Matt Paxton interview

[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Warren: Let's talk a little bit about Lexington. What were the hangouts in Lexington
when you were young, and did students come up to the local places?
Paxton: Yes, students did, I'm sure. I'm trying to think about some—one of the
hangouts, I guess even before I got to college, was a place called Mike's Place. You've
probably heard some other people talk about that. Mike's Place was a little dive—not a
dive, but a night spot located right on the corner of the road that goes into the golf club.
The building is still there. It's some sort of apartments now and they've added other
units to it. But at that time it was the main night spot that young people went out to,

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and Mike was a real character. He had a little zoo, I think, that went along with it, had
some animals. But the nightclub or night spot or whatever was where we all went, and I
think he had a juke box, you know. We danced and had booze all around the place.
That's the main place that I remember. There were other places that came and want.
Warren: This was out on South Main?
Paxton: Uh-huh.
Warren: I've never heard of Mike's. That's a brand-new one to me.
Paxton: Oh, yeah, that was a big local spot back in those days.
Warren: Do you think any photos have survived of that?
Paxton: I wonder, because he was around here for a long time, and they would get him
to bring his animals out for like the mock convention parade and that sort of thing.
Warren: Who was he?
Paxton: His name was Mike Brown.
Warren: That's a new one on me.
Paxton: Then there were things downtown. Of course, there was the Liquid Lunch.
Have you heard about that?
Warren: No. This is great. What's the Liquid Lunch?
Paxton: The Liquid Lunch was down where the Camel Inn is now. That went through a
number of names. That was just strictly a beer joint, pretty much, and that wasn't the
official name of it. I can't remember what the official name was. [Laughter] But that's
what everybody called it.

         Then there was Jabo's, which was where the Willson-Walker House is. Jabo
Morris. And he provided everybody with beer, pretty much. He delivered beer at W&L
and VMI, and he had his place down there.
Warren: It was a restaurant?
Paxton: It was really just a beer joint, I guess we'd call it, just a place where you could
go in and drink beer. He must have had a restaurant, too. I think the ABC laws have

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probably always required that you had to serve some food where you served beer or
wine or whatever.

         But then another big place was Doc's Corner Store. I know you've heard about
that. You haven't heard about that?
Warren: The Corner Store.
Paxton: The Corner Store.
Warren: Charlie was telling me about that.
Paxton: Charlie would remember the Corner Store.
Warren: But it was called Doc's?
Paxton: Yeah, Doc Collette [phonetic]. I don't know what Doc's first real name was, but
his last name was Collette.
Warren: Where was that located?
Paxton: That was right there on the corner where the post office is, across from the post
office where the Quik Print place is, Quality Quik Print. Collette was a character for
years. When I was in school here, that was really the big beer-drinking place where he
just had booze on the counter there. He supposedly served food, as all those places did.
And the ABC people were just not nearly as strict as they are now about underage
drinking. Of course, I guess the age was a little younger then, too, maybe. But Doc's was
just an institution. They had a fire there one time, I remember, and Doc's poor little dog
got burned up, and that was a great source of consternation for quite a while. But he
operated that place for a good many years, but its heyday was in those post-war years
when I was here.

         Then there was a place down at the Dutch Inn for a while, a little bar or whatever
down there. You know where that is on Washington Street?
Warren: Yes.

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Paxton: I can't remember what they called that exactly. That was in business for a
while. So those were the main places. And then the fraternities were a center of that sort
of thing, social activities for the college-age crowd.
Warren: Today we're a real magnet for tourists. Were tourists coming through back
then?
Paxton: Tourists were coming through then, not nearly in the numbers that they are
now, but tourists have always come through for a long, long time on account of the Lee-
Jackson graves and the Lee connection with the college here and so forth. And, of
course, there was always a certain amount of travel through here on account of colleges,
people coming and going for colleges.
Warren: And I wonder weren't people coming through just because it was a major
intersection.
Paxton: Yes, yes. When 11 and 60 crossed right there on the main corner of town, there
was a certain amount of travel that just came through because of two major highways.
Warren: I came across a reference recently to the finishing paving Route 60 and that
they were almost done paving all the way to Staunton.
Paxton: Right. [Laughter]
Warren: I thought, oh, my God, I guess there was a time when it wasn't paved.
Paxton: Yeah. Well, there was a time when Lexington was very isolated travel-wise,
really. When Lee was here, it was extremely isolated. Of course, at that time the canal
was still in operation, but later on people just despaired about getting in and out of
Lexington. At one time the best way to get in and out of Lexington was to take a
stagecoach through Goshen Pass and catch the train in Goshen. You can imagine what
that trip through Goshen Pass in those days must have been like by stagecoach. So
travel was not good.
Warren: I came across a reference where it talked about the various ways—this is about
1850—the various ways to get in and out of Lexington, and it said whichever way you

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chose, you wish you had chosen the other way. [Laughter] I thought that was a real
good quote.

         Something you've alluded to a couple of times is fast upon us, is the mock
convention.
Paxton: Oh, yes. Well, that's certainly been a great tradition at W&L, and that trust for
authenticity has been true going way back. It has become more scientific in recent years,
I'm sure, and they've probably been in close touch with all the party functionaries and
so forth to try to get an authentic feel for it, but I was in school, of course, for the one in
'48, and that was one we missed, I believe. I'd have to go back and look. But there was a
real push for authenticity.

         The mock convention has also historically attracted some very prominent
politicians here, including President [Harry S.] Truman and, of course, former Vice
President Alben Barkley, who died here. That was, of course, a thing that focused a lot
of attention on it. Bill Clinton, of course, spoke here when he was governor. [Jimmy]
Carter, before he became president. [Barry] Goldwater. Just many, many really high-
profile political figures have come here, and it's been taken fairly seriously by people in
the political sphere, I think.
Warren: So you've covered mock conventions not only as a student, but as a
newspaperman.
Paxton: Yeah, sure have.
Warren: So you've got a real continuum. Describe what that's been like through the
years. How has mock convention evolved in your life here in Lexington?
Paxton: Well, it's one thing that has really had a pretty steady course through the years,
it seems to me, and in my time, I can't speak for what it was like before World War II,
but ever since the war, the forties, it's been pretty much what it is today, although it, I'm
sure, is more of a production. There was nothing like the money spent on all of this in
those days, of course, that there is now. But even in those times, they had coverage in

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Life magazine, which was a big thing, you know, and this sort of thing. So it has
certainly remained a strong tradition and very much what it is today, really, over those
years.
Warren: I'm intrigued that the students are able to entice these big-name people here.
How do they do it?
Paxton: I don't know. I think they do it lots of times by political pull of one kind or
another. For instance, I remember when Jimmy Carter came up here, at that time he was
governor of Georgia, I guess, my friend Dick Denny [phonetic], who was somehow
connected with Carter, maybe in the state administration or whatever in Georgia, got
him to come up here, I'm sure. He was a W&L alumnus. I'm sure lots of times it's just
through some sort of connections. I don't know how they got Newt Gingrich to come
this time, but I'll believe he's here when he gets here, because it's mighty hard for a man
like that to break loose. Historically, the people they've gotten have been people who
either have been in top political office or have not yet arrived at top political office. It's
very unusual to have people like Gingrich, who are right in the thick of it at this time.
That really is something different, and I'm going to be interested to see whether it will
work out.
Warren: Me, too. I'm curious whether they say, "Well, Jimmy Carter was nobody when
he came to mock convention, and after mock convention, look what happened." And
the same thing with Clinton. I wonder if they don't have some line they use.
Paxton: I don't know. They might. They might have something that they use to help.
I'm sure they've used everything they can to entice them here.

         One of the real challenges of the mock convention through the years has been to
kind of keep the lid on student high spirits, you know, with a few beers flowing here
and there. People just get in high spirits and fall off floats and that sort of thing, you
know. And also they sometimes have to be encouraged a little bit to tone down some of
the floats, because the school kids get out of school to watch the parade and so forth.

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Warren: Oh, they do?
Paxton: Yeah, they do and will this year, I think. So that's one thing. I had a good time
just this spring. My son has a little magazine that he gets out for the tourism business,
Lexington for the travel industry. He asked me to do a little piece for it on the history of
the mock convention, and I had a real good time going back through files of the paper
and looking at those stories I had written all those years ago, you know, remembering
some of the things.

         One of the funny things was the time that Truman spoke. Some of the politicians
had a real good sense of what this was all about and how you really wanted to get into
the swing of it and make this a real convention speech, you know, but some others
haven't quite gotten the drift of it as well and they've undertaken to kind of lecture the
students, you know. "You young men should," you know, and so forth. And that
doesn't go over well at all. I think maybe Truman was a little bit that way, and the
crowd got a little bit restless. This one guy, in a quiet moment, in the room he just rolled
this beer can down the aisle, and you could just hear that thing clanging down. It was
very embarrassing to all the W&L authorities and so forth, but this is the kind of thing
they've had to contend with, of course.

         But through it all, the student leadership of the mock convention has really done
a wonderful job in keeping it to its purpose and keeping the high jinks within bounds,
and the demonstrations on the floor, kind of keeping them within reason and so forth.
Warren: That's a pretty good description. I think that's just great.

         A couple of times you've made mention of the high jinks, the beer-drinking, and
you've watched this both as a student and probably participated a little as a student, but
as a newspaperman following the town-gown relationship through the years. What
have you observed? Does Washington and Lee have a drinking problem?
Paxton: Well, I'm sure it does, as does every college campus. It's gone through phases, I
think. I remember when I went down to teach at McCauley [phonetic] Prep School

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down in Chattanooga after I finished here, I met Mr. McCauley, and he had gone to
Washington and Lee and he told me that he would never send a son of his here because
they drank so at Washington and Lee. I came home and mentioned that to my father,
and he said, "Why, that man never drew a sober breath the whole time he went to
W&L." [Laughter] So I think your point of view changes, you know, sometimes from
the time you're a student to the time you're older and so forth. There have been
problems with drinking, of course, and parties and that sort of thing.

         I think that there's a lot more recognition now of the danger of alcohol abuse
than there was in my day. We thought it was just funny when somebody got drunk.
Now they are beginning to recognize the beginnings of an alcohol problem when they
see one. I think people are much more aware, even young people in school, than we
were, and I can't say that the problem is any worse than it was then, if it's bad now. The
fraternities now, of course, now are equipped with these party rooms that handle the
noise and all, and drinking so that it doesn't spill out on the streets as much as it used
to.
Warren: What about that period when it was spilling out on the streets? What was it
like covering that in the paper?
Paxton: Well, I think people in college towns are just reasonably tolerant of that sort of
thing. They've been through it before and they realize the college scene is important to
the community. I don't recall that it's ever spilled out to the extent of it being a really
serious problem. One of the most annoying problems with it has been the litter
problem, you know, paper cups and all strewn up and down the streets after a Saturday
night party, and that's annoyed me greatly, because I like the town and I don't like to
see it littered like that. But that's a problem that they've tried to deal with one way or
the other.
Warren: How does it get [unclear]?
Paxton: I think it's better. I don't think it's as bad as it used to be.

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Warren: You mentioned what was going on here in the sixties. What did go on here in
the sixties?
Paxton: Very much the same thing that went on in so many campuses. The real
division in our society over the Vietnam War and the prominent part the students
played everywhere in the protest of the war, it seemed to some people that it was just
going to be the end of civilization, the students were just going to destroy everything,
you know, like the Red Guard in China. I remember one very tense moment at
Washington and Lee. You've probably come across this in talking to people, when Bob
Huntley was president during that time. I hope you'll talk to him at some point.
Warren: I'm waiting for him to get back from Florida.
Paxton: But things reached kind of a crescendo, and the students were threatening to
close the college down, I think, that spring, and what year that is I would have to go
back and look. There was a real counterculture type of student who had gotten to be
head of the student body, I guess, and he was making demands and so forth. Finally the
thing sort of came to a head with this outdoor meeting on the front campus lawn there,
in front of Lee Chapel. We put up a podium there, and Bob Huntley addressed the
students and did what I thought was a masterful job. I went over to hear him. I thought
he handled the situation very well and seemed to sort of defuse the thing. They didn't
make good on their threat to shut down the school. I can't remember what all the
demands were that they had, but I remember feeling that he had really handled it very
well, and from that point on, that seemed to be the passing of the worst of the crisis at
Washington and Lee.

         But it changed life on the campus for all time, no question about it, and that
Fancy Dress thing was just one little manifestation of it, I'm sure, and I know the
curriculum underwent certain changes, and various things were changed. I'd have to go
back and refresh my memory on all that, but life was different just as it was everywhere
after that period, you know. I'd be interested in hearing what Bob's recollections of that

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were, Bob Huntley. That was a terribly stressful time to be a college president. Our
friend Edgar Shannon, who was president of the University of Virginia at the same
time, of course, he's a W&L alumnus and would be a good person to talk to also.
Warren: He's on our list, too.
Paxton: He underwent that over there. It was just an experience that would age a man,
very, very nerve-racking.
Warren: This is an off-the-wall question, but satisfy my curiosity. Do you know why
Red Square is called Red Square?
Paxton: I'm not sure that I do, really. It's been called that ever since I can remember.
Warren: So it goes back to when you were a kid?
Paxton: Oh, yeah, I think so. I think it goes back to about the time those fraternities
were built in the thirties, and I think it just has to do with the fact that those red-brick
fraternities were built in a square.
Warren: I wondered if it's that simple an answer.
Paxton: I think so. I think it is.
Warren: It's kind of a loaded name, you know.
Paxton: I know. Yes, it sure it. It sounds like it has some very sinister connotation.
Warren: It's been a question I've been meaning to ask people, but it never seems like it's
appropriate. I thought you, as a newspaperman, might have tracked it down and know
the answer to that.

         You mentioned that you weren't exactly classmates with Roger Mudd, right?
Paxton: No, Roger was a year behind me. Roger was in '50, I think, but we were good
friends. He was a Delt, and the Delts and SAEs went back and forth quite a lot together.
Warren: Washington and Lee has produced some pretty impressive alumni, Roger
Mudd being one of them. What was it like going through with somebody like that? Did
you have any inkling of who he was going to be? Tom Wolfe was the same time here.

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Paxton: Tom Wolfe was a little later. Tom Wolfe came along about six or seven years,
five, maybe not quite that much.
Warren: Not that much.
Paxton: He was a little later.
Warren: '51 or '52, I think.
Paxton: Was he? Because I didn't remember that we had overlapped. He was in school
with my brother, who finished in '54 at W&L. Roger was a colorful character at
Washington and Lee, and he was obviously destined for something good. He really
didn't know what he wanted to do when he got out of school. I hope you get to talk to
him. He had a real sense of the dramatic. They used to have these performances on
campus to raise money for what they called the Student War Memorial Scholarship
Fund. This was years after the war. They'd have a big production. I remember Roger
was in that one year, and he was playing the role of Dr. White, the university physician,
and they called him Mr. White. They just did everything they could to irritate the
powers-that-be, you know. Roger just wowed them on stage. I remember he got this
hypodermic needle and ran all the way across the room to jam it into somebody. He
had some real good lines. He had this booming voice, as he does now. He was
obviously a person who was going to make himself known later on.
Warren: Were there people that you thought were going to develop into something
and you never heard from them again?
Paxton: [Laughter]
Warren: You know, there's sort of that feeling as you go to college, that certain people
are going to be something special.
Paxton: Yeah, and then not. I'm sure there were, because I remember even in high
school when you'd have the Most Outstanding and so forth, and the Most Likely to
Succeed in the annual, you know, and they'd never be heard from again. Those
particular ones would never amount to anything. So you certainly couldn't always tell.

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Warren: When you were there and until relatively recently, Washington and Lee was a
male bastion if ever there was one. Where did the girls come from?
Paxton: Oh, they all came from the girls' colleges around, you know, Sweetbriar and
Hollins and Randolph-Macon and Mary Baldwin and Southern [unclear].
Warren: Did they come to you or did you go to them? What were the logistics?
Paxton: The logistics of it was that you went to them. They would not come to you.
You went to them. You went and you picked up your date and you squired, or a friend
would go and pick up maybe several dates or something like that. Sometimes they'd
come on the train. The train days were pretty well over by the time I was in school, but I
remember one—it may have been a Fancy Dress, when a bunch of them came up on the
train because of a big snow. I can't remember all the details of it.
Warren: So do you remember the train station still being functioning?
Paxton: The train station, in my time, was definitely past its heyday.
Warren: So it wasn't a passenger terminal anymore?
Paxton: They had passenger service here until about the mid-1950s, but nobody ever
used it. The little car was half a passenger car and half a baggage car or something, and
it rolled back and forth between here and Glasgow, Balcony Falls, they called it.
Warren: So it was just a spur? It wasn't on the main line?
Paxton: No, it wasn't. It never was on the main line here. The B&O was coming down
the valley from Webster and Harrisonburg and Staunton, heading for Salem, which was
then more prominent than Roanoke. It got as far as Lexington. Meanwhile, the railroad
became the N&W, did an end run and came down through Buena Vista and took the
river ride, which was a much easier ride, and got to Roanoke, and that pretty well cut
off the B&O. So we never were really on a through rail line here.

         To go from Lynchburg, I remember hearing my mother-in-law talk about coming
to Mary Baldwin from Lynchburg. She would take the train from Lynchburg to Balcony

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Falls—that's Glasgow—take another train from Balcony Falls to Lexington, and change
again and take another train to Staunton. It was an all-day trip. [Laughter]
Warren: I've found these references to how long it took to get from Clifton Forge to
Lexington by train, it's like four hours. I wondered what on earth were they doing all
that time.
Paxton: Oh, I don't know. You probably had to change. From Clifton Forge to
Lexington, you'd come to Balcony Falls and then take another train up to Lexington, or
you could go to Staunton and take a train down the valley to Lexington. So it was not
real convenient.
Warren: So by the time you were a student, the car had pretty much taken over?
Paxton: The car had really taken over. Back in the twenties and thirties and before that,
people did travel in and out by train. They'd have some special trains and excursion
trains and trains that would come in for football games and that sort of thing, you
know, but by the time I was in school, that was really past.
Warren: And how about buses? Did students travel by bus?
Paxton: Students did travel by bus, yeah. They did use the bus.
Warren: I've seen a picture, and I don't know whether it's students or faculty or whom,
but of a lot of people leaving for World War II behind McCrum’s. That's where the bus
station was?
Paxton: That's where the bus station was at one time.
Warren: Do you remember that?
Paxton: Oh, yeah. I don't remember being there to see that group off. The bus station
was at McCrum’s for quite a long time. I don't know just how many years, but quite a
long time. There was a lot of bus travel then.
Warren: I guess you were a little young. You were probably in school the day
everybody took off.

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Paxton: Yeah, yeah. I didn't get in the service 'til just about the end, the closing months
of the war.
Warren: Your timing was real good.
Paxton: It certainly was. Excellent.
Warren: I've asked you just about all the questions and gotten wonderful, succinct
answers. Is there anything you'd like to talk about, about Washington and Lee or
Lexington or the relationship?
Paxton: Well, it's just been wondering to me to live here and to be a W&L alumnus and
to live in the town and enjoy all the wonderful advantages that you get to enjoy in a
college town.

         I think one of the greatest people from Washington and Lee was Dr. [James G.]
Leyburn, and I hope that this will come out in some of the interviews, about what he
did for the academic quality of the school.
Warren: Tell me about that.
Paxton: Well, he came here from Yale, you know, as dean, and offered what he called
the—he didn't call it, but it became known as the Leyburn Plan, because he wanted
people to be able to equate Washington and Lee with Ivy League schools. He certainly
greatly strengthened the curriculum and the academic quality of the school, I'm sure,
and just his own wonderful learning and his marvelous interest in the students and
everything that he meant in so many different ways.

         He had a tremendous impact. He personally had a great impact on a lot of
students who just practically worshipped the ground he walked on. He wasn't as
popular among the alumni of the day, because they blamed him for the problems of de-
emphasis in athletics and so forth. Well, he had said some things that maybe left him a
little open for criticism by the alumni. But I think he stands out as being a very
important person in the history of the school.

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         On another level, I hope you'll ask about the Gauley Bridge Hunt Club. That was
a funny thing that was active right after the war. I never was a member of the Gauley
Bridge Hunt Club.
Warren: What's the name?
Paxton: Gauley Bridge. That's the name of a little place in West Virginia, on Route 60 in
West Virginia, between here and Charleston. You'll have to ask Charlie McDowell or
Pat Robertson about that. I think it was just a fun kind of a drinking thing as much as
anything else, but you'll have to ask them about Colonel John McQuarter [phonetic],
who was a real big person in that. But it was just something that people laughed about
and had a good time about. I guess it arose from some trip that people took to
Charleston one time or something and then probably stopped in Gauley Bridge for a
beer or something. [Laughter] But they'd march around and had this outfit they would
wear, which is one of those funny things, like the White Friars in Phi Alpha Nu.
Warren: There are a lot of those kind of things around here. I don't know much about
them; I've just seen pictures in the Calyx.
Paxton: They were just clubs of people, just a social thing, and didn't amount to a
whole lot, pretty much, but there were more serious things, of course, like the debating
groups and things like that.
Warren: There certainly are. It's an organized school if ever there was one.
Paxton: It's full of organizations.

         I think I've bored you for long enough, but I've enjoyed it.
Warren: You have not bored me at all. This has been a wonderful interview, just as
Frank [Parsons] promised.
Paxton: I'm glad if it could be of some help, because it's been fun doing it.
Warren: I didn't know a thing about the Gauley Bridge Hunt Club until today, so you
set me off on a new tack. We'll see what comes of it.
Paxton: I don't think much will come of it. [Laughter]

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Warren: Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Paxton: You are so welcome.
[End of interview]

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