Ellison, Violet

              ORAL HISTORY OF VIOLET ELLISON
Interviewed and filmed by Keith McDaniel
July 20, 2011 
Mr. McDaniel: This is Keith McDaniel, and I’m with Violet Ellison, and today is July 20th, 2011, and I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up: where were you born, where did you go to school, something about your family.
Ms. Ellison: I’m an only child, and I was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, a long time ago. I remember from my childhood a very important day, the day that Huey Long, who was the governor of Louisiana, was assassinated on the steps of the Capitol building in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Yes. We didn’t have to go to school that day.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Ellison: I think it was summertime, I mean warm –
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
Ms. Ellison: – so we were glad. But, anyway –
Mr. McDaniel: But it was warm in Louisiana most of the time, wasn’t it?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, except January and February, and then you don’t want to be there. It’s very, very cold. But I grew up during the Depression. It was really bad.
Mr. McDaniel: What did your dad do?
Ms. Ellison: My father was a sheet metal worker, so during the big war, he worked in the shipyards building LST boats, the kind that open at one end, and the soldiers would –
Mr. McDaniel: Run out, march out.
Ms. Ellison: – run out, yeah. They would go right up to the beach and they could run out that way. Anyway, he worked a lot in those days. So I don’t know –
Mr. McDaniel: So you’re an only child. Did your mother work or was she a homemaker?
Ms. Ellison: She was a homemaker. She was a wonderful cook. We ate all kinds of wonderful French food, and I didn’t know until I was grown that I was eating gourmet food. We had an Italian family in the neighborhood. They had six or eight children – I’ve forgotten how many – and I played with them a lot, and I would be there at mealtimes, and I was eating gourmet Italian food, only I didn’t know that till many years later.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Now, were your mom and dad originally from Louisiana?
Ms. Ellison: Oh yes. Yes. Their parents were from Germany and France. One grandfather came from Alsace-Lorraine, and my parents didn’t know whether Germany owned it then or France, so they didn’t know much about that grandfather, anyway.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. So you went to school in Louisiana, in New Orleans.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. I went to college at Sophie Newcomb College, which was part of Tulane University then. Since then, much to my dismay, it has become now a part of Tulane. We sometimes had boys in the class at Newcomb, depending on the class. I studied sociology, which I thought was fascinating, and I still do. People in groups are interesting. Be careful how you two behave. But, theoretically, you’re not a group.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Ellison: With me here, you’re a group.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s right. The three of us, we’re a group.
Ms. Ellison: You’ve got to have three for a group. So anyway, the year the war ended, my girlfriend from college and I went to Chicago for a while, and we were there when the war ended, and we were there on D-Day, when everything ended. It was very exciting. It wasn’t that strange for me to be in a big crowd on State Street or whatever that main street is – I can’t remember now – because in New Orleans, of course, we have Mardi Gras, and that was a lot of fun growing up, and being in a crowd was nothing new for me. I didn’t like it. I like Oak Ridge, where it’s not so crowded.
Mr. McDaniel: Really? You didn’t like being in a crowd?
Ms. Ellison: No, I didn’t like it.
Mr. McDaniel: So you and your girlfriend, you said you had moved to Chicago and you were living in Chicago.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Were you working at the time?
Ms. Ellison: Yes. I was a nursery school teacher. There was a program called the War Nurseries. That was for mothers to go to work in the war effort, and the children were kept in these schools. It was a very well-run program, and I certainly enjoyed doing it. I did it in New Orleans and then in Chicago. It was a lot of fun, except for the kid who threw up very frequently at lunchtime. My God, that was awful.
Mr. McDaniel: I guess that’s part of taking care of kids.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: So you can remember the war ending?
Ms. Ellison: Oh yes, I remember the war very well. We ate Campbell’s black bean soup over and over again.
Mr. McDaniel: Really?
Ms. Ellison: It was awful, but it was better than nothing, and when you work, you can’t spend too much time cooking. But I enjoyed Chicago very much. We did all the culture parts, the museums, and we saw operas. I don’t know. It was a lot of fun. I miss that kind of thing being here, but I know Knoxville has an opera program, but I never – I guess I’m all through with opera.
Mr. McDaniel: So you were in Chicago and you were working, after you graduated college. So how did you end up in Oak Ridge?
Ms. Ellison: Oh, well I married a physicist from New Orleans, and his sister was my good friend that I went to Chicago with.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, it’s a small world.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Exactly.
Ms. Ellison: His buddy that he had gone to graduate school at Tulane University, his buddy got a job at Oak Ridge when they graduated, and my husband, he taught physics at Louisiana Polytechnic Institute in north Louisiana. You remember Louisiana Polytechnic Institute because they always beat the Volunteers – the UT [University of Tennessee] girls in basketball.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s exactly right.
Ms. Ellison: So we lived in Ruston, oh, for quite a while.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, and this was after you left Chicago, you went back to Louisiana and you got married, right?
Ms. Ellison: Yes, and my husband was from New Orleans, too. He was a student at Tulane then, so he got the job at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which his friend helped him get, and his friend was one of the people in our wedding when we got married.
Mr. McDaniel: So what year did you move to Oak Ridge?
Ms. Ellison: We moved to Oak Ridge in 1952.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay, 1952. Now, did you have children at this point?
Ms. Ellison: Yes, we had one daughter when we moved here, and I’ll never forget that train ride from New Orleans to Oak Ridge.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, tell me about it.
Ms. Ellison: She was wide awake the whole time.
Mr. McDaniel: How old was she?
Ms. Ellison: She was just barely three.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, really?
Ms. Ellison: Her birthday was in August and we came in September, so she had just been three for a short time. So we came here, and my husband had gotten an apartment on West Outer Drive, right next to what became Peach Orchard. Now, it’s a beautiful subdivision. Then, it was just woods, and I loved being right on the edge of the woods. You know, being from the city, it was just like having a park right outside your door. So anyway, we had three children in the following years. I did not go back to work because I thought being a mother was important and I just didn’t like the hassle of taking care of kids and coming home and cooking dinner, and all that. To me, that’s not my idea of living. What else?
Mr. McDaniel: So you came to Oak Ridge you said in –
Ms. Ellison: In ’52.
Mr. McDaniel: – ’52, and you had your daughter, she was already born. She was three when you came, and then you had two more children after that, while you were here.
Ms. Ellison: “It’s in the water,” they used to say – 
Mr. McDaniel: Is that what it was?
Ms. Ellison: – “Don’t drink the water. You’ll have a lot of kids.”
Mr. McDaniel: I’m sure, and your husband worked at the lab.
Ms. Ellison: Yes, he was a crystallographer. He is now deceased.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right? Okay. So a crystallographer, what is that?
Ms. Ellison: That’s a person who puts crystals on an X-ray machine and looks for the – I don’t know whether it’s nuclei or what, but then they plot it on a – I don’t know. I used to help him do it, but it was a long, long time ago.
Mr. McDaniel: So what were some of the things – when you came to Oak Ridge, you were being a mother first, I’m sure, but I’m sure you got involved in the community somehow.
Ms. Ellison: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: What were some of the things you did here?
Ms. Ellison: The first thing I did when I came was join the Oak Ridge Chorus. I always enjoyed singing. Not that I was very good at it or had any kind of voice, but I enjoyed singing. I had always been in the Newcomb Glee Club the whole time I was in college, and so I enjoyed doing that very much, until I got pregnant, and then I couldn’t do it anymore, the second time.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Exactly. What were some of the other things you did in town?
Ms. Ellison: I haven’t thought about my early days in Oak Ridge for a long time. Even though I knew you were coming, I didn’t think about that.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, you know, they said that if you had an interest in something, there was a club for it.
Ms. Ellison: Yes, that’s true, but I’m not that much of a club-goer. I like reading. I’ve always been a library cardholder, and for a while there, I was a volunteer at the library. I was one of the lucky ones who got to shelve the new books, and I did that for maybe three or four years, and then I started having problems that old people have, like osteoporosis and falling down and that kind of thing. That was the thing.
Mr. McDaniel: I understand.
Ms. Ellison: But I enjoyed living in Oak Ridge. We had a lot of fun. We had a social group, a Saturday night drinking group.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Tell me about that. What was that about?
Ms. Ellison: No. [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: You got together Saturday night and had a few cocktails, is that what it was?
Ms. Ellison: No, we didn’t drink cocktails. We drank, but it wasn’t cocktails.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. [laughter]
Ms. Ellison: That’s okay. So moving right along – oh, I forgot. How could I forget that? I forgot what year it was. Oh, goodness. Somewhere along the line, I had a friend I met at church, Virginia Jones, and she had been an English major and she was very interested in books. She wanted to own a bookstore, so she asked me if I would go in with her and be a partner and we would start a bookstore, and so we did that in 19 – anyway.
Mr. McDaniel: What decade was it? Do you remember? You may not remember the year, but what decade was it?
Ms. Ellison: No, no.
Mr. McDaniel: Was it ’60s, ’70s?
Ms. Ellison: It was in the ’70s, I think.
Mr. McDaniel: In the ’70s?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, because I ended up in the store without the partners, and she got interested in being a therapist, and I was doing the bookstore thing. One of my major customers was the seminar center. At that time, we had a seminar center in Oak Ridge for government workers. They would come here to be trained, and it was partly to educate them in the nuclear age, so to speak, and they ordered a lot of books, so that really helped my business very much.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, where was your bookstore?
Ms. Ellison: It was on Tyrone Road, in the same building with The Oak Ridger newspaper. We called it Jackson Square, because it was very close to Jackson Square but I was there running the bookstore for I think it was twenty-five years or twenty-seven years, something like that.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty important.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. Oh yeah, I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun, and I did special orders. Oak Ridge is such a diverse community that people would buy gifts for their relatives all over and I one time bought some books and had to mail them to China.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, what was the name of your bookstore? Oh, Jackson Square. You said Jackson Square.
Ms. Ellison: No.
Mr. McDaniel: No?
Ms. Ellison: The name of it – it was a name chosen by a committee.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay.
Ms. Ellison: It was called The Bookstore. Yes, no imagination. Bad, bad, bad.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, my goodness.
Ms. Ellison: But, anyway –
Mr. McDaniel: So you ran that for twenty-five years. So when did you give it up?
Ms. Ellison: I closed it. I retired in – I think it was ’73.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. All right.
Ms. Ellison: When I was seventy-three, my memory started going.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Yes, and that’s not a very good thing to do for somebody in business. You have to remember the customers, and I used to read Publisher’s Weekly every week, religiously. I would frequently look at The New York Times book review section, because my customers were – Oak Ridgers read The New York Times. They would call me and ask me if I had such-and-such a book, so I tried to keep up that way. But I did special orders, and it was a lot of fun.
Mr. McDaniel: I bet I’ve been in that bookstore before. I’m sure I have, if it was in operation that long. I grew up in Kingston, but –
Ms. Ellison: Tell me your name again.
Mr. McDaniel: Keith McDaniel. I grew up in Kingston, but we came to Oak Ridge all the time when I was young.
Ms. Ellison: And you were a reader?
Mr. McDaniel: Not as much as my mother. My mother, her house is full, every corner is crammed with a book, but she was a very voracious reader. All right. If we get to things that are off limits, just tell me. [laughter]
Ms. Ellison: [laughter]
Mr. McDaniel: So after 1960, you were on your own.
Ms. Ellison: ’66.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, 1966, you were on your own, and your kids were growing up; they were in school, I imagine.
Ms. Ellison: The first thing I did when I got married was join the Unitarian Church. My husband didn’t like churches, and I enjoyed doing that very much. It’s a wonderful group of people. Some of my best friends were Unitarians.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. So was that the church you joined here?
Ms. Ellison: Yes. I still belong to it.
Mr. McDaniel: You still belong to the Unitarian Church.
Ms. Ellison: I don’t like going in the summer because this summer we have something called the Celebration Service, complete with a drum.
Mr. McDaniel: Uh-oh. [laughter]
Ms. Ellison: I prefer the traditional service, just the piano.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you remarry?
Ms. Ellison: No.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. All right. You just decided to –
Ms. Ellison: Had some offers. Sitting in a bookstore all day, you get a lot of offers.
Mr. McDaniel: I bet. I’m sure you were involved in the community, you know, being a business owner and such in the business community.
Ms. Ellison: For a while, I was very interested in politics.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay.
Ms. Ellison: In the 19 – I knew I would forget that. The year that – oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t brush up my memory.
Mr. McDaniel: That’s okay.
Ms. Ellison: There was a group in Oak Ridge called Concerned Democrats of Oak Ridge, and that was when – anyway, the Democratic Party in Anderson County was very active during a particular time in history.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. In recent history.
Ms. Ellison: Yes, recent history, and so the Concerned Democrats of Oak Ridge organized – the Concerned Democrats, that was a national organization like, and we put on a coffee house every Saturday night during the election year, when Gene McCarthy was running for president.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, I see.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. Does that name ring any bells for you?
Mr. McDaniel: I imagine that was back in the –
Ms. Ellison: The ’70s.
Mr. McDaniel: Was it the ’70s? Was he running in the ’70s?
Ms. Ellison: I think so.
Mr. McDaniel: Maybe. So it was maybe late ’60s, early ’70s.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, the late ’60s.
Mr. McDaniel: The late ’60s, I believe.
Ms. Ellison: Anyway, the coffee house was a lot of fun. It was during the Vietnam War.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Now, where was it held?
Ms. Ellison: It was held in the basement of the restaurant that is no longer there, but it was in Jackson Square, behind – it was across the street from the arcade where all the craftsmen are today.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, Greenwich Village there.
Ms. Ellison: Greenwich Village. Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Right.
Ms. Ellison: There was a restaurant right across the parking lot.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, it was the Greek restaurant.
Ms. Ellison: Yes.
Mr. McDaniel: What was the name of it? It was the Greek restaurant, though. I remember.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, and in the basement, there was a basement –
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, okay.
Ms. Ellison: – and there was a wonderful place there, with chairs and tables, and there was a stage.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, wow.
Ms. Ellison: So we had all kinds of people –
Mr. McDaniel: Sure.
[telephone rings]
Ms. Ellison: – that’s my telephone.
Mr. McDaniel: Do you want to get that, or do you want to just let it ring?
Ms. Ellison: I want to –
Mr. McDaniel: Go ahead. If you need to get it, go ahead.
[break in recording]
Ms. Ellison: Okay.
Mr. McDaniel: All right.
Ms. Ellison: So we had a good time at the coffee house. I was the treasurer of the Concerned Democrats of Oak Ridge. Lily Rose Claiborne was the president. I’m not going to remember the names of all the people, but we had a large membership, and we gave the Democratic Party, the person running for president, McCarthy – oh, I don’t know how I could forget Gene McCarthy, because the Concerned Democrats of Oak Ridge hired a bus, or maybe it was two buses, and we drove to Nashville, where McCarthy was giving a talk at – I can’t remember where it was. But one of the things I remember about that night was, besides us being there, a whole crowd of Oak Ridgers, there was a whole lot of nuns, too.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Yes. Growing up in New Orleans, I’m very familiar with nuns. My mother was a Catholic. But to see them at a political rally was very strange. So anyway, I had never been to Nashville, so it was interesting for me to go there. So I feel like I’ve had an interesting life since my marriage since my divorce.
Mr. McDaniel: Since your divorce, right.
Ms. Ellison: Since the children grew up and got –
Mr. McDaniel: Flew the nest, right?
Ms. Ellison: – yeah. But one is in Knoxville now, and one of them is in Gainesville, Florida. She works at a Chinese medical school. Florida has a lot of Chinese medical schools. She’s lived in different cities in Florida, and she usually ends up working at the medical schools. Anyway, she was my Phi Beta Kappa.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Pardon me bragging.
Mr. McDaniel: Right, that’s fine.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. All of my girls were very intelligent. The one that died was not a good student, but the one that lives in Knoxville is a buyer for H. T. Hackney Grocery Company. She is a big help to me now, while I’m not as fit physically as I used to be. She comes every Saturday and does my hair. That’s why it looks like this on Wednesday. It’s not, you know, Monday and Tuesday are pretty good. So I’ve always been interested in politics.
Mr. McDaniel: Did you ever think about running for office?
Ms. Ellison: No. Oh, no. I enjoyed being the treasurer of the Concerned Democrats. I kept track of the money. That’s always been something easy I could do. I mean, I always kept out of debt when I had my bookstore. I had a good credit record. I had accounts with many publishers and the big wholesale company in Nashville. So I enjoyed that very much, and I really enjoyed working with the people in the center, seminar center.
Mr. McDaniel: Seminar center.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, it was interesting to go there and see all the people from governmental operations all over the country that would come there and be trained.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, was that run by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities or by the Lab [Oak Ridge National Laboratory]?
Ms. Ellison: No, neither.
Mr. McDaniel: Really?
Ms. Ellison: It was a separate organization.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: I bet they had contracts, though, with the government.
Ms. Ellison: Yes, and the participants, it was usually a two-week session, and they stayed in the Alexander Hotel.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, where was this? Was it across the street? Was it that building across the street?
Ms. Ellison: Across from the Alexander.
Mr. McDaniel: Yes.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, it’s big.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. I remember now.
Ms. Ellison: They bought a lot of books from me. It was very interesting seeing the kind of things they were reading. Anyway, I enjoyed working in the bookstore very much. When I was a child in New Orleans, I remember one summer I personally organized a library in my neighborhood.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. My parents had a garage that was empty. You remember, I grew up during the Depression, so we didn’t have a car anymore, but we had a garage, and so that’s where our library was, and of course, I was the librarian. I had most of the books.
Mr. McDaniel: Of course.
Ms. Ellison: My parents were very good about buying books for me when I was a child.
Mr. McDaniel: Sure. Well, good.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, what else about your life in Oak Ridge do you want to tell us about? Early on, you said you really enjoyed Oak Ridge, you enjoyed, I guess, the lifestyle in Oak Ridge better than the big city.
Ms. Ellison: Oh, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Well, I mean, why is that? It’s just easier, a little slower?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, that’s what it is. You know, people in New Orleans rush. Oh, my father was one of those people that couldn’t walk slowly. I had a friend in Oak Ridge who was from New Jersey, Diantha Paré. She was one of those fast walkers, too. It used to drive me crazy. She was a good friend. She had been a teacher in the Oak Ridge Nursery School where my first daughter went when we first came to Oak Ridge, and Diantha would come pick me up from the bookstore and we would go to lunch frequently. I always had helpers of one sort or another; mostly they were friends of mine, people from church. Diantha and I would walk over to the Greek restaurant that you were talking about.
Mr. McDaniel: The Acropolis.
Ms. Ellison: The Acrop – oh yes.
Mr. McDaniel: The Acropolis.
Ms. Ellison: I’m so glad you remember the name. He was the best cook. Oh, I just loved those lunches. But she was one of those people who rushed, and we would walk from the bookstore to the Acropolis, and she would rush ahead, and I would be – I don’t know. She was one of those fast walkers.
Mr. McDaniel: Speaking of food, I’ve not asked this of people, obviously the Acropolis was good; were there other really good restaurants in Oak Ridge, I mean good restaurants, or not? You know? Tell me – 
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. I remember –
Mr. McDaniel: – having grown up eating good food.
Ms. Ellison: – yeah, I remember Oak Ridge had a cafeteria. It was one of those that was integrated when we had all the integration movement. I remember we had a march with black people to show our support for integration. I remember taking two of my daughters with me, and I have a picture of that, too.
Mr. McDaniel: Is that right?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, but I don’t think the cafeteria was very good, but we did eat there occasionally.
Mr. McDaniel: What was the name of it? Do you remember the name of it?
Ms. Ellison: No.
Mr. McDaniel: Where was it located?
Ms. Ellison: It was in Downtown, what we call Downtown.
Mr. McDaniel: It wasn’t the S&W was it?
Ms. Ellison: No, no, no.
Mr. McDaniel: The Davis – 
Ms. Ellison: Yes, I think it was the Davis Brothers.
Mr. McDaniel: Davis Brothers.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah – 
Mr. McDaniel: That’s right.
Ms. Ellison: – and the local people, many of them were Unitarians, helped integrate Davis Brothers. They went down there. A lot of our people knew a lot of people in the black community, and so it was just one of those things that happened that I was very happy to see. Growing up in New Orleans, the black people were treated so badly –
Mr. McDaniel: Really?
Ms. Ellison: – just so badly, but I’m so glad that things have changed as much as they have now. Maybe not perfectly, but so much better than they used to be.
Mr. McDaniel: Were there any other restaurants in town that were any good?
Ms. Ellison: Not that I remember.
Mr. McDaniel: I bet your kids went to the counter at Woolworth’s occasionally, didn’t they, down there?
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, I liked Woolworth’s. I grew up in New Orleans eating at Woolworth. When I was a child, I frequently had to go to the doctor. My mother would take me to the doctor on Saturdays. I can’t remember now what it was for, but she would take me to lunch at Woolworth. Oh, and that was fun.
Mr. McDaniel: That was a treat, wasn’t it?
Ms. Ellison: Yes, that was a treat.
Mr. McDaniel: I remember going to this Woolworth when I was a kid, and going to the soda fountain and the lunch counter. I had a lady I was talking to just this week, and she was talking about the Federal Bakery.
Ms. Ellison: Oh.
Mr. McDaniel: She said she misses having a good bakery like the Federal Bakery.
Ms. Ellison: Oh, they were great. I had forgotten all about the Federal Bakery.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. You’d walk by it and smell that fresh bread and those fresh rolls –
Ms. Ellison: You couldn’t resist.
Mr. McDaniel: – and I remember my mother, whenever it was a real, real special occasion, she might get something from the Federal Bakery and take home. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about, anything else you want to recall?
Ms. Ellison: I don’t know. I’m really am sorry that I didn’t think more about this.
Mr. McDaniel: When you’re long gone, when people think back of you and Oak Ridge, what is it you’d like for them to remember?
Ms. Ellison: You should have told me that beforehand. One thing I’m really interested in, and that’s nature, and pollution and things like that, and I think it’s wonderful that we have the recycle business going on here, even though it costs seven dollars a month, but I’m glad to do it.
Mr. McDaniel: Glad to do it. Okay.
Ms. Ellison: Well, I’ve lived in several places in Oak Ridge, and I hope I’ve improved each place I’ve lived, improved the landscaping, although I can’t remember.
Mr. McDaniel: Now, how long have you been in this house?
Ms. Ellison: Oh, I came in this house in the year 2000.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, did you? Okay.
Ms. Ellison: That’s a real easy one to remember.
Mr. McDaniel: There you go.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: So you’ve not been here that long, have you?
Ms. Ellison: No. I lived in Emory Valley, one section of Emory Valley for a long time, maybe twelve or fourteen – longer than that – long enough to pay off the mortgage, because when I sold that house, I had enough money to buy this for cash. So I have no mortgage now and I love having these mortgage people call me on the phone and I say, “I don’t have a mortgage.” “You don’t have a mortgage?”
Mr. McDaniel: I remember the day that my mom and dad paid off their last house payment. They moved to the house they live in now in 1956 –
Ms. Ellison: Oh.
Mr. McDaniel: – and I guess it was ’86, they paid their last house payment. I think it was eighty-three dollars. That was how much their house payment was every month for thirty years, but when they moved into that house in 1956, it was brand new. It was probably twelve hundred square feet, and it cost ten thousand dollars.
Ms. Ellison: Wow, that was a bargain.
Mr. McDaniel: You know, it was great, and of course my dad was a machinist at Kingston Steam Plant, well, for TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] his whole career, and I remember him coming home and he about doubled the size of the house, just enclosing the carport first, and then adding some more to it, and putting something onto the back, so anyway.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: All right. Well, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. I appreciate it. It was interesting. I didn’t know about your bookstore. I didn’t know that was you.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, it was interesting being right next door to The Oak Ridger.
Mr. McDaniel: Oh, I’m sure.
Ms. Ellison: Every day, the press would run sometime after lunch, and I would get so sleepy listening to the hum of the motors –
Mr. McDaniel: Of the press?
Ms. Ellison: – of the press, yeah. It was really funny.
Mr. McDaniel: Now you say that was on Tyrone. Now, where is that exactly? See, I don’t remember where the old Oak Ridger used to be.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: Where is that? Is that –
Ms. Ellison: Oh, off of Central.
Mr. McDaniel: – which is off of Central. Oh, okay. Yeah.
Ms. Ellison: You know Central?
Mr. McDaniel: Yes.
Ms. Ellison: Goes straight up to Jackson Square.
Mr. McDaniel: Right. Yeah, it’s that road that goes in between the parallels of the Turnpike, but between the Turnpike and Tennessee there.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. Right.
Mr. McDaniel: Okay. Sure.
Ms. Ellison: Well, there was a cleaner –
Mr. McDaniel: Yeah, on the corner.
Ms. Ellison: – on the corner. Yeah – 
Mr. McDaniel: Right, and there used to be –
Ms. Ellison: – and The Oak Ridger.
Mr. McDaniel: – and there used to be Sun Printing Company was down there after The Oak Ridger, I think.
Ms. Ellison: Oh.
Mr. McDaniel: I believe so.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, yeah.
Mr. McDaniel: I know where that is.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah, it was –
Mr. McDaniel: Was the Magic Wok there then, that little –
Ms. Ellison: Oh yes. They have good food.
Mr. McDaniel: They have great food! It’s not much to look at, but it sure is good eating.
Ms. Ellison: Yeah. Well, my bookstore was not much to – I mean it was just a plain, red brick building, but there was a nice window, a really big window, and I enjoyed it. We had a lot of fun. Well –
Mr. McDaniel: Is that it?
Ms. Ellison: – I think that’s it.
Mr. McDaniel: All right. Well, thank you so much.
[end of recording]