GREENWOOD(AP) — Billy Randall remembers what the Cotton Row Club was like when he was a youngster in Greenwood in the early 1960s.

He was delivering the Commonwealth then, and he found it was a profitable spot.

‘‘Back then, the papers weren’t but a nickel. You’d come down through here and these people would give you a quarter,’’ he said. ‘‘I mean, I made $3 or $4. Usually you didn’t make but about 60 cents. It was unbelievable.’’

Randall said he hopes the recent change in ownership from Stacy Ragland to Lewis ‘‘Bubba’’ Buford III, won’t change the club’s distinct atmosphere.

Randall, owner of the Greenwood-based Mississippi Auto Recovery, said the club’s lively history is forever linked to Greenwood’s cotton trade. He recalled that the club’s membership was made up of mostly cotton factors and farmers.

‘‘The cotton men would come in the afternoon,’’ he said. ‘‘I think the market would close at 3 p.m. They’d come in and get themselves a drink. Once here, one cotton buyer would talk to another.’’

The club featured a Western Union ticker tape machine that would provide reports on cotton prices so factors could keep up with the commodity market, he said.

Randall said, in the early 1960s, Greenwood boasted 20 to 30 cotton factors spread along its cotton row.

As Randall got older, he did work around the club.

‘‘I was what they called a gofer. Whatever somebody wanted, I’d go get,’’ he said.

When the club’s manager, Joe Correro, whose nickname was ‘‘Pork Chop,’’ needed steaks, pork chops or chicken, Randall would get them.

Over the years, the club has cooked up a beaver, hogs and goats, he said. If somebody brought in freshly caught fish, Randall would help clean them.

The generosity of club members, such as Tommy Gregory, Fred Johnson and others, made a profound impression on Randall.

‘‘There were hundreds of people that helped me out in life. I didn’t have a lot of money,’’ he said.

Later, when he was attending Delta State University, Randall said, Cotton Row Club members gave him the job of washing their cars for $5 apiece, Randall said.

For a time after his grandmother died at the age of 90, the club’s owner, W.A. ‘‘Smitty’’ Smith, allowed him to stay upstairs at the club when needed. Before that, he had lived with his grandmother all his life.

The club was famous for its card games, particularly its ‘‘booray games,’’ which came from the Cajun country of Louisiana. A typical booray game at the club would have a $15 or $20 limit.

‘‘We had more arguments in a booray game than there was in anything else,’’ Randall said.

Randall said several characters used to occupy the club.

He said longtime member Jackie Adkinson was the funniest man he ever met. And when club members Willie Webb and Seger Collier got together, Webb would inevitably get on Collier’s nerves talking about the rivalry of Ole Miss and Mississippi State.

That’s one thing that never changed at the club.

‘‘It’s just State and Ole Miss,’’ he said. ‘‘It ain’t Southern, Memphis State. It’s just State and Ole Miss. You’d get people hot in here.’’

Buford said talk of redoing the club is overblown. He said has no great plans to alter the club. Because it’s a historic building, he can’t change the building’s exterior much at all.

Buford said he’s appeared before the Greenwood Historic Commission and has gotten the go-ahead for some of the planned renovations.

‘‘This building is falling down. We’re going to make it a little bit nicer on the inside,’’ he said.

———

Information from: Greenwood Commonwealth, http://www.gwcommonwealth.com



AP-CS-02-24-08 1424EST