Charles LeRoy Lewis - Special Collections - University of Baltimore

Harvey: When was the decline of the Mechanics?
Lewis: Oh, them organizations started to decline in the
twenties after World War I and the Depression. They declined,
and of course the automobiles come along, radios come along,
stuff like that - just like moving pictures. Movies was
everything. Moviesstartedhereon Street
Avenue then they came out on 36th Street
and you had the - next to where
the Junior Order these where the building there, why
you had the Across the street. Then Mr. Hicks,
he was the tinsmith and he started movie there
we had those two movies.
Today, you've seen whathappenedto movies. They've
outlived their usefulness.
Harvey: Are you saying that the orders declined partly
because there were other things to do in the evening?
Lewis: That's right - those days people . * . in other words,
now, I don't know - you people are young. And I don' t
get around much with young people, either. But in our day
we had pools; we had watermelon parties. And then we
had surprise parties - everybody brought a package. md we
had to make our own fun, and we had a good time. You talk
to people and say
some of them would laak at you.
And yet it was a lot of fun; nobody got messed up. Young
people had a good time; same way at watermelon parties.
You didn't hear a lot about washing faces, but I went to a
lot of watermeLon parties and there wasn't no washing faces
because you just didn't do that to your girlfriend. We were