died, they ran this store. Eunice Pace died about a year ago, back in 1992. She and
 Boo Franklin, her sister, operated that store for many, many, many years. It is still
 in existence and still has all the old dry goods in there. And it is a big tourist
 attraction.

 Perry Como stumbled across it a few years ago. He liked Saluda so much that he
 came up and bought a mountain top and built a house there. That is his summer
 home. He is a great favorite with all the people of Saluda; they love Perry Como.
 It is very interesting to see the way that the people operate because Perry built his
 house. I was down there one time, and I walked into one of the places where they
 did not know me--I am related to at least half the people in Saluda, anyone named
 Pace or Ward or Thompson down there are my cousins--and I walked in this one
 place and I said, "Hey, did Perry Como ever build his place down here?" This person
 said, "Well, I do not rightly know." And I said, "Well, I thought he did. Where did
 he build?" They said, "Well, I do not know, somewhere around here." I was very
 surprised about this, so I went down to M.A. Pace and I said to Eunice, "Eunice, you
 know it is the strangest thing, people do not know anything much." She said, "Lord,
 honey, whatchya talking about?" I said "Well, I was just in this place up there a few
 minutes ago, and I asked about Perry Como's place. They did not know anything
 about it." She said, "Lord, honey, everybody knows. We just do not want anybody
 bothering him. I'll tell you where it is. You go down the Spartanburg highway here.
 The next road after Dr. Salley's, you turn to the right and it's about a mile and a
 quarter back out there on top of a mountain. But don't go down there bothering
 him." I said, "Eunice, I had no intention whatsoever of bothering him; I won't bother
 him. I have met him down in Jupiter, Florida. [He is a] very nice person and I just
 wanted to know where he had built and I hoped he was happy." She said, "You can
 depend on it. But we like to protect him; I'll tell you, but I won't tell anybody else
 where he is." People up there are very close- mouthed about things like that.

CJ: Tell me about growing up in North Carolina. You were born in 1918 in
 Hendersonville. What you wrote up about your life [said] it was East Flat Rock,
 actually.

RJ: Yes, Flat Rock was a very interesting place because this was where the first
 commuter system was set up for the benefit of the old aristocratic families down in
 South Carolina, particularly in the Charleston area and some parts of Georgia too.
 What happened was that, before the Civil War ever started, your big industrialists
 and agriculturalists and that sort of thing mostly operated out of Charleston, South
 Carolina. That is where the aristocracy is. One of those gentlemen from Charleston
 who had a summer place up in North Carolina eventually became Secretary of the
 Treasury for the Confederacy. For some strange reason, he was one of the few
 Southerners that did not lose money during the war. After the war he was very
 wealthy. I have often wondered about that.


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