THE PARKMORE DRIVE-IN
You would have to have been a student at the Montgomery Bible School/College in the 1940s and early 1950s to remember this popular place where young people would gather, especially in the evenings and nights. Each night at 10:00 p.m. (as I recall) The Parkmore would broadcast on a local radio station and play popular music. I can remember that some individual would portray a ‘mechanical man’. Does someone else remember this? As a kid in Jr. High School I also remember riding in the back of a large truck along with other students and driving out to the Parkmore one night. Robert Tillery was the driver. This drive-in was on the Atlanta Highway where the Bama Lanes bowling alley is now located. Please note that on the bottom of the ad it is mentioned that the Parkmore was located at the City limits. How about that! This present business is now a long drive from the campus of Faulkner University . Back in the late 40s and early 50s there wasn’t much out the Atlanta Highway except some houses to be found in the Dalraida community and the VA Hospital on Perry Hill Road .

THE STUDENT CENTER
Lest someone might think that we were unfortunate students with no social life, it must be said that we did have a student center where we could gather and enjoy moments of fun and relaxation. Now mind you it wasn’t like the one that the university now has with pool tables (which would have been declared ‘worldly’ back in the 40s and 50s), along with basket ball courts, etc. Also it is when I enter the cafeteria at Faulkner University that I see the coffee shop to my right and I smile, thinking that drinking coffee was not even permitted on the old campus. It was strictly taboo. That reminds me of what Bill Huggins related to me some years ago when as a student he went to Ozark to preach one Sunday. He was invited to eat lunch (dinner) in the home of sister Ida Davis. This fine Christian widow asked Bill if he wanted a cup of coffee. Bill quickly answered that he did not drink coffee because he was a Christian. Sister Davis replied, “I am a Christian too but not a fool.” We would both laugh at this incident that occurred in the distant past. I have asked my wife to write her memories of the old student center.

(pictured above: unknown; Virginia Thomley McCrory; George Pennock; Blois Clifton; Ann Whittle Sasser; unknown; Mavis Grace, and; Margaret Laird Wilson)

MY MEMORIES OF THE STUDENT CENTER
By Virginia Slaughter Elliott (1953-55)

The Student Center was located in the basement on the left side underneath the main classroom building. It was the ‘hub meeting place’. You could buy refreshments, pay on your bill at the window opening to Blois Clifton’s office, pick up your mail, and buy any school supplies or books needed, make change, or just meet your friends. My job during 1954-1955 was to open the student center each morning at 7 or 7:30 am. Since breakfast was at 6:30 am in the cafeteria, many would pop in and pick up ‘Price’s Donuts’ (2 in a bag for 5¢, fresh, just delivered that morning) and a coke or carton of milk. Many missed breakfast so they could get a few more minutes of sleep. At noon when classes dismissed for lunch, it would quickly fill up with students checking to see if they had received that longed-for letter from home, etc. and then most would disappear from there heading for the cafeteria to have lunch. Some of the ‘day students’ would hang around, eat their sack lunches, or snack on knick knacks until time for the next class. Betty Puckett was the manager of the student center that year. Betty & Carroll lived in a trailer parked up by the boys’ dormitory, and were dear friends of so many. On the warmer days, we would fix up some good ‘coke floats’ or ‘7-up floats’ for our clientele. At night, the Student Center stayed open until 8:30 or 9 pm, depending on the schedule of the night classes. Many nights about 8 pm or later, when most of us girls would already be in our night clothes, someone would suddenly decide they needed a snack or a drink. We’d appoint one or two to take ‘orders’ and collect money, and send them off into the night to the student center to make the purchases before it closed. Often the ‘elected one to go’ would slip their long winter coat on over their pajamas, button it all the way up, put on shoes, and head out. And, just as many times, we’d see boys with long jackets on also there and their pajama covered legs sticking out, doing the same thing. In the late afternoon and evenings many young couples did their courting over a table in the student center. Also, one time, a ping pong table was moved in and some good games of ping pong went on for lengthy periods of time.