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Old City Hall had it all, like a mall

Five O'Clock Shadow

By Charles Deal | Special to the Record

Published: September 27, 2009

Growing despite hardscrabble times, Hickory filled the needs for a new city hall in the 1920s with imagination and use of city labor.

The result was a mall of city services.

At city hall you could pay for a speeding ticket or your water bill. You could spend a night in the slammer or call the fire department in a time of need. Administrative offices were upstairs. At Hickory Community Theatre the jail cells were in back and just off the main stage behind the curtains.

All city services were housed in what is now Hickory Community Theatre, which in October will observe its 60th anniversary. The auditorium of City Hall was leased as a Paramount Theatre for about 10 years in the middle 1930s and early '40s. Live traveling shows were sometimes booked, where a woman vocalist finished an aria with the surprise help of a prisoner in the drunk tank.

A ramp out back led to the bars of a cell, a place where relatives or friends might visit a prisoner. The ramp remains, the cell has been bricked over, as were cell windows facing the alley. Little kids wanted no part of that ramp, jail cells or the people who occupied them, curious only what these terrible people had done to deserve time in jail.

In a separate building on Trade Alley, a few feet east was the police department. Police cars were parked in a basement level. Lockers for officers were nearby.

Public restrooms were located in the basement of City Hall. Passable during the day when some light penetrated the soiled windows; by night they were creepy.

Downtown on a Saturday was special for a kid, the attraction being a cowboy movie and an adventure serial that always ended with the hero in death-threatening trouble. How he escaped was a week away and another dime admission fee.

The fire station was included in that same mall of services. On a good day, if the sun was bright, one or more of those gleaming American LaFrance fire trucks would be pulled out of its stall onto the sidewalk. Proud firefighters would be shining the chrome and bringing the firehouse red to a sheen.

Every kid would have loved to crawl onto that high leather seat and feel the power of the steering wheel — but not in his wildest imagination would a kid think of turning on the siren.

One fireman I'll always remember was Capt. Harry Yount. He always had time for kids, offering a warm smile that said we were no bother. He would talk to us. Heady stuff for little kids, that a grownup would take the time.

Many years ago, a large open reservoir to catch water for firefighting purposes was located opposite the old City Hall. Despite these efforts, Hickory's magnificent Opera House burned to the ground near the reservoir and the current downtown Hickory Bank of Granite office.

Those kids are all grown now and many are grandparents who will never forget the Saturday morning kiddie movies, cowboys and Capt. Harry Yount shining an American LaFrance fire truck, all part of the beauty of a small, friendly Southern town.

Charles Deal is a former newspaper editor and publisher. Reach him at chazdeal@aol.com.