ALEX: You've spent many a
long time in the hardware business, you say?
RICHARDSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Is your father in the hardware business here?
RICHARDSON: Yeah. He established it.
ALEX.: He established it. Uh huh.
RICHARDSON: Nineteen and one.
ALEX.: Well. So you saw, even in your time, you've
seen a good bit of the business growth in this area.
RICHARDSON: My father's close to the Virginia
side. The Springs. Virginia House Springs.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
RICHARDSON: It's across the line there. ____. But he
studied to be an engineer ____
South America and got down in
Alabama. And went into business there some place over there. ____ all this lumber up here. About 30 miles up there. So
he decided to come back here. Built a store on the side of the river.
People's store is over there. They put the railroad--it started coming up
this way. Nobody knew which side of the river it was goin' to be on
'til they took it quite a ways. They thought it was goin' to be on this side so they went and built this store
because of the railroad. Of course, the railroad was a
big thing in those days.
ALEX.: Oh, yes.
RICHARDSON: They had four passenger trains a day.
ALEX.: Right through here. Can you remember those
coming through as a boy?
RICHARDSON: Yes.
ALEX.: You say your father is still living?
RICHARDSON: No.
ALEX.: No, he's not still living. But you say he
had a place over at Warm Springs.
RICHARDSON: I mean, yeah, that's where they came from.
ALEX.: Oh, I see.
Yeah. So you've spent most of your life here. You've seen the hey-day of the lumber
business. You've seen this town, I guess, when every
street light was lit.
RICHARDSON: Yeah, they had that, too. Oil lights lit 'em.
ALEX.: When would you say the hey-day if we can say
it that way of this Marlinton was? Nineteen thirties,
forties?
RICHARDSON: Oh, I would say twenties. It would be before
that.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
RICHARDSON: It was a pretty busy valley. Everything that
came in was on railroad.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
RICHARDSON: Before there was any cars or so.
ALEX.: What are
some of the things you have seen in the area that caught your fancy over the
years? Some of the stories, you've seen some of the fires on the street maybe? The hotel burn?
RICHARDSON: Yeah. Well, of course, there's been several
fires. ____ been some fires on that. ____. The old
building. ____. Of course, they moved on down the street
then.
ALEX.: It's one of
the older buildings. The old bank of Marlinton?
RICHARDSON: Uh huh. First National is over there, too.
At one time this town had three banks.
ALEX.: Is that right?
RICHARDSON: Yeah.
ALEX.: Do you remember the bank that was at
Green Bank? Or Durbin?
RICHARDSON: I didn't know there was one at Green Bank.
ALEX.: There used to be one over at Durbin, though,
didn't there not?
RICHARDSON: One at Durbin.
*: Those checkbooks over there is $43.38 and
there's a check for $42.80, making 58 cents.
ALEX: Well, that's 1905. That's a lot of money in
1905. Could almost go into business with that kind of
money in 1905. Thank you. I was looking through those accounts
over there. You can tell a lot about the names of the various companies that were in this area
because it looks like you did business with most of them if not all
of them.
*: Yeah.
ALEX: Sold coffins. Even sold coffins here.
RICHARDSON: We had just about a little of everything
then.
ALEX.: Yes.
RICHARDSON: Of course, you
had more do-it-yourself people back in those days. You have a lot of service that
you didn't have at that time.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
*: ____.
RICHARDSON: Everybody burned wood and coal back in those
days.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
RICHARDSON: Never had any gas in the kitchen.
ALEX.: Yeah.
RICHARDSON: There was oil. They had oil stoves.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
RICHARDSON: Cook stoves. Canned with. Don't have them
now.
ALEX.: Uh huh. Most of your business then was in
the hardware line. Today, it's in what? Fencing?
RICHARDSON: It's hardware and appliances, furniture.
ALEX.: Appliances. You sell a lot of appliances and
furniture then. Let's say in the 1900's it was mostly building materials then?
RICHARDSON: Yes, sir. They were building these little
towns all over the county. Uh, one thing that I might
mention, back in the teens and the twenties there was fourteen
baseball teams to the Greenbrier line to the head of
the railroad up here to
Oxford .
: Fourteen baseball teams.
: Yeah.
ALEX.: Is that right?
RICHARDSON: They had some pretty good players.
ALEX.: What did they do, play on the weekends
mostly? Let the phone company make a little money, huh?
Yeah.
RICHARDSON: They don't have any bargain stall.
ALEX.: Yeah.
RICHARDSON: Tape up there was selling 65 cents. ____
cost 60 cents. ____ a good weekend.
ALEX.: Is that what he said?
RICHARDSON: No sale.
ALEX.: No sale. Well . . .
RICHARDSON: Got a carload of hacksaw blades.
ALEX.: Yeah.
RICHARDSON: Wish he hadn't.
ALEX.: Yeah.
You, uh, I guess you've dealt with a lot of peddlers then, haven't you?
RICHARDSON: Oh, yeah.
ALEX.: Used to ride the train through here?
RICHARDSON: Yeah, yeah, back at one time they did.
ALEX.: Yeah, I expect your father did a lot of
business with
fellows who just rode the train through and
stayed at the local hotel. Isn't that right?
RICHARDSON: That's right.
* : Rather particular ____.
ALEX.: Rather than write this all down
sort of record
it and let my secretary go through it ___. And I cut
the tape off when you were on the phone and so on because I didn't want to . . . You don't object to it, do you?
RICHARDSON: Oh, no.
ALEX.: This saves me a little time and effort and
every now and then we can just save a lot of work this
way. You don't object to it?
RICHARDSON: No.
ALEX.: You can set around a store like this and
learn a lot about it. You seem to still have pretty good
business. Your employees just hustle around here and they're workin' all the time.
RICHARDSON: We've been pretty busy this morning. Yeah.
I was tired and I sit down and went to sleep for a little
while.
ALEX.: Yeah.
I got the feeling you were doing pretty good business this morning. How long have you
been in store?
RICHARDSON: Oh, since the first World War.
ALEX.: Since the first World War. So around 1914 or
someplace around there? Seventeen?
RICHARDSON: About eighteen or nineteen.