Cotton Row Club
Ramcat Alley (Behind Cotton Row)
Greenwood, MS 38930
(662) 453-1180
SOLD February 2008
A guy wanted to sell [that Coke machine], and I went on and bought it and put beer in it. – Stacy Ragland
The Cotton Row Club has been a fixture in downtown Greenwood for as long as anyone can remember. Located just off of the Yazoo River and behind the legendary Cotton Row, this building is rumored to be the second oldest building in town. Once a stable and a blacksmith shop, it eventually became a hangout for cotton factors and other businessmen sometime during the first half of the twentieth century. Its current owner, Stacy Ragland, started coming to the club in the 1950s, began working there in the 1970s and when his boss retired, Mr. Ragland bought the place. And, fortunately or unfortunately, you can’t get food here. Sure, there are peanuts at poker games and a potluck during the Super Bowl, but this is not a restaurant. Rather, it’s a private little hideaway and watering hole for local businessmen and their friends. Mr. Ragland assures me that anyone is welcome (and that even women would be welcome too), but the place is known for its tight crowd and tight lips. Stop in, though, and get a beer out of the Coke machine, have Mr. Hambone shine your shoes and let the world around you stop for a spell.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
SUBJECT: Stacy Ragland, owner
DATE: July 23, 2003
LOCATION: Cotton Row Club
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans
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Stacy Ragland: My name is Stacy Ragland, and I'm seventy-two year old.
Amy Evans: Are you from Greenwood originally?
Greenwood, yeah.
Okay, so I've heard that this building that the Cotton Row Club is in on Ramcat Alley--
Right.
That
it's the second oldest building in Greenwood? Is that true? As far as
you know?
I imagine so. I think this thing was here-- I really don't know the exact date that this place was built, but it used to be a stable.
Uh-huh.
A blacksmith shop.
Okay.
And, uh, I don't know how it ever [laughs] become a club like that, but I come in here in the fifties. But I went to work here in nineteen seventy. I been here thirty-three years.
And you came to work here when it was already a club?
Yeah.
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And you own the building now?
Yeah.
And how did that transpire?
Well, uh, my boss retired and sold out to me.
What
was his name?
W.A. Smith.
Okay. So how would you describe the Cotton Row Club?
Well, it's more of a less, uh, a place where the cotton people, you know, come in here and have drinks some afternoon and--just sit a few hours before they go home. That's about all it is to it.
Are you open all day, generally?
Yeah. Well, I don't come down here now. I used to come down here at nine o'clock in the morning, but back then we had business all day long. Now, I don't have no business at all hardly until after five o'clock. Five o'clock in the evening. A lot of customers died out and everything, you know. And the younger generation don't participate in this club like it was back whenever I was here.
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But--just like I said, I don't have as many customers as I used to have because the younger generation--they do their thing, you know. And they're--this is mostly old folks.
What would you think the old folks would think if some younger people started coming in here?
Oh, they wouldn't care.
They wouldn't?
Oh, well now I--I got a pretty good amount of young people that come in here but, you know, during the summer months they don't do it. But when the football season and everything starts they'll come in, you know.
Yeah. And I know--Mr. Persons [Dale Persons at Viking Range Corporation who is a patron of Cotton Row Club] told me that women are welcome here, but do you have many--
Yeah.
Do you have many women that hang out here?
Well, it used to be, uh--No, uh-huh. No women hang out here.
[Laughs]
But I don't mind 'em coming in.
[Laughs]
If they want to come in and sit down and have a drink with the men, I don't care. It don't bother me. But way back yonder, it was just strictly a stag club and a lot of wives weren't [laughs]--come in here to see what was going on and what the place looked like and everything so--
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And you like running this place?
Oh, yeah. Well, you don't have to do nothing, really.
[Laughs]
[Laughs] Most days the same, answering the telephone.
Yeah.
Yeah. He does all the work. [Mr. Ragland motions to his left where "Hambone," the man who shines shoes at the Cotton Row Club, sits at the new shoeshine stand by the front door]
Yeah? Mr. Hambone.
Yeah.
How long has he been with ya? I think he--
Seventeen years I--Ain't it seventeen, Hambone?
Hambone: Yes, seventeen. Since eighty-six.
All right. You have a lot of shoeshine business? [To Hambone]
Hambone: Well, it's slow now. Not like it used to be.
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Summer months bad, anyway, 'cause lately--really--I don't book baseball or nothing, and basketball season's over, see. And football season'll start the second of next month.
Um-hmm.
And we'll be busy then until the pro playoffs next, and then basketball next year.
Um-hmm. Do you have big parties when all that's going on?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Is that more the time when people cook around here?
Yeah, in the winter time mostly.
In the winter.
Yeah.
Do you have one person who comes here that cooks pretty regularly or he's--
Well, I cook sometimes myself. I cook fish a lot.
Oh, do you?
You know, I do a lot of fishing and--[short pause]. Joe Ginard on the corner over here, he fishes a lot. He'll come in and ask me would I cook some fish. [Long pause] Uh, Morgan Johnson, he cooks. He'll cooks steaks and pork chops and things, you know.
Um-hmm.
He's a real good cook.
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Do you have a favorite piece of memorabilia on these walls in here?
No, not really.
No?
[Mr. Ragland turns and points up to the centerfold that is tacked to the wall above his head] That girl up there--
[Laughs]
--been there about--I guess she's been there twenty-five, thirty years anyway.
Has she? She's a fixture. What about this, um, board that's up behind me? This baseball-- [A big hand-painted scoreboard along the wall behind the couch where we are talking]
Yeah, it--it was a Southern league way back yonder, you know. They used to keep scores on it.
Uh-huh.
We had a ticket tape--tick--tape right over there behind that machine there. [Mr. Ragland points towards the back of the room where there is a snack vending machine at the bottom of the stairs.]
Uh-huh.
Till the federal government made you take 'em out, you know.
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Now, your Coca-Cola machine over there that's got--
Beer in it.
Beer in it? What made you decide to do that?
Well, uh--well, I can't answer that 'cause--a guy wanted to sell it, and I went on and bought it and put beer in it.
Yeah. It's just easier, huh?
Yeah.
Keeps it cold.
Yeah.
Keeps people payin' for it.
Yeah, that's--
[Laughs]
Yeah, that's right.
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Well, so you think you'll stay in the business for a while more?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, if my health will let me, yeah.
Map
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.