold on; they'd

turn the casket over, and that'd be bad for us and them too. But people don't do that as much as

they used to. I've been out of the business for a while; when I got out, I sold all of it, the land and

everything else on a trade with the boy that had been working with me for thirty-five years. I

gave him part of it and gave him twenty-five percent interest in the business some years ago.

Then we'd saved up a bunch of cash, and I took the cash and gave him the property and the

building and all.

Used to embalm. Talking about embalming, back years ago we didn't embalm

everybody, and you did it in the home when they did embalm. I never was an embalmer; I

learned the business by being in it. I never had any formal schooling in it, and now they have to

go to school and so much schooling and all that, but I never did embalm. You had--supposed to

be licensed to embalm and we never, I never tried it. But, they'd go out in the home and you

had to take your embalming equipment, and you had to take your jugs to hold the blood;

you took the blood out of the body and replaced it with the fluid. And I'd get out in the homes; a

lot of people would want to come in, and a few of the men would want to watch it. They'd be in

the way of the embalmer and Mr. Gold, who was our embalmer back what I remember at that

time, we'd have a cavity fluid that'd had an awful lot of formaldehyde in it and so he'd tell me,

"Jack, pour some formaldehyde on the cotton, put it behind your back.%u201D You'd have rubber

gloves on. He said, "Just kinda walk around the room a little bit,%u201D and the first thing you'd know

it'd start burning their eyes, and they'd all say, "Well, I think I'm going to get out of here!" And

the first thing you know they'd leave and we'd put the cotton in a bottle and open the windows

and let that stuff out, because it does--it did burn your eyes, pretty strong stuff. [laughing] That's

how we'd clear the room a lot of times, but you'd have to do all that work, and I never will forget

the last one we had didn't want to be embalmed, and I went out and we carried the casket with us.

I had to go shave the man, a little house, it was rather dilapidated and all, but we--Daddy would

stand there and fan and keep the flies off of me while I was shaving him, and we dressed him and

put him in the casket and that was the last one. I remember where the house was. But from then

on, we'd always bring the bodies back to the funeral home and embalm them. We did most of

them back then, but you also used to carry the caskets in the house a lot. In fact, most of them did

for a long, long time; then they gradually got to letting you leave it at the funeral home. Now, the

first cremation I ever had was, I remember it, it was in Shelby, of course; he was the manager of

one of our, what was the big department store back then. The crematory was, you had to go either

to Duke University at the medical school, or to Winston-Salem, to Bowman Gray School of

Medicine. And that was the only two in the state to my knowledge back then, and all, it was just

unheard of really, but now it's done quite often.

DG: What year did you retire?

JP: '63 I believe. Patsy told me this morning. I'd forgotten. [laugh] [pause] I should

have retired earlier, really, I'm serious. I more or less had retired before then, because I got to

where the last couple of years I just would maybe help on a funeral and go up there when I was

needed. And we did a lot of traveling, wished I could have done more; I'd love to now, but I'm

getting too old to be going out of town too much.

EK: Now I know, this question really doesn't have a whole lot to do with anything else

we've talked about, but sports in Cleveland County has had a pretty rich tradition; football is big

and baseball has always been big. Were you involved in any kind of Cleveland County sports?

JP: I remember, but no, I was not involved in sports, I never was very athletic. I was in

the band. Back when I was in school, I actually joined the high school band when I was in the

fifth grade. They recruited, and we thought we knew what we were doing, but we weren't very

good, but there was several boys in Shelby, quite a few. I have a picture of the band in1929;

those on the front row, Will Harry and myself, and Buddy Young and [cough] a bunch of those

fellows. And we were involved in the sports because we would go and play for them, and the big

sport back then, that I remember, was baseball. Bigger than football and basketball. We had a tin

can, which they called it a tin can because it was a tin building; you know where the baseball field

is in the back of the--they call it the middle school now--that field there next to the cemetery?

Well it was a big gymnasium there that was made out of tin. I don't think I ever went to but one or

two basketball games; basketball really wasn't very big and football was pretty big, but it was

always out in the, back there was where they played football also, and baseball too, later 'till they

tore the tin can down. But I remember Daddy telling me about the football; they would recruit

boys all over the county to come and play football for Shelby High. The county schools didn't

have football. They didn't have buses so the men in town would load their cars up and take them

to Hickory or wherever they were going to play. And one of them, I remember, broke his leg

one time and Daddy said they put him in the back of the car and brought him home and took him

to Shelby Hospital, or the local hospital; I don't think it was even the Shelby Hospital because

that wasn't built until about '23. We won the state, I say we, Shelby won the state championship

and went to Raleigh to play for it, and they chartered a train; the train went and the band all went,

and we all had a big time going there and playing, but that was back, gosh that was before the

Depression, I think, so you can imagine how old I was.

EK: What instrument did you play?

JP: It's the trumpet.

EK: How are we doing on time?

DG: Oh let's see, we don't want to keep you too long. We need to be winding up in a

little bit.

JP: Sure.

DG: It's about five %u2018till four.

EK: Okay. All right. Well really, I only have one more question, and then if you want to

talk about anything else that's fine. How would you like to be remembered?

JP: Well, I'd like to be remembered for what I think was my straight-forwardness and

my honesty and my love of people. That's it. As a matter of fact, I'll tell you my wife's writing

my obituary. She just finished it, and she's doing the rewriting now, and she's gone to visit a

friend over at the nursing--over to the rest home over here right now.

EK: Does she not think she's jumping the gun a little?

JP: Huh?

EK: Is she not jumping the gun a little?

JP: Well, [laughing] she told her daughter about it and her daughter--this is my second

wife, Patsy--my first wife died of cancer back in '72. No, I'm sorry. '76. And her daughter said,

"That's morbid, Mother, what are you doing that for?" But you know, being in the funeral

business, I know it; I've always encouraged people to do that because I've seen people come in,

and they had no idea what the family wanted; they didn't know whether, even some of

them didn't know where they wanted to be buried, whether they wanted a church service,

graveside service, or no service. I encourage people to go and even pick out their caskets, and we

had a lot of people that would do that, but some people cannot even think of it. But it's inevitable.

Some people wouldn't even buy a cemetery lot. But I had one man, an attorney in Shelby that,

he told me, he came by here one day and said, "Jack, not here, but my funeral.%u201D He said, %u201CJack, I

want for you to ride with me out to Cleveland Memorial Park; I want you to see my marker I

put up." So, we went out and looked at it, and he said, " I'm so and so, and so and so, an

attorney, etc., etc., a member of the Episcopal church of the South, a Methodist Episcopal

Church of the South.%u201D I said, "We hadn't been the South in quite a while!%u201D He said, "Well, I was

a member of the church of the Episcopal, the Methodist Church of the Episcopal South." I'll get

it straight in a minute; %u201Cthe Methodist Episcopal Church of the South%u201D; well, that's what we used

to be, and he was the old school and his daddy, I think, was a minister. Mr. Charlie had his

bronze plaque already made out with all that on it. But a lot of people won't buy their tomb

stones, but a lot of people do. You'll go out to the cemetery, and you'll find a lot of them with

the first name on their marker with their birth date but not their date of death, of course. And then

that's done later if it's a cut-in type. Most people will, but a lot of people wouldn't dare do that.

They think that's bringing it on, but it doesn't. And I'm fixing to have some serious surgery next

week and that's one reason that got us to think about it.

DG: What kind of surgery, can you say?

JP: An aneurism.

DG: Wow.

JP: Oh yeah. At my age, it's--

DG: Risky.

JP: Yeah, it is risky.

DG: Oh dear, I'm sorry.

JP: Yeah, I'm going in the morning over to the hospital for a heart catheterization before

I go to Charlotte Tuesday, next Tuesday; just if the catheterization doesn't turn out good he's

probably not going to let me go have it done.

EK: We definitely wish you the best.

JP: Well thank you. Thank you. Those things, you know I've had a great life, really,

wonderful. Had two beautiful wives, two good wives.

DG: How many children do you have?

JP: I only actually had one child, my daughter; then we adopted a boy. He was a baby.

He was about six to eight weeks old, and now he's forty-seven and about six-feet five, six-feet

four, excuse me. [laughing] A big husky fellow you know and all.

DG: Do they both live here in Shelby?

JP: Yes, they do. Ellen, do you know Ellen Palmer?

DG: Ellen Palmer. Boy that name sounds familiar.

EK: It does, doesn't it?

JP: She lives back up of the post office, in what's called Patton Oaks, back in there.

EK: That's where my boss lives.

JP: Who?

EK: My boss lives down there.

JP: Yeah, the editor! Well, she lives on up above him in that little dead end, toward

DeKalb Street.

EK: Okay.

DG: And what about your son?

JP: Carl, he and his wife split up. They lived over on the point on the lake, Moss Lake,

and they split up, divorced. And he bought him some land up here in Polkville, toward Polkville,

Union School, do y'all know where Union School is? Back of it, back up there. He bought forty-

five acres up there and he has a log house on it, one of these modern type log houses. It was

kind of run down and really, and he's fixed it up and lives up there on it by himself, seems to be

happy with it.

EK: Sounds lovely.

DG: Yeah it does, doesn't it?

JP: He's got deer up there around him, turkeys, dogs. He knows about as much about

Farming as I do. And I know more than that--he does. [laughing] But he's enjoying it, he's not

trying to farm.

DG: Yeah.

JP: Yeah. But he has one daughter, and she lives in Greensboro; she's going to school

down there now.

DG: We have a proper word form here that you see what's going to happen--do we even

want to turn that off now or do you have something you want to say?

EK: No, that was everything; that was everything I had prepared to say.

DG: Very interesting. Very interesting. We don't need it on for this. [cut recorder off]

END OF INTERVIEW

[Mr. Palmer started speaking again][recorder cut back on]

JP: Cut and go back to what is now the Marion Mall, and there was an ice plant, damn, I

left all that out, didn't I?

DG: That's all right, we'll come back again! [laughter]

JP: There was an ice plant and then next to the ice plant was the Blue Ridge ice cream

place, and Mr. Mull had to--he took the Star and the ice plant did too, and I'd get a

watermelon slice every once in a while from the ice plant, and then go on to Mr. Mull's and he

had the best sandwiches, you know the chocolate cake with a big slice of--.

DG: Ice cream sandwiches.

JP: And they'd make mistakes sometimes and get too much ice cream in them, so they'd

be seconds, so he'd say, "Jack, go back there in the freezer and pick you out one." And they

were a nickel--

DG: Wow!

JP: So I'd get a big one, usually the biggest one I could find! [laughing]

DG: Did you ever eat snow cream?

JP: Ma%u2019am?

DG: Did you ever eat snow cream?

JP: Oh gosh, yeah, we'd make snow cream.

DG: We've interviewed Ladley Burn; I'm sure you know Ladley Burn, and we got the

story of the snow cream, you know, the snow cream and--.

JP: That they sell.

DG: Yeah. That they sell.

JP: Boy, that was different than what we used to make.

DG: Was that right? Yeah, well--.

JP: We'd go out and get, get--ice cream--.

DG: He patented it, had it registered--.

JP: Well, that was different, that had milk in it; I mean not milk, but cream

and-- we'd go out and scrape up the snow. And put vanilla in it and sugar--.

DG: We used to do that when I was little--.

EK: Yeah, me too.

JP: Ah, well good.

DG: Yeah, yeah it was great.

JP: Well, see I'm a retired Army man--.

DG: So, oh, you were in long enough to retire? Did you stay in the reserves?

JP: Yes. Retired Colonel, retired L.C.

DG: That's what my husband retired as--yeah.

JP: Well, good, good, yeah. Well you've got the-- y'all have Tri-Care? [recorder off]

Transcribed by Betsy Beason