Oral History with Julius McKay

              Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
Oral History with Julius McKay
Interviewee:
McKay, Julius Walker, 1923-
Interviewer:
Benson, Sarah Shaw
Copp, Roberta
Date:
May 23, 1996
Location:
1431 Assembly Street
Columbia, S.C. 29201
Identifier:
ohmckay, ohmckayt
Rights:
Digital recording copyright 2016, Richland Library. All rights reserved. For more information contact Richland Library, Columbia, SC 29201.
Description:
Julius “J” Walker McKay is a lawyer, the former Chairman of Richland County Council, the former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Richland County Public Library, and was also active in numerous other civic organizations. In this interview, he discusses growing up in the University neighborhood of Columbia, his work with Richland County Public Library director C. David Warren in expanding the public library system, and the design and construction of the Main Library.Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
Oral History with Julius McKay, May 23, 1996
Page 2
LOG:
00:14/p.3
McKay states that he was born in 1923 on Greene Street and recalls the Five Points area being woods and swamp.
00:56/p.3
McKay recalls moving to the University neighborhood and growing up there. He states that the business district was confined to the area around Main Street and the rest of the city was largely residential.
04:25/p.3
McKay recalls the Columbia was a nice town to grow up in. In summers he would burn his feet on the hot pavement but his feet would tough up by the end of summer.
08:30/p.4
McKay describes the ways that World War II changed Columbia.
10:30/p.5
McKay describes the University neighborhood and the families that lived in that neighborhood. The campus was confined to the Horseshoe area at that time.
13:30/p.5
McKay recalls some of the beautiful homes that have since been demolished. He states that it was a tragedy that Columbia did not have a stronger sense of preservation.
16:30/p.6
McKay describes attending the Citadel.
19:00/p.7
McKay describes practicing law as a young man.
27:40/p.8
McKay recalls joining the library Board of Trustees and working with David Warren.
35:15/p.10
McKay describes how he and David Warren hired Gene Aubry as architect for the Main Library. He recalls the construction of the Main Library.
44:40/p.12
McKay describes construction and expansion of the library branches, specifically the Cooper Branch, North Main Branch, St. Andrews Branch and Sandhills Branch.
1:01:40/p.16
McKay describes how the public’s perception of the role of the public library has changed during his time on the Board. Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
Oral History with Julius McKay, May 23, 1996
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SHAW: First Question I have for you is to please describe your early life. Family, education and the ways things were when we were growing up.
MCKAY: That is a big wide subject. I was born in 1923 on Greene Street right at the bottom of Gregg Street hill. I think John O’Neill lives in that house now. And it was kind of scandalous because my mother and father built that when they were engaged. And you know you weren’t supposed to do things like that. You weren’t even supposed to talk about bedrooms and things like that. And Greene Street was not paved. And it was way out in the country. Five Points wasn’t there, the railroad track was kind of the borderline of Columbia. Everything else was just woods and swamp. And we lived there for five years until I was five years old and then we moved up on the corner of Senate and Bull Street. Which is where the State Library is now which I think is unique with my involvement with the Library. They tore down my old house and built the State Library. But it was a wonderful neighborhood. All of Columbia was residential. Downtown was where all the shops were. Even on Gervais Street which is now all commercial was strictly residential. From the top of the Gervais Street hill all the way down to Sumter Street there were only two businesses. One was Dunbar Funeral Home which is still there, and the other was Gervais Street Pharmacy right at the top of the hill at Barnwell and Gervais Street. And Dr. Dorn ran the Gervais Street Pharmacy. And I just remembered that they used to sell something called Eskimo Pies which were wonderful things. And if you got a pink Eskimo Pie you got another one free. So we’d all save up our nickels and run down there and hopefully get a pink Eskimo Pie. Dr. Dorn being a good German, I think he ate all of them himself, we never got one. But it was a wonderful way to get you to eat Eskimo Pies. And then all Senate Street all the way down to almost to the Capital at Trinity Church was all residential. So was Pendleton Street. Then you jump across Gervais, Lady was the same way until you got to Main Street and Washington, it was all residential. Every business was right on Main Street. Columbia had about 40-45,000 people in the city. So it was a small town. Everyone knew everyone else. And it was wonderful in some ways and bad in others. It was wonderful in that you always had a friend, you knew where you could find someone. But it was bad because if you did anything wrong, mother knew about it before you got home. And so children were pretty well disciplined in those days. I went to McMaster School which is now a part of the University, I think it is the music part of the University. And it was a very nice school as I recall. And then I went to Hand Junior High for the 7th grade. For 8th grade I went to University High and for the 9th grade they were building Dreher High School and they didn’t have any room for us at Columbia High school, we went to what is called Columbia Female Academy which is on Laurel Street. It is where the Hampton-Preston House is now. In the back part of that was a girls school at one time. And the Hampton-Preston House had a beautiful garden that was still there but it was all overgrown. And all of that has been torn down now. And that was where I went to high school in the 9th grade and then went to Columbia High for 10th and 11th grade. So I was kind of on a motorcycle from the time I got out of grammar school until I got to Columbia High. Columbia was a nice place. I remember in the summertime what I wore was a pair of trousers, short trousers. And you’d go down the Main Street and you’d walk across the street. It was so hot that the pavement was soft. And you had to run. And the bottom of my soles on my feet got burned up. And I could walk on the sidewalk. But that soft asphalt you sank down in it. It would burn your feet pretty badly. So we learned to run across the street and walk on the sidewalk. 25 cents went a long way. My mother would give me a quarter on a Saturday morning. And I’d go downtown and get a haircut for ten cents. A movie cost ten cents. At that time we would see these serials with Tim Steel and all these old cowboys.
COPP: Hop-A-Long Cassidy. Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
Oral History with Julius McKay, May 23, 1996
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MCKAY: Hop-A-Long Cassidy and Tim something. But it was a lot of fun. And that cost ten cents. And we had a nickel left over. And all the kids bought Baby Ruth. Because you got a big Baby Ruth for a nickel. Snickers and Milky Ways were a little smaller, you didn’t get quite as much. So you took your nickel and bought a big Baby Ruth. It was an interesting time. There were two people that I really admired. One was Willis Cantey and the other was Billy Wingfield and they lived on the eleven hundred block of Bull Street right behind my house. They were much older than I. But Billy would stand in his backyard on side of Bull Street and Willis would go across the street to Mr. Hunter Gibbes’s side lot. Billy would take a football and he would kick it all the way across Bull Street. And I’d sit on the curb and watch that ball fly. By golly if I could just get big enough to kick the ball across Bull Street. Oh to be that strong and that big. Well I drove down Bull Street the other day. And it’s just a narrow little street. Not nearly as wide as it used to be. I don’t know what they did to it, but they shrunk it down. The University was small. I don’t think they had over 1,500 students at the University that time. And my sister, older than I was, she was quite a belle. So there were always boys in the house where we lived. And she had a friend, Henrietta Phillips. Her father was a Rector at Trinity, it was Trinity Church at that time, and she lived on the other side of campus on Sumter Street. And so when it was time for Henrietta to go home, I don’t know why they felt it was necessary but they felt it was necessary for me to walk her home. She was, I thought, years older than I was. I think probably three years older than I was. I thought she was an old, old woman who didn’t need any help. But I would walk her home. And when I would get to her house, my sister would go because they didn’t want two girls walking through the campus by themselves, somebody might whistle at them. That would make them very excited. But it was an interesting time. Wonderful people there. In my neighborhood, the Hennigs, Julian Hennig lived right behind me on Senate Street. Mr. Walter Love and his three sisters lived next door. Mr. Walter Love was a very large man. He was an old bachelor and he had these three wonderful sisters who looked after him. In 1941 when the war broke out, you had to blackout your house. You bought shades that you pulled down to keep the light from getting out into the street. And Mr. Walter was the Street Warden for our block. And he came to the door and knocked on the door told my mother, he said “Ma’am, I’m the Street Warden” and she said, “Walter I’m so glad you’ve come.” She said “would you walk around the back of the house and make sure that no lights are coming out the window?” And Mr. Walter said, “No ma’am, I’d be too frightened to go in the back of that house, I’m not going back there.” So he never went into the backyard to see if light was coming out the window. And the war changed Columbia. Fort Jackson was here. Soldiers started coming in 1939 and we had some wonderful times, father sold for the USO, it was up here on the corner of Laurel and Assembly Street, right at the top of the hill about where the Post Office is. And of course all the girls would go down there on Saturday night to dance with the soldiers and entertain them. And my sister picked up her husband, a soldier who came to Fort Jackson. And he was a very attractive fellow. His name is Chalgren. C-H-A-L-G-R-E-N from Minnesota. And my mother was not a bit approving of anybody anywhere else out of South Carolina marrying her daughter. She kept telling Anne, “Now Anne, don’t fall in love with a soldier.” Gus was a Lieutenant, graduated from West Point, Anne brought him home. She kept telling her mother, Lieutenant Chalgren. She said, that is an awfully hard name to say. And I said, that’s right, it was C-H-A-L-G-R-E-N. And mother said, “all right.” And when Gus came to the door mother opened the door and said, “Oh Lieutenant Ginsburg, I’m so glad to meet you.” That is my sister. But Gus married her in spite of that happening and they’ve been married for about 50 years.
COPP: When you were growing up Bull Street ran all the way through, didn’t it? McKissick hadn’t been Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
Oral History with Julius McKay, May 23, 1996
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built so that the campus…
MCKAY: That’s right. Bull Street went straight on through. Then they put that, what do you call that star gazing thing there?
COPP: The observatory.
MCKAY: The observatory. They built the observatory there and that closed up Bull Street there. But Bull Street went to the observatory. And then the University closed that up when they put McKissick in there. The University campus was limited literally to the Horseshoe. There just wasn’t as many students as there are now. And the fraternity and sorority houses were on the campus, on the Horseshoe. And there were a lot of people who came to my house because we were right close by. And a lot of people from all over the state would come in. I had an older brother who was at University and my sister. So they had a lot of people in and out of our house all the time. And on our block of Bull Street we faced on Senate, and immediately behind us was the Jack Chase home. Chase was the Registrar at the University. Next door to that was Mr. Hunter Gibbes who was a lawyer here in town. Next door was a Mrs. Reynolds who had three sons. And then on the corner, oh what was that gentleman’s name. Chemin (?). Mr. Chemin. And he had a big old Victorian house, course all those are gone now. Across the street, the Wingfields lived directly across the street on Senate and Bull Street and then behind them were the Bells and the Swygerts. Ben Swygert was my closest friend. And he and I were the same age. And Ben’s father whipped him one night, Ben ran away from home and came over to my room. His father had thought that he had run away from home but he stayed with me that night and we took him back home the next day and everything was all right. But that just shows you how small Columbia was, when people run away they’d just go across the street, they didn’t have far to go. And Willis Cantey lived there. Willis was later president of C&S Bank, a very remarkable, wonderful fellow. Small of stature, I don’t think Willis was over 5’ 6”. He even played on one of the basketball teams at the University. Great basketball player, track star, football player. Very athletic. And then on the corner was McCord Ferry House, which is still there. It’s the only house that’s still in that area.
COPP: Didn’t Mr. Kohn live in that neighborhood too?
MCKAY: Cahn?
COPP: Helen Kohn Hennig’s father?
MCKAY: No. Not in that immediate neighborhood.
SHAW: You mentioned Julian Hennig. The Hennigs lived there.
MCKAY: The Hennigs lived there. They lived right around the corner in a house built by Mr. Ambrose Gonzales but Mr. August Kohn bought it from Mr. Gonzales.
COPP: That’s the house I’m thinking of.
MCKAY: Yes, beautiful.
COPP: It is where Senate Plaza is now.
MCKAY: Yes. It was an English Tudor style house. Beautiful, handsome house. A tragedy they tore that down. But I must say it was a tragedy that Columbia did not have a strong sense of preserving what they had here. There was a very handsome Victorian homes down here along Gervais Street that Sherman didn’t burn. Matter-of-fact his headquarters was in one that’s right now where the Town House is. But I was like everyone else, saying “God, why would you want to live Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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in one of those old houses with the high ceilings? It’s cold, drafty. Why not just tear it down and live in a nice ranch style house? All on one floor, wonderful.” Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s that is what you wanted. Looking back on it we were foolish. We should have kept those old homes, we would have been a lot better off. My friend Gus Graydon said (you out to take his tape, brilliant fellow) he said Harold Brunton, who came here from somewhere else to be with the University, did more harm to Columbia than Sherman ever thought about. Because Harold Brunton took the University and tore down all the homes, that were there on Pendleton Street, on College Street and on Greene Street, and extended the University back into that area. And if he had gone the other way across the Assembly Street and on down towards the river, in my opinion they would have had a much more beautiful campus and they would have preserved these homes which could now be a real marvelous downtown neighborhood because there were beautiful trees there. There were oak trees, no pine trees, because pines don’t grow in the city very well. But beautiful oak trees and old Victorian homes with porches that wrapped around them. Big two story houses. There are several left on Pendleton Street and you can kind of see what the others looked like. They were very much the same. I remembered a story last night, Dr. Legrand Guerry lived on the corner of Gregg and Pendleton Street. And I think his house is still there, Greek house. And Mr. Billy, well he was a lawyer who lived next door and had a lot of interests in the State newspaper. And Mr. Billy had an emergency operation. Appendectomy, and Dr. Guerry, being a close friend operated on him and took his appendix out and he got along fine. And Mr. Billy got a bill from Dr. Guerry for the operation. 125 dollars. Well he was incensed. So he took the bill and wrote on the bottom of it, “For legal advice given over the backyard fence for a period of over 20 years, 125 dollars. Fully paid and satisfied.” And gave it back to him.
SHAW: And he took it.
COPP: Well did you follow in your brother and sister’s footsteps and go on to the University too?
MCKAY: No, no I went to the Citadel. I was the only member of my family that broke the tradition. My father was on the Board at the University. But being the third child, having an older brother and an older sister and a younger brother, I was nothing. I wasn’t the oldest, I wasn’t the youngest. I wasn’t the only-est. Just nothing. So I wouldn’t do anything that the others would do. So I took myself, entered myself into the Citadel. My father and mother took me down there. I had never seen the place and I had already decided I wanted to go. Well they got these big iron gates. I was a little taken aback by that, but they opened the gate a little bit and they let me in. And then they slammed the gate and then they started screaming at me. “Hold your shoulders up! Point your chin in! Walk straight! Run up those stairs!” I thought, “God, what have I gotten myself into?” But I had to stay because I had done it to myself. If my father had put me down there I’d have quit the end of a week. Since I had done it myself I had to stay. And I loved it. And I was there three years, volunteered in the service after the second year and they took me in the third year. But the Citadel was good for me, I enjoyed it. They take one year of pure plus-perfect hell, and then you get three years where you can give away pure, plus-perfect hell to somebody else. So it is well worth it. The ratio, it is the gamble that you take.
SHAW: What made you decide to become a lawyer and practice in Columbia and where did you go to school for that?
MCKAY: I had always wanted to be a lawyer. My father was a lawyer and I had always wanted to be a lawyer. So that wasn’t any choice. I came back after the service and went straight into law school. It normally takes three years but in those days because we had entered the service, we Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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went to summer school and they compressed the course into a two year time. And of course my father had a firm. Firms, they were very small. I think we had one of the largest firms in Columbia, we had three lawyers then. Nowadays my present firm we’ve got 80 lawyers. And so times have changed. But life was very simple. You practiced law six days a week. I went to the office on Saturday because that was the only day that farmers could come in or people working could come down to see a lawyer was on Saturdays. So you went in every Saturday morning until 12 o’clock. And we had a wonderful lawyer here, Frank Taylor. Tall, very nice trial lawyer. And we had bar meetings every Saturday morning. Frank stood up one time and said, “You know the banks are closing on Saturday. There is no reason for us to come down to the office on Saturday. People who are coming in to the bank would come in to their lawyer, but there’s no reason to come down.” So very, very reluctantly we closed the office on Saturday. And work out alright. The world didn’t come to an end. People still came to the office. And then I guess another few years later we got another bar meeting. Frank stood up and said, “You know on Friday afternoons nobody does anything. The banks are closed on Friday afternoon.” Somebody says, “Oh Frank, you’d want to close the office on Monday morning if you had the chance.” So we didn’t follow Frank on that plan. But it was, the practice of law was different. Columbia was small. If you had a problem then all you did was pick up the phone and call another lawyer, people wanted to help you. Young lawyers didn’t know much. He thought he did but he really didn’t. On the principle, knew all the principles but didn’t know the practical. And I had a case early on in those days if you got in an automobile accident you could attach the other man’s automobile to pay for your damages. You’d put up a 250 dollar bond. Well the code told exactly how to attach it. Exactly what to do. So I did that. On a Friday I attached a man’s automobile. Well, Saturday morning my client and that man came in and he wanted to get his automobile back. You can look at the code from one end to the other and there ain’t nowhere that tells you how to unattach an automobile. So here I am, I’m sitting there, client mad, this man mad, because he wanted money, and he wanted his automobile. And me sucking my thumb because I didn’t know what in the hell to do. So I snuck into another room and called Frank Taylor. I said Frank, and told him my problem. He said, “Call the Sheriff. That’s all you gotta do.” And Sheriff Heise was the Sheriff. So I dialed the Sherriff and explained my problem. “Aw J, don’t worry. What is the automobile? Where is it, here? Just tell the man to come over and pick it up, that’s all right.” So that was a little thing but nowadays I’m not sure you could call another lawyer and get that help from him. He would tell you, well find out yourself. But that was Columbia and it was small. And I think, I don’t want to say lawyers were more ethical but if you did something wrong, people learned about it a helluva lot quicker than they do now. And you were immediately branded if you tried to take advantage of someone. You had to represent your client well but you also had to deal with these lawyers every day. So it made life a little easier. And law was a little more exciting because you tried cases, I guess it was trial by trap would be what you would do. Nowadays they have something called depositions where you get to pose all those witnesses, and you can ask a lawyer the name of all their witnesses and you can take their depositions. And when you get to try a case you’ve already heard what they’re going to say. It is like eating a plate of cold hominy, go over there and they say the same thing all over again. But those days you never knew who the witnesses were going to be. You’d walk into the courtroom and there they would be. You would have never seen them before. I don’t know if a lot of them had ever seen the action but they were able to testify about it.
COPP: Sounds more exciting.
MCKAY: It was very, very exciting. Very exciting and more challenging too. You had to be constantly on your feet to catch these little nuances and make your points. But and I think in those days if you Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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got a verdict for $3,000 you were dancing down the street and waving your hand all over the place. Nowadays a lawyer won’t even try a case for $3,000. Of course as I said a quarter went a long way in those days, a quarter don’t go very far nowadays.
COPP: What sparked your original interest in the library and what kept this interest alive all these years?
MCKAY: Well when I was young the library was in the Woodrow Home on the corner of Sumter and Washington Street. And we had to go there every Saturday, you’d go to the library. And it cost ten cents a year to get a card and to check your book out with the library card. So we would go to the library and check out books all the time and take them home. And if you kept them over it was five cents a day. That was a lot of money. So you always ran back and got your books back on time. Because your mother and father were not too sympathetic about you keeping a book out over one day of time. And interestingly enough when they tore down the Woodrow House to build the library there in 1954 I believe it was, they moved the library to the Wingfield house which was on the corner of Gervais, I mean Senate and Bull Street.
COPP: Where the archives is now.
MCKAY: Where the archives is now. That is where Billy Wingfield lived.
COPP: Who was a Professor of History, right, at the University wasn’t he?
MCKAY: No, his father was a druggist up on Main Street. He had the drug store up there on the corner of Hampton and Main. Dr. Eli Wingfield, a very nice fellow. I wish we had some pictures of that old house. It was a handsome old Victorian house. Built by Mr. McCrery who’d incidentally built a house that is now owned by the University. On Gregg Street, do you know where Gregg and Pendleton cross and you go down the hill on Gregg. There is a red brick house there, very, very handsome red brick house. That was Mr. McCrery’s house. He was in the insurance business here in Columbia. And what is now called Maxcy Gregg Park, we lived on Greene Street right up above that, was known as McCrery’s bottom. And my father’s house, the lot went all the way through to what would now be Blossom Street, there wasn’t any street down there at that time. And he kept a cow down there. And Mr. Dave Ellison lived across the street and had a terrace that went up to Mr. Dave’s house up on the top of the hill. And he raised dahlias, beautiful dahlias. And the cow had a real affinity for dahlias. It would walk across, come up the hill, go across the Greene Street which was unpaved, climb up the hill and get into Mr. Dave’s dahlias. And he would call my father, and my father would get Tom to go up and get the cow and bring it back down and put it back in the bottom. He and Mr. Dave would have words and they would talk about the cow. Well anyway. One Sunday my father was having a party. And the cow got loose and went up and was eating dahlias. And he called down and, those days people drank a whole lot, my father had been drinking along with everybody else he was having at the party, and the boy who went to go get the cow was not there. So he had to go get the cow himself. So he walked up to the top of the hill, and he was a powerful man, he wasn’t large but he was a powerful man, and he took the rope from the cow’s nose and he started beating on the cow because he was mad. “Cause He had to leave the party to come up and get this cow. Well, the cow started running down the hill. And the rope got hooked on my father’s arm, he dragged him all the way down the hill, across Greene Street and down into McCrery bottom. And then Monday morning the cow was at the abattoir and we didn’t have any further problems. But, now that gets a long way away from the library. The library has always been something that I’ve treasured. When I was on the County Council, when I got off of County Council and there was a vacancy on the Library Board and I actually got put on at that time. At that time David Warren had just come, he’d been here a year. Anna King was the librarian then and she had retired. And Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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they brought this young fellow from Tennessee. And David and I immediately just kind of fell in with each other. He is a wonderful person, just remarkable. And he kept telling me about these great visions he had for a new library. This one was totally inadequate. Gus Graydon told me when this was built it was totally inadequate. They knew it at the time but they didn’t have enough money to build a bigger one. And it was. It was crowded. And so we started making plans then about what we could do. At one time I guess after I had been on the Board about five years, six years, people from Tennessee came to talk to David and said they wanted him to come back. To leave here and come back. And he seriously considered it. Well that just scared the bejeezus out of me. I said David, if you go, if you’re leaving right now, we’re going to get on the process of building a whole new system and you’ll miss out on it if you go back to Tennessee. I thought I was lying but it turned out I wasn’t. He had the same plans I did. And of course we were successful in getting the public interested. That little nasty building, around 30,000 square feet. Sarah, I don’t know if you were there, it was an awful building. But the people of Richland County just piled in there. I remember David told me one time one Sunday he said, “J, we’ve had 2,000 people come in here today.” And so we would always go to the County Council and say, “Look, we need a new library.” Well they put us off and put us off, and finally we came to the conclusion we’ve got to get a bond issued. The County was not going to spend its money. There are two ways for financing. The County has a certain percentage of the value of the property that they can bonds for without having to go to the public. But, if you want something in excess of that that then you’ve got to go to the public to get them to give you money so it won’t be taken out of that allocation. They have x amount of dollars they can put into bonds, and if you want a bond issued then it takes it out of that x amount. But if you go to the public then it does not take away from that x amount of money. So we went to the County Council and we suggested that we would like to get a bond issued. Well they didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance in hell. And they said, “Go to it. Have a good time.” Spartanburg had a bond issued before and lost it. For a library. People had said “No, we don’t want it.” So David and I got to working. And I went to see five prominent businessmen in Columbia and asked them to head up this bond drive. I’m not going to name any names, but all of them said no, they were too busy. And I went to see Kirk Finlay who was Mayor at that time. And I said, “Kirk I’m kind of running out of names to run this thing.” And he said, “J, don’t waste your time with businessmen. All they’re going to do is turn it over to their secretary anyway. What you need to do is get some woman who is very active in this community who would be interested in doing it.” So, I’d been to see Joel Smith who was President of Nation’s Bank at that time. And as soon as he said that, [snap] Kit Smith came into my head. David and I went to see Kit. And she said she would be thrilled to do it. And I think she worked for Chernoff-Silver at that time, I’m not sure, but I know she does now. So we got Chernoff-Silver on board with us and Kit just did a superb job. What we did, we got the Friends of the Library involved and we got a list of all the registered voters. And we got on the phone, the Friends of the Library were given this list, and we got on the phone and they would call people. And they would call and say, “Sarah, we’re thinking about building a new library downtown and it’s going to cost a heck of a lot of money. Would you be in favor of it?” And you would say, “Oh yeah I’d love a new library.” We’d mark you down. Or we’d call you and say, “Robin…” and repeat our question and you would say, “No, I’m not going to spend any more of my tax money on the library, hell no.” Marked through your name. Well, the election was going to be on a Tuesday, so starting Friday we called all of the yeses. I mean we called ‘em and called ‘em and called ‘em and urged them to get out and vote. And the opposition never really developed. Number one, people in Richland County loved the library and number two, we didn’t exactly publicize. We did everything that was supposed to be Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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done but we didn’t get out and make talks on the radio and things like that. We just quietly ran our campaign. And when it was over, 10,000 people voted. I think 10 or 11,000. But we got 72 percent of the vote. Well, County Council was incensed that we’d gotten this thing. And, they didn’t think we could do it. And so they weren’t any particular help to us, but the money had to be used for the library. And David and I sat down and we figured out that we needed a new main library and we needed seven new branch, not new branch libraries, but new library buildings. And we could do it for $27,000,000. And we had already built two new libraries, the Southeast Branch and the Eastover Branch, about a year before from County money. The County Council gave us money to do that. So we started with these plans and we were so damn lucky it’s unbelievable. Just from getting ready to put out the bids, the United States, had a heck of a depression. People were out of work. Contractors were desperate for work. And so we were able during this two-year period when we were building these libraries and such so as to get it for a very, very reasonable price. Because they had to have work. This building, which I think is one of the, well it is the handsomest library in the United States, maybe in the world as far as that’s concerned, but it cost 48 dollars a square foot to build it. And if you built it today it would be at least 90 dollars a square foot. And so but because of the depression we were able to get a magnificent building for a very, very reasonable price. And we put out bids for architects. And we have a lot of architects that applied. But one that we liked most was Gene Aubry. He gave us a nice design and he seemed to know what he was doing, and he had a very wonderful personality. But he was with one set of architects, one set of local architects. Well they were all right but we felt that Stevens and Wilkinson had had more experience. So we convinced Gene Aubry to go over with Stevens and Wilkinson and so they put together a package for us. Which we accepted. And this building is the result of that. Aubry designed the building, the nitty-gritty work had to be done by Stevens and Wilkinson. But as I say it is an unusual building. Gene Aubry, when we were having a meeting with him he said, “Now what kind of building do you want?” Well not that I’m over-spoken but I don’t sit quietly and I said, “I tell you exactly what I want. I want a red brick building with columns and a lion on either side of the front door.” He said, “Is that right?” And I said, “Yeah, that’s right.”
COPP: Very traditional.
MCKAY: Very traditional, absolutely. Absolutely traditional. And so this is what he came up with. And during the dedication when we were having the opening, we were right out here on Hampton Street. With the Catholic school across the street. And I leaned over to him and I said, “Where in the hell is my brick building with the lions?” And he looked into the mirrored reflection here that reflected that building there and he said, “Look at all the bricks, they are right there.” So I got my brick building from Gene Aubry. The interesting thing was when we negotiated with the city on the property. And the South Carolina Gas Company had a long term lease on it. And so I had to go to Lawrence Gressette, President of the power company and an old friend, and I said Lawrence we want that building, we want that property for the library. And the city has agreed you can have parking spaces over in this parking garage right next to your building over here if you’ll release that to us. And he couldn’t have been nicer, he said, “I’d be delighted to do that.” The city didn’t give us any bargain. We had to pay through the nose to get this property from the city. But nevertheless it was an ideal site for it. And a fellow named Ed Bagley, owned the adjoining property, and Ed told me, “J, if you get that property from the city, I’ll sell you the property that I own at the same price I paid for it, at no profit at all to me, I just think it would be wonderful to have a library downtown.” Ed was a very forward-thinking man. Thought he’d build this building across the street. And at that time he intended to build a 32-story building right across the street on the corner of Hampton and Assembly Street. But the depression came Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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along and that went through the mill. But we were going to put a walkway over Assembly Street to go to his building from the library so it would have been a nice, joint…but anyway that was our plan but those fell through. But we bought this from the city and we started excavating. And we were going down 12 feet for the basement. And for some unknown reason, why he did I’ll never know, Buddy Hanna said, “I think we need to go down another couple of feet.” We ran into all sorts of problems because the city had pipes they didn’t even know they existed. And the water was leaking in and we’d have to close them all off and such as that. So he went down another two feet and, blessed goodness, he ran into pool of gasoline. There had been a filling station on the corner here for a long time and we’d had it tested. That was one thing we worried about, I remember the Barnett filling station here. I was concerned about the ecological problems. And so we tested it and, no problem. We found the tanks, pulled the tanks out. There weren’t any problems with those. But, apparently all the gas had leaked out and it was down here in a pocket. Well that scared the daylights out of us. We didn’t know what we’d have to do with that. But Buddy Hanna handled it. Buddy Hanna was with M. B. Kahn and he handled it beautifully. He dug it all out, called DHEC, told them what we were doing, and we took the gas-permeated soil and carried it out into the county, to a field out there. And then we just took a tractor and plowed back and forth across it. And that turned the fumes loose. And it takes about maybe two or three years to leave it out in the sun and it will clarify itself. That was one of the frightening things we had happen, building this building. And I always fussed at Buddy about going that other two feet. But it was probably just as well because if we had put the concrete pad on top of it, and those fumes had started coming up underneath here, eventually, we would have had some real problems with it. But it turned out to our benefit.
COPP: You would have had a beautiful explosion too.
MCKAY: Could have, yes. That did worry us a great deal, that it could catch fire. I don’t know if it would have been an explosion because it was all permeated in the soil but it would have burned pretty fiercely. They found Assembly Street, not during my lifetime but in earlier years, was a residential street too. They found several wells down under….
COPP: There was a house on this corner for a long, long, long time. Until that filling station...
MCKAY: Took it down. Yes, during the ‘30s they built that filling station.
COPP: And actually there were houses all along here and then gradually starting at Washington Street they were putting in businesses, right. There was a Pepsi-Cola plant in the center of this block.
MCKAY: Really? I didn’t remember that.
COPP: I’ll show you on a map. But tell that story about the Pepsi-Cola. Since we were talking about service stations and there was the Pepsi-Cola plant here.
MCKAY: I had a dear friend who ran a filling station on the corner of Sumter and Taylor Street and he also sold tires and gas and such as that. And Sumter Street was being paved. And he noticed that all the workmen that came into his place to buy lunch, all they bought were Moon Pies and Pepsi-Colas. And he didn’t ever sell a Coca-Cola. And so he kind of scratched his head and said you know Pepsi-Cola must be pretty good stuff. So he started back in the ‘30s buying up Pepsi-Cola stock. And at the time, you know he didn’t buy a great deal of it but over the years it split and grew. At the time of his death he had a very substantial estate. And his wife, who was a very lovely lady, has given away thousands of dollars from that stock to her children each year to reduce their estate. We reduce it by $90,000 one year. And, bless Jesus, the stock goes up. So we have gain in it and the next year we’ve got the same thing and we keep giving away all Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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this God-darn Pepsi-Cola stock. So it was a wonderful investment that this man made. Something that you dream about doing.
SHAW: Just ‘cause he noticed they were drinking that soda?
MCKAY: He noticed they were drinking Pepsi-Cola. He tried to get Moon Pies but Moon Pies was a little organization over in Nashville, Tennessee, and wasn’t a public company, it was a private company. He never could buy any Moon Pie stock. If he had he’d of been a billionaire today. But that Pepsi-Cola plant, I had forgotten that was here. But down here where it’s now known as Finlay Park, was Reamer Ice Company, down in the bottom there. My mother when she was a young girl said that Finley Park was a zoo. They had a little zoo down there. It was a lovely park. And the Seaboard train came through there and bought it up, or the City of Columbia gave it to them so they’d come in to Columbia. So they came in underground through there and went on to the Seaboard Station there. And I don’t know whether or not you are familiar with it but it used to be a trestle that went above the ground on the other side and across the river. That trestle was sometimes 30 feet high. When the train would come though this way, go underground this way, then go out the trestle way. And Mr. Jo Berry Lyles was the attorney for the Seaboard Railroad and whenever he would be sued he’d get up and make a jury argument and he would say, “The great Seaboard Railroad, that pours into Columbia through a hole and flies out on the wings of a bird.” Then we had several good things happen on our branches. Number one was the Cooper Branch. It was a totally inadequate branch out on the Trenholm Road and Mrs. Madge Cooper, who was the widow of Paul Cooper - the branch was named for John Hughes Cooper, who was Mr. Paul’s brother. John Hughes was a little lawyer here and very attractive man with a wonderful sense of humor. And he, at tax sales had bought up all that property where Forest Lake is now, and on out to Dentsville. He owned most of that property. And he probably paid $5, $6, maybe $10 at most an acre for that land buying it up at tax sales. And so he gave the money for the library to be built out there. So that’s why they call it the John Hughes Cooper Branch. And of course we outgrew that. And when Mrs. Madge died, who was his sister in law, she left $75,000 to be used to improve the Cooper Branch. Well we had money in our bond issue to redo the Cooper Branch. So we were able to take that money and put it somewhere else and use Madge’s $75,000 to upgrade the Cooper Branch. So that was a very fortunate thing to happen. We had on North Main Street, we found a piece of property out there that we got for a very reasonable price and we were able to build a very nice branch out there. The people in Eau Claire wanted it in Hyatt Park which is right below the tin bridge on Main Street. And that was too close to the Main Library. So it needed to be a little further out. And we found this other tract of land out there and got it for a reasonable price. And the people of Eau Claire were thrilled that we were able to put it out there. It is still in the city area. But we built a very nice branch out there. The other branches kind of fell into our laps. They were already there and we just redid them or remodeled them. Except the one out on...is it called Southeast the one out on…
COPP: Sandhills.
MCKAY: No, St. Andrews.
COPP: Oh St. Andrews.
MCKAY: On Broad River Road. We had a little tiny branch out there that had been, primarily, manned by the Women’s Club in that area. That they’d given us and they raised money for it every year. So we were able to find an old warehouse out there. People don’t realize it but the best library in the world is a grocery store. It has an opening on the front, an opening on the back and it is Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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all wide open. More people think a library ought to be like a school room where you got little cubby holes. But that’s the worst thing in the world you could have. You want wide open space. So we found warehouses. The one out there on Broad River is an old warehouse. It wasn’t too expensive to readapt for library purposes. And the same thing was true out on the Sumter Highway. We found what was called the Fox warehouse out there. People, I think they’d gone into bankruptcy but they wanted to get rid of the building and we were able to pick that up and remodel it. And remodeling a building like that is much less expensive than trying to build a library. So those two things worked out beautifully. I don’t know. I always maintain the Lord sits on my left shoulder. Because things happened to me that shouldn’t happen to anybody else. Always do, I don’t even question it. And so he was sitting on our left shoulder that time because everything we did just fell into place.
COPP: Wasn’t the land for the Sandhills Branch donated too?
MCKAY: Yes, that’s right. Oh, hell of a fight. The Board didn’t want that piece of property. It was out there in the Summit I think it’s called. And they had no objection to it except that there was a six-foot wall around the goddamn thing. And I was concerned, and the Board was too, that that was going to be a hindrance to people who didn’t live inside that wall to go to that library. But they offered not only to open a library they offered $20,000 towards books. And we had another site we had to pay for out there. And County Council just said, “Absolutely not, you’re going inside the Summit.” So we did, because the property belonged to County Council not to the library. So we went inside there and built a nice branch and it has been very successful. The walls haven’t deterred people at all. So I was wrong. We were wrong in that particular instance and the County Council was right. Now, I want to say this about County Council. I had my fights with them. We were constantly battling with them for money. But the library was just one little small chink in their budget. But to us it was the biggest thing you could possibly have. But we may have screamed and hollered but they have been pretty generous with us when we needed it. When the chips were down they never came through with what we wanted but they came through with enough for us to do what needed to be done. We had one hell of a battle with them after this building opened. Because we kept telling them, by the time we got audited we said we’re going to have a tremendous increase in cost. You’ve got to be prepared to raise money for us because we’re going from 30,000 square feet to 200,000 square feet. We’re going from six branches to nine branches. And we’ve got books, we’ve got personnel, we’ve got one heck of a lot of money. You’ve got to budget for that. So we kept asking each year to kind of give us an increase and they wouldn’t do it. And then all of a sudden we’re here, and our utility bill was higher than probably the whole budget we had, the whole bill. So we had a real crunch. And they did come through. But we ran two branches as I recall, the Summit Branch and the Blythewood Branch. Only three days a week and the same crew was in each one of those branches. And then we had to cut down on the hours that we ran the other branches. We just couldn’t fund the personnel to run them. But over the years the Council have kind of come around to our way of thinking. They have never given us the amount of money that we really need. But they give us enough. This fellow David Warren is a genius. He runs the finest ship I ever saw and he takes a dollar and he can squeeze it so damn hard George Washington just has a fit. And so we get good value for our dollar. And he has done that year in and year out. And I just can’t say enough things about him. He is really the reason. I take all the credit, don’t take me wrong. Anytime anybody tells me, how beautiful is the library, I don’t say, “Well, you ought to give David credit.” No I don’t say that at all. I say, “Well, thank you very much!” But David is really the backbone of this library. Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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SHAW: And you were Chairman of the Board for how many years?
MCKAY: 13 years.
SHAW: 13 years. And how has the Board of Trustees chosen, or elected?
MCKAY: County Council. County Council selected who goes on the Board. It used to be that the Board would send to the County Council the names of people they wanted. It was kind of a self-perpetuating Board when they were in the old building. But County Council kind of got onto that and they wouldn’t do that anymore. If you sent them a name [snap] death toll for that name, it didn’t have a snowball effect of getting on the Board. So, you had to politic with them to get someone on the Board. And we always had good Board members. They’d give us businessmen, they’d give us businesswomen, and they’d given us librarians, school teachers. All of whom were vitally interested in the library. I don’t recall anyone in the 13 years I was on the Board that just didn’t put their shoulder to the wheel and work like the devil to help. So it was we had good Board members. And we still do have good Board members. County Council had given us some good members. So that is how they elected. And they serve a term of four years. And there is a County statute that says that no person shall serve more than two terms on a Board. But the Library Board was not subject to that. We were told we weren’t anyway. But they said it was, and at that time before any of the buildings were built where we were in the process of it, they had to replace all ten of us. And it was really a kind of tight affair. I went and talked to them and said, “Look, we’re coming to the most important part of all, you put a whole new Board in there, no telling what will happen to this money we’ve gotten you can’t build it such as that.” So they kind of waved it. And they re-elected Ethel Bolden, Bobby Kapp, me and one other one to a new four-year term, but we had already served eight years. Well I had served ten years. And so we were able to re-appoint the Board and kind of ignored that rule.
SHAW: That was two terms, consecutive terms or just any?
MCKAY: Two consecutive terms.
SHAW: Consecutive.
MCKAY: You could go on one term and then keep on going if you wanted. But they re-elected us and of course we kept our cohesiveness then. When the chips are down the County Council comes through for us. I fuss about them but…
COPP: Before Home Rule when it was the County Delegations, did the County Delegations appoint the Board of Trustees?
MCKAY: Yes. That was the time when the Board was kind of self-perpetuating. The Board would say, “We want so and so on the Board,” and so the County Delegation would do that. They provide the funds but didn’t get much funds in those days. Nobody had any money. That was when the Board was self-perpetuating.
COPP: Don’t you think that helped that library having the same Boards when it was beginning to build up and become larger?
MCKAY: Yes. I do think so. I’m not sure it does now. Robin, I think that getting new blood on is a good thing. As long as you get good new blood. People who are interested and willing to work. Like me. I served about two years too long. You know you get burned out and you need new blood to come in there and bring new ideas and fresh approaches to things. It is awfully hard on the Director because he has got a Board he is very comfortable with him, the Board is very comfortable with him. And then he gets some new radical that doesn’t know what the hell Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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they’re talking about and they get all worked up. And he has to calm them down. But that keeps David on his toes too. But my one fear is that David will leave. I hope he will not for another several years anyway because he has done such a beautiful job here.
SHAW: I just wanted to get a comment on the library’s place in the community and public relations efforts that have been made and if they have been successful?
MCKAY: Well of course the library’s place in the community is almost self-evident. In the older days it was important. But now with this building I think people recognize it even more how important it is in the community. And I know that BMW looked at Greenville and Spartanburg a long, long time before they settled up there, because of the library. Greenville at one time had a very good library but, time went by the same thing happened to them as happened to us, the library became inadequate. Spartanburg had turned down a bond issued for a library, but they subsequently passed it. But most industries when they come in and they look, number one, at your schools, see what kind of schools you have. Number two, they look at your library. And so the library is a critical part of development. And anybody moving into a community. Somebody who is retired, they don’t give a doggone about the schools but they look at the library because that is what they use. So it is critical that you have a good library system. And right now we’ve got far and away the best library system of any county in the United States. Well the interesting thing, this is another sideline on this building, we spent $11,000,000 on this building, we got 200,000 square feet. Chicago is building their new library at the same time but they got 400,000 square feet, twice the size. But they spent $40,000,000 for theirs. The same time we were spending $11,000,000 for this. And they’ve got a library that’s a boondoggle. It is not open. It is not open space. It has not got the same thing. And they also contend that they have the largest children’s library in the United States. They got 20,000 square feet. We got 20,000 square feet right down here. So ours is just the same size as Chicago’s. But that is just the size. We show them what we’ve got here. I think that as time goes on this library can become more and more important in the community. I am not sure that the political people recognize the library as well as they should. I get a little perturbed with Bob Coble. He will tick off all these things in Columbia that he’s got that are wonderful. And in my book the first thing that you say, you ought to see the library we’ve got. He talks about the zoo, he talks about the museum, he talks about the Hampton-Preston mansion, all these things we’ve got here. And I’m not sure Richland County Council appreciates what they got. Because we are constantly battling with them. We’re up there saying, “We need more money, we need more money.” We are a thorn in their side. Rather than think of it as a wonderful thing they think, “God almighty, that dang library group is about to drive me crazy.” But the general public they just think it is wonderful. It is what three years later. I still got, in fact I got a letter last week from somebody, “J, I want to tell you write and tell you how marvelous your library is.” And I write back, “Thank you very much.” I say this but I don’t mean it. “I’m just a small cog in the wheel that built the library.” I don’t mean that at all, I take full credit. But even today, three years later people are writing me or see me on the street, they come over and want to tell me how much they love the library. So people of Richland County really do appreciate it.
COPP: I had a lady tell me the best thing about living in Richland County was the library.
MCKAY: Isn’t that nice, yeah. A friend of mine, Francis Hopkins sent me an article out of the Greensboro newspaper which said, “Columbia has demonstrated that if you build a better library you’ll fill it up.” And they apparently have a lot of problems in Greensboro. And this whole editorial was on what Columbia had done, how they prepared for it, they worked for it for 12 years, finally got the library built, and that they ought to scrap what they are doing in Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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Greensboro and start all over again and to follow what Columbia had done. I sent it to David. He had already seen it. But we’ve gotten a national reputation and through David international reputation. David is now on a Board in England on some library, international board over there. We’ve gotten awards from the National Library Association. He has just put us on the map. And he is such a nice person.
COPP: Do you think the public’s concept of library has changed in Columbia, in Richland County?
MCKAY: Certainly mine has. I mean I was looking for four walls and two lions and the columns. And I think if you go into Columbia and throughout Columbia and ask them what sort of library you want that is what 99 percent of the people would say. They would look at New York’s library and that is what it is. Yes, I think the public concept has changed. I think the use of the library has changed considerably. Not just for books. You can come in here and get any kind of information you want. The computer system. I think we were the first library in the United States to have a computer system.
COPP: One of the first to have Dynix.
MCKAY: And that revolutionized libraries. And you’ve got a certain class of people that say, “Well, eventually we’re not going to need libraries because we can do everything on computers.” But people need to hold that book in their hand and read it and so you will always have a need for libraries. I felt that way at one time that you know eventually people would not need it. But it is absolutely wrong. People need to hold the book and to see them and to thumb through them and to sit quietly in your living room or den and read a book. And that is what children need to do. That is what I love to see here. When I come into this building I see mothers with children and literally they’re staggering as they’re holding all these books as they walk out of the library. Well that just pleases me no end because that shows that the younger people still need it. And this is a welcoming building. When you walk in that front door you just kind of suck in air. It is so welcoming and magnificent. You still have a hotel over in Atlanta, I’ve forgotten the name of it, but the taxi drivers used to call it cathedral because you walked in the door and everybody looked and, “Oh my God.” So that is the same way I feel about this library. You walk into it you say, “Good gracious look at this magnificent building.” Even now when I come in it gives a sense of awe.
SHAW: What kind of comments have you had or received from people since we’ve modernized, gotten computerized and how have they accepted that?
MCKAY: That is the one thing that has really impressed people. That they can come into this library and because apparently we were right on the cutting edge of all of the improvements and computers and such as that and the businessmen are very impressed with that. They can find what they want. And not just businessmen, students come in here and do research. Get on the computers. And you get into Midnet and cover the world. And I’ve just bought a computer. I learned last night how to turn it on.
SHAW: Good start.
MCKAY: But someone told me that I can get something and put it in my computer and I can tie it in to the library. One of the lawyers here, got an office across the street, said, “Have you ever tied into your computer. In my office, if I want a book I just type in a book, find out where it is, punch a button and it holds it for me.” Well, that’s sitting in his office. He doesn’t have to come over here. I can do the same thing in my home. If I can learn more than just to turn it on. So I know. Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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COPP: You can go all over the world with that computer now, you really can.
MCKAY: I saw a funny article the other day. A man was writing a comment that you know I had a friend that came to me and he said, “I’ve just talked to a man who climbed the Peruvian Alps.” “Well supposed that man knocked on your front door and said I want to come talk to you about climbing the Peruvian Alps, would you let him in?” “No.” “Well, why’d you let him in through your computer?” “I don’t know but it was interesting.” So I do believe computers have opened things up. When I was in the ‘30s I had a radio that I made. It was a spool that my mother had, with a copper cord and you tied it in and you could move it up and down and you could get WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it was unbelievable that you could do that. Now I punch a gosh darn button and I can talk to a man that climbed the mountains in Peru. It just has come so far. And we don’t have time to sit down and smell the roses anymore. So we don’t have time to sit down and try to absorb of all this stuff that’s happened to us. We just accept it and as soon as we accustomed to it there’s some brand new thing coming you have to start all over again. And I think that is one of the problems we’ve got nowadays is we don’t have time to smells the roses. But medicine has improved. I remember when doctors used to come to your house but they don’t do that anymore because they don’t have time. They’ve got so many things they’ve got to do. And that is where your library is built, they can help the doctors. They can come in here and find all of these things. So I think it is wonderful.
SHAW: Do you have anything else you’d like to bring up or discuss about the library or Columbia that we haven’t discussed?
MCKAY: Well I think we pretty well covered anything. One thing I would like to say, Five Point was a swamp. It was just a road that went through there that went out to Shandon, up the hill to Shandon. And my uncle, Toots Walker, built the first shopping center that was down there. And of course now that’s the mecca. That is where all the college students go, down in Five Points. And there’s a pipe underneath there, I wouldn’t recommend you do it but when we were kids we used to walk on those pipes and go all the way under Five Points and come right into what we called Valley Park. I think it is called Martin Luther King Park now. But you could walk Rocky Branch, which ran underneath it.
COPP: Do you remember when there was a casino there in Valley Park?
MCKAY: At Valley Park yeah. You played bingo and all sorts of things down there, yeah.
COPP: You must remember when they started building Shandon?
MCKAY: Well no. Shandon was built during the ‘teens. Mr. Shand, Mr. Billy Shand was the surveyor, and he laid that out. See, Shandon was a suburb, Wales Garden was a suburb, Heathwood was a suburb and Forest Hills.
COPP: And Waverly?
MCKAY: Waverly was a part of old Columbia. And that was a residential, a very fine residential homes out there where Benedict and Allen University. The Robinsons, the Harts, the Urquarts, my father, all grew up out there, down in Waverly.
COPP: The Childs lived there.
MCKAY: The Childs, yeah all those families lived in that area. And then slowly but surely they moved out and the blacks moved into that area. Which was right because it was right around the colleges. But it was, Columbia neighborhoods have not changed that much. Forest Hills is still just like it was. Heathwood, it was always a very expensive, elegant place to live. Wales Garden was Walker Local and Family History Center | Richland Library
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established by Mr. Edwin Wales Robinson, he was president of First National Bank, and he built that area up there. And so Columbia was confined to Elmwood on the north, Heyward on the south, Harden on the east, and the river on the west. My mother grew up on the corner of Bull and Gervais Street, right there where the theater is now. And she had an old-maid aunt who lived next door to her who dearly loved her. And mother owned one of the first automobiles in Columbia. And she was just a young child, probably 17 or 18 years of age and she was backing the automobile out of the driveway into Gervais Street. And her aunt came out on the porch and said, “Anne, be careful, remember the river is right at the bottom of the hill.” So Columbia has changed a lot for the better. I’m sorry we tore down all those wonderful old homes but we’re no different from any other city in the ‘40s and ‘50s. After the war people wanted to move out there to the suburbs.
SHAW: But we got a beautiful new library.
MCKAY: We got a beautiful new library and that is bringing people back downtown. I’m hoping the museum help.
COPP: I’m hoping that this new group they’ve formed to build apartments above the businesses will help too.
MCKAY: Won’t that be great. That would be wonderful. Move people back downtown. It will take a while though. It will take getting over, I don’t know why there is a stigma against living downtown. Well, there are no grocery stores.
COPP: You were reading my mind. I was thinking but there’s no grocery store.
MCKAY: There’s a little drug store. Well there are drug stores but there’s no grocery stores.
COPP: But I’ll bet if the people come the grocery store will come too.
MCKAY: Oh no question about that. They go where the people are. Start up a little mom and pop operation for a grocery store and do real well. There’s a little grocery store over on Pickens Street, the…
COPP: Purple Cow.
MCKAY: They’re doing real well. Nice neighborhood, people don’t have to go all the way out to the suburbs to get some groceries… So you’re right. They can get a grocery store downtown. I don’t know which comes first, the chicken or the egg. The people first and then the grocery store or the grocery store and then the people. They’ve got to get people first.
SHAW: Well thank you. Just a wealth of information. It was wonderful.
MCKAY: Well, I tell you. To be sitting here talking about myself for a couple hours. Oh thank you.
End - Julius McKay