Marion interview [Begin Tape 2, Side 1] Warren: This is Mame Warren, tape two, with Hardin Marion. You mentioned little Lexington. We haven’t talked about Lexington. What was Lexington like in the fifties? Marion: Well, Lexington was little. Lexington was very much like it is today. My recollection is it was 6,000 people in 1951 when I got here, and it’s probably still about that size today. I’m not sure of the exact population. A lot of the houses look the same today as I remember them then. One thing I can really tell you about Lexington, but, again, it’s not from my student days. I told you I came back to my first reunion in 1975, my twentieth reunion, and I came back again in 1980. Between those five years, Lexington revitalized itself 32 and spruced itself up, I think with some Bicentennial money it got. Some of the lighting, I think, wiring was put underground. The streets, some of the streets, were bricked. Lexington cleaned itself up in those five years, so that there was a real noticeable difference when I was back in 1980. Lexington looked a little down at the heels in 1975, at least by comparison as I thought back on it when I got here for my reunion in 1980. I think Lexington is a gem of a city. I wouldn’t be surprised if I weren’t living here, myself, when I decide not to practice law any longer in Baltimore just because through my involvement with Washington and Lee, I’ve got—if I discount my law firm and the people I know through my law firm in Baltimore, I probably know more people in Lexington than I do in Baltimore. Warren: That’s the way I felt in Annapolis. Marion: So you know, little Lexington is little, but there an awful lot of people here that I know, most of them, of course, connected to the university. Warren: What were the hangouts back in the fifties? Where did you go? Marion: Well, since I was a Phi Gam, my traditional path each day was from the Colonnade back to the Phi Gam house up Lee Street, and Doc’s was the hangout of choice for our group, particularly for those who drank beer, but I was always with people who were drinking beer even when I wasn’t, so I would sit with them. Doc’s was the place. I remember hearing stories about Liquid Lunch and some of the hangouts on Main Street, but that was primarily for the Red Square and fraternity people and for those whose path took them a different way from the campus than mine did. What other hangouts were there? There was the State Theater and there was the Lyric Theater. A typical Sunday afternoon found everybody in my fraternity eating Sunday lunch at the fraternity house and then going down to the State Theater for the two o’clock movie, and making comments, probably being boorish as far as the local 33 residents were concerned, but trying to top one another with funny comments about what was on the screen. Probably sitting up in the balcony of the theater. We’d go to the Lyric occasionally to see a movie that wasn’t a first-run movie, maybe an arty-type movie. In law school, when I lived in the freshman dorm, I can remember frequenting—I don’t remember the name of it, but it was essentially where the Willson-Walker House is today—a restaurant that was a pizza place. I just don’t know the name of it, but it had what I considered to be the best pizzas in the world at that time. Of course, they were the only pizzas in the range that I could walk to. I loved them. I put on a lot of weight by going down there frequently at midnight for a pizza. I remember the pizzas, and I remember Fats Waller music on the jukebox down there. Warren: Where was this? Marion: On Main Street, on the west side of Main Street across from where the McCampbell Inn is, and it had to be right about where the Willson-Walker House is. Warren: Was Jabo’s in there somewhere? Marion: Somewhere. Warren: But you’re not talking about Jabo’s? Marion: I don’t think so. I think that was a place that sold beer. Warren: Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Marion: There was something on the other side of the street. That may have been the Liquid Lunch, and that may have been Jabo or Jabbo, where the McCampbell Inn is today. But there was something, I think, in the pizza place that I recall, as late as the early eighties, before the Willson-Walker House. I think that’s where it was, but it might have been one of the other places right in that same neighborhood. But there was a place where you went in and maybe sort of went downstairs, and they would have bluegrass music, something of that sort. I remember being there the first time I came 34 down for a class agents’ weekend in 1980, 1981 and going to that place. Then within a few years, it was the Willson-Walker Restaurant, I think. Warren: What you’re talking about was when it was the White Column Inn. Marion: That’s what it was, yes. Now, the White Column Inn, I think, was the pizza place by whatever name it was known in 1956 to ‘58. Warren: All right. That’s something I’ll have to find out about, because I knew it as the White Column, but that started in the early seventies or mid-seventies. I’ll have to find out. You’re the first person who mentioned pizza in Lexington. Marion: There was a pizza place there, and it played Fats Waller music. That was the era of—I don’t mean Fats Waller, Fats Domino. Fats Domino. What’s the song that I remember from that? I’ll think of it, maybe. Warren: So do you think there’s any connection between pizza, Fats Domino and Domino’s pizza? Marion: I don’t think so. You can draw that connection, but I’m not sure. Warren: Maybe the guy who started Domino’s Pizza went to W&L in the fifties. Well, I think we’ve gone through my list. Was there anything else you’d like—I mean, you had Alben Barkley up your sleeve. Do you have anything else up your sleeve? Marion: No, I threw in Alben Barkley. We’ve talked about my one big venture into campus politics. Warren: How about Fancy Dress? We haven’t talked about dances or any of that. Marion: I’m not a great dancer, and I was not a great dance attender. I went to Fancy Dress my freshman year, and I remember it cost me an arm and a leg to rent a costume and buy a corsage for a date. I think I decided after that I just wouldn’t bother to put on a costume. I’m not much of going over to a huge crowd of people. I’m not a great dancer. I generally sat on the fringes and watched other people dance in the fraternity house. 35 Warren: Something you’ve alluded to a couple of times is that other people were drinking beer but you that weren’t. Was that a big deal back then? I mean, certainly, keg parties are a big deal now. Was drinking beer— Marion: Yeah, drinking beer was important to most everybody I knew then. I didn’t drink anything when I came to Washington and Lee. I had my first drinks under the constant social pressure of my fraternity brothers. “Oh, come on. Try a beer. Try a beer.” So I had a couple of beers in April of my freshman year, and I then drank probably something else with gin in it. Those are the only two beers I have ever had in my life. I did not like the beer, and I am that aberration from Washington and Lee of somebody who just doesn’t drink beer. I did learn to drink whiskey and gin and the rest of those things during the course of my stay here, but I’ve never been a beer drinker. But most everybody else that I knew, they would drink beer. They would complain about the different alcoholic content of beers. I don’t remember what it was— 3.2 as opposed to some other number that was higher. They would complain if they could only get the weaker beer from Doc’s on the corner. I don’t know whether Doc’s sold the other beer to them if they weren't twenty-one. I don’t know how that worked. I remember that the only liquor that you could buy was at the ABC Store, which was in the same block as the State Theater on the other side and close to the corner of— is that Washington Street? Warren: Mmm. Marion: People would have to go buy a bottle of whiskey on the weekend and carry a bottle around. They went to parties which was—I always thought it was a self- defeating kind of a proposition, because you’d buy more whiskey than you could use in the course of an evening and were then under the temptation or the pressure to drink more than you could safely handle. People periodically passed out or went to sleep or retired from parties because they had too much to drink. I don’t think it was binge 36 drinking as I hear about today. I don’t think people drank solely to get drunk, but they clearly drank too much. Now, I include myself in that group. Warren: It must be part of the mystique of this place—alcohol. Marion: Yeah, that’s one of the things that has come to the attention of the Board of Trustees, and along with it, not only the concern about student drinking, but the perception on the students’ part that the board and the alumni, in general, want the university to have a reputation as a big party school. That’s kind of tough to deal with, because the board does not want students to believe that it does not tolerate drinking in anyway shape or form, but I think we’ve got to get the message out. The board does believe that drinking has got to be done in much more responsible way than students too frequently do it. Most of us probably know that from our own experience as students, as well as by what we see and hear today. Warren: I expect that’s true. Are there any final things you’d like to say as we wind this up? Marion: No, I think this is a wonderful project. I appreciate your inviting me to participate. I’ll forward to whatever it is you’re going to put out. Warren: I look forward to it, too. Marion: I look forward to see what I have to say at the time and what everybody else says. Thank you very much. Warren: Thank you. I appreciate it. [End of interview] 37