B.M. Ingram (G)
(10:07) Mr. Ingram gives a brief history of how his company evolved and describes the downtown area of Florence, Alabama in the early to mid 1900s. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Arch...
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| Format: | Electronic |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library
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| Online Access: | https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/oral_hist/id/173 |
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Electronic |
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Oral Histories Collection |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts B.M. Ingram (G) Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
| fulltopic |
Oral histories -- audios and transcripts Business enterprises; Business districts |
| description |
(10:07) Mr. Ingram gives a brief history of how his company evolved and describes the downtown area of Florence, Alabama in the early to mid 1900s. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with B.M. Ingram
July 7, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 7 of 9
Clint Alley: When did you start your furniture business?
B.M. Ingram: Now, who said it was mine?
[laughter]
BI: No, no, here’s, here’s what, here’s what happened there. We, ah, like I say, we were handling farm supplies, and had the cotton gin, and we had some employees that, that worked part of the year and we didn’t have anything for them to do. And so we got into the lawnmower equipment business and sold lawnmowers and fertilizer and whatever you would need to farm with. And after the times changed with the cotton pickers and the machinery for doing all of that, which our cotton gin was not designed to do that, we gradually eliminated the cotton business and concentrated on the gasoline distribution and the farm supplies. The, ah, as we were going along with that, my wife had cancer, and we decided that we were gonna go to M.D. Anderson in Houston. So we went to M.D. Anderson and while we left I told Trisha, who had been working with me in the business, even when she was in high school, that the business was hers and I was leaving it, and she could lock the door or whatever. Well when I came back, she had about half of the building with furniture in it, and I thought, “Well this is nuts,” but fortunately she got into the outdoor business as Lowe’s and Home Depot gradually dominated the, ah, furniture, I mean the lawnmower business. And, so this is really Trisha’s patio furniture and all. I have not been active in the buying or selling the furniture. I spend my time enjoying visiting with people like y’all.
CA: Well, you’re good at it!
[laughter]
BI: Well, you’re kind.
CA: Can you describe the downtown area, as far back as you can remember?
BI: Well, let’s look. I don’t know whether you would remember Noah Danley. Noah was our police chief. And when I went off to school, Noah was, there was a City Café, and Noah was one of the cooks there at City Café, flipping hamburgers. And you could get a great big hamburger for a nickel. And this about-an-inch-thick hamburger would be meat and oatmeal squeezed together. And so the oatmeal would get all the juice and keep it from running out so it‘d be a good, juicy hamburger. And so Noah was doing that, but when I came back, Noah was the chief of police. And one of the nice things about it, he had gotten to be friendly with people of all walks of life, and he was, he was a real good man for keeping the peace. Now he might know somebody that was drinking, which was illegal, but if he wasn’t causing any trouble, Noah left him alone. And, so he, he didn’t start any kind of problems. Well now this, downtown Florence had the Majestic Theatre. Was a little, narrow theatre right beside the First National Bank, which was across from Rogers’ Department Store. So you had the street car coming through the area, you had the Rogers’ Department Store, was a three-story, or maybe it was just two-story, wood-frame store. Well, when Tom, Tom Rogers came back he started building the present store. He built it and kept the old Rogers’ open all during the week and everything and you’d go in there and there would be this steel beam in the, right straight through the, through an area. Ah, somehow they had worked it through there, and yet they were still selling the clothes and things so they gradually tore out the old store and built the new one, which has the floors at different levels from what the old wood-frame one had, and it’s wider than the original store. And, ah, you had Kreisman’s, was up at the far end; I believe you had the old courthouse that, regretfully, they tore down. You had a big bus, bus station. Now we had bus service and it’s amazing the transportation that was available those years. We had rail transportation out of East Florence, going to Nashville. We had, at the airport, there were ten or fifteen flights every day from Muscle Shoals, of these DC-3s, and I mean the planes were in and out. We don’t have any buses now, we don’t have any, ah, very little transportation by air. I need to tell you about how things have changed. My mother tells me about a trip that she made. Ah, Woodland is a little town on the little area on the river between Florence and Waterloo. And so she was going down there to visit a cousin along with another cousin, and so they were about eighteen years old or something. Well they walked from Prospect Street, that’s here in Florence, up and caught the street car, rode the street car to Tuscumbia, got on the train in Tuscumbia, and rode down to Barton, now Barton’s on the south side of the river, and it’s, ah, maybe halfway to Cherokee, went to Barton. There at Barton they had a buggy that met the trains, regularly met the trains, so they got out and got in the buggy, the buggy carried them down the river, and at the river they got a—what do you call it that would go from one side to the other? —ferry! They got on a ferry and went across to Woodland. Now this took most of the day, this long trip. Right now I can go to Woodland in about fifteen minutes from here. But the reason that they didn’t go down by buggy or wagon or something to Woodland on this side, was that it was muddy and it was almost impossible to get there. And so now you’ve got paved roads, you’ve got, and you’ve got electricity all over the county and things like that. But you had Farzley Candy Kitchen, was down there. This man could make some real good candy. You had General Dowdy, now his name was General Dowdy, his, his parents named him ‘General’ because they knew that if he got in the army, he wouldn’t maybe get a very good rank! But General Dowdy had a son named Billy Scott Dowdy that was in our class. And they had a, a candy production facility up there just right off of Walnut Street and they made these—stick candy was primarily what they made. And so they would make it and it had to be fairly sanitary, so whatever fell on the floor was pretty sanitary, so they would sweep it up and bag it, and we would buy the sweepings for a nickel a bag, and it was delicious! That’s, that’s where we all got too fat! It started off with the candy!
[laughter]
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| title |
B.M. Ingram (G) |
| titleStr |
B.M. Ingram (G) |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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FLCPLoral_hist173 |
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https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/oral_hist/id/173 |
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http://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/oral_hist/id/173 |
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1782468788300546048 |
| spelling |
B.M. Ingram (G)Business enterprises; Business districts(10:07) Mr. Ingram gives a brief history of how his company evolved and describes the downtown area of Florence, Alabama in the early to mid 1900s. This interview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence-Lauderdale Public LibraryFlorence-Lauderdale Public LibraryB.M. Ingram2009-7-7sound; textaudio/mp3; text/pdfEnglishIs part of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library collection.Contact the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library for permission to use.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with B.M. Ingram
July 7, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 7 of 9
Clint Alley: When did you start your furniture business?
B.M. Ingram: Now, who said it was mine?
[laughter]
BI: No, no, here’s, here’s what, here’s what happened there. We, ah, like I say, we were handling farm supplies, and had the cotton gin, and we had some employees that, that worked part of the year and we didn’t have anything for them to do. And so we got into the lawnmower equipment business and sold lawnmowers and fertilizer and whatever you would need to farm with. And after the times changed with the cotton pickers and the machinery for doing all of that, which our cotton gin was not designed to do that, we gradually eliminated the cotton business and concentrated on the gasoline distribution and the farm supplies. The, ah, as we were going along with that, my wife had cancer, and we decided that we were gonna go to M.D. Anderson in Houston. So we went to M.D. Anderson and while we left I told Trisha, who had been working with me in the business, even when she was in high school, that the business was hers and I was leaving it, and she could lock the door or whatever. Well when I came back, she had about half of the building with furniture in it, and I thought, “Well this is nuts,” but fortunately she got into the outdoor business as Lowe’s and Home Depot gradually dominated the, ah, furniture, I mean the lawnmower business. And, so this is really Trisha’s patio furniture and all. I have not been active in the buying or selling the furniture. I spend my time enjoying visiting with people like y’all.
CA: Well, you’re good at it!
[laughter]
BI: Well, you’re kind.
CA: Can you describe the downtown area, as far back as you can remember?
BI: Well, let’s look. I don’t know whether you would remember Noah Danley. Noah was our police chief. And when I went off to school, Noah was, there was a City Café, and Noah was one of the cooks there at City Café, flipping hamburgers. And you could get a great big hamburger for a nickel. And this about-an-inch-thick hamburger would be meat and oatmeal squeezed together. And so the oatmeal would get all the juice and keep it from running out so it‘d be a good, juicy hamburger. And so Noah was doing that, but when I came back, Noah was the chief of police. And one of the nice things about it, he had gotten to be friendly with people of all walks of life, and he was, he was a real good man for keeping the peace. Now he might know somebody that was drinking, which was illegal, but if he wasn’t causing any trouble, Noah left him alone. And, so he, he didn’t start any kind of problems. Well now this, downtown Florence had the Majestic Theatre. Was a little, narrow theatre right beside the First National Bank, which was across from Rogers’ Department Store. So you had the street car coming through the area, you had the Rogers’ Department Store, was a three-story, or maybe it was just two-story, wood-frame store. Well, when Tom, Tom Rogers came back he started building the present store. He built it and kept the old Rogers’ open all during the week and everything and you’d go in there and there would be this steel beam in the, right straight through the, through an area. Ah, somehow they had worked it through there, and yet they were still selling the clothes and things so they gradually tore out the old store and built the new one, which has the floors at different levels from what the old wood-frame one had, and it’s wider than the original store. And, ah, you had Kreisman’s, was up at the far end; I believe you had the old courthouse that, regretfully, they tore down. You had a big bus, bus station. Now we had bus service and it’s amazing the transportation that was available those years. We had rail transportation out of East Florence, going to Nashville. We had, at the airport, there were ten or fifteen flights every day from Muscle Shoals, of these DC-3s, and I mean the planes were in and out. We don’t have any buses now, we don’t have any, ah, very little transportation by air. I need to tell you about how things have changed. My mother tells me about a trip that she made. Ah, Woodland is a little town on the little area on the river between Florence and Waterloo. And so she was going down there to visit a cousin along with another cousin, and so they were about eighteen years old or something. Well they walked from Prospect Street, that’s here in Florence, up and caught the street car, rode the street car to Tuscumbia, got on the train in Tuscumbia, and rode down to Barton, now Barton’s on the south side of the river, and it’s, ah, maybe halfway to Cherokee, went to Barton. There at Barton they had a buggy that met the trains, regularly met the trains, so they got out and got in the buggy, the buggy carried them down the river, and at the river they got a—what do you call it that would go from one side to the other? —ferry! They got on a ferry and went across to Woodland. Now this took most of the day, this long trip. Right now I can go to Woodland in about fifteen minutes from here. But the reason that they didn’t go down by buggy or wagon or something to Woodland on this side, was that it was muddy and it was almost impossible to get there. And so now you’ve got paved roads, you’ve got, and you’ve got electricity all over the county and things like that. But you had Farzley Candy Kitchen, was down there. This man could make some real good candy. You had General Dowdy, now his name was General Dowdy, his, his parents named him ‘General’ because they knew that if he got in the army, he wouldn’t maybe get a very good rank! But General Dowdy had a son named Billy Scott Dowdy that was in our class. And they had a, a candy production facility up there just right off of Walnut Street and they made these—stick candy was primarily what they made. And so they would make it and it had to be fairly sanitary, so whatever fell on the floor was pretty sanitary, so they would sweep it up and bag it, and we would buy the sweepings for a nickel a bag, and it was delicious! That’s, that’s where we all got too fat! It started off with the candy!
[laughter]
http://server15947.contentdm.oclc.org/u?/oral_hist,173 |