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September 29, 1981 Around Adair with Ed Waggener The article below first appeared in the September 29, 1981 issue of the Adair County News. It included a history of Hill's Jolly Time Popcorn Company, which dominated the Public Square for a time in the late 1930s. Alumni of the business included T.P. "Cotton" Phelps, John Burr and Bill Walker. --Pen By Ed Waggener Successful graduates abound Many Adair Countians, when asked about their degrees, answer, "I went through the School of Hard Knocks." Others admit that they learned what they know by graduating from the Old Kroger Store, from the F & M Grill, and now, many say they have come through Houchens' U. There is a small but elite set of alumni from a little known firm which flourished in Columbia during the late 1930's. It was "Hill's Jolly Time Popcorn Company." Lawrence Hill, Ruth Hill Wells' uncle, who now lives in Lexington, owned the business. He was as entrepreneurial as any who ever lived here. As a boy, he developed a chain of popcorn stands. The poppers were of his own design and were fabricated at Walker Stove Company, on Reed Street in Columbia. Frank Cole, (who later bought the business and renamed it Cole's Tin Shop, the name it thrives under today) under the proprietorship of Charles Cole, built the poppers. The poppers ran on kerosene. And that was an occupational hazard. At least two fires, Hill remembers, nearly wiped him out, but he doesn't recall any serious injuries. In those days, popcorn was cheap. Hill sold it for five cents a bag. He bought corn from local farmers for five cents a pound. A pound of popcorn will yield 10 bags of popped corn ("depending on the size sack you use," former popcorn king, Charles Marshall, says), so the business returned a tidy profit. Still, Hill sometimes experienced cash shortages. He had to have money to operate on, and tying up ready assets in popcorn seriously strained his liquidity. A great Columbia merchant of the day, Mr. Tom Baldwin, served as his "banker." Baldwin would buy the corn from Hill for the same price as Hill paid the farmers, five cents a pound, then sell it back, as the popcorn business needed it, for six cents a pound. That helped me conserve my capital," Hill says, and adds, "I was thankful for that service." Hill had poppers set up in each quadrant of the Square. Saturdays on the Square, in those days, were much different from today. Often the sidewalks would be jammed with shoppers doing their weekly, or even monthly shopping. Young girls would promenade to gather, some making many turns around the two-tenths mile perimeter, while prospective swains looked them over and finally singled them off for later rendezvous at the picture show. Sometimes the arrangement was made while sharing a bag of Jolly Time Popcorn. The picture show was the Rialto Theatre, then run by F.X. Merkley. Mr. Merkley didn't sell popcorn at the show. He didn't want the popcorn litter. It was before the general axiom of the exhibitors "to salt the popcorn heavily and put a lot of ice in the pop cups" became the operating standard of the movie industry. It was before exhibitors learned that the concessions, properly managed, could net more profits than the admission tickets. Hill bought the rights to sell in front of Russell & Company and at the Bank of Columbia, two businesses which, then, as now, flank the building where the Rialto was located. (The theatre was in what is now Gaspard Brockman's Columbia General Appliances.) The young popcorn magnate and the respected Columbia businessman got along fine. "I don't think Mr. Merkley wanted the mess," Hill recalls, "but we got along great as long as I stayed over on Russell & Co.'s or the bank's side." Folks who remember seeing young Hill at work remember the seriousness with which he ran his business--a seriousness which foretold of his maturing ability as a businessman. "Lawrence would carry this notebook," one man recalls, "and he'd make checks on his locations, dutifully recording the ciphers in their proper places, keeping as good an account on the hourly and daily business progress as a modern day cash register data terminal does for a fast-food chain today. "When older merchants would ask him how business was going that day," this historian tells me, "Lawrence would turn to his notebook, and, just as the clerks for the great Rockefeller might recite the action at the various Standard Oil Refineries, Hill would rattle off a summary of his day's trading. 'Number One is doing great this Saturday, Hill would say, 'but we're off by 19 percent on Number Four. I don't know if it's the market or the management.' He said it all with great solemnity, befitting the magnitude of the enterprise." The alumni of the business include T. P. "Cotton" Phelps, now President of the Bank of Columbia; John Burr, the retired all-time great Adair County basketball coach; and Bill Walker, of Walker's Florist and Gift Shop. When Hill decided to move on to the restaurant business from the popcorn industry, he sold his popcorn machines to his younger associate, Bill Walker. "He had money," Hill recalls. This story was posted on 2020-09-20 09:22:08
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