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T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History
The Cowboy Inn, the Paradise, and Marge's
Arthur Kenneth Lee, by Chelsea Arseneault, 2015.
CHELSEA ARSENEAULT: What about the Cowboy Inn?

ARTHUR KENNETH LEE: Cowboy Inn. Yeah. Peter Deville.

ARSENEAULT: He owned it?

LEE: Yeah. He owned that. Peter Deville ran that. It wasn’t . . .He didn’t have dances or nothing like that, It was just the neighborhood bar.

ARSENEAULT: Who would go to the Cowboy Inn?

LEE: Locals, a lot of locals, a lot of people. And it wasn’t no . . . it wasn’t like the Paradise. It was just a pool hall and drinking. Paradise had live entertainment, you know what I’m saying? It was more of a show place like. But the Cowboy Inn was just a nightclub. It had a lot of regulars that would go there and drink and shoot pool and stuff like that. But the Paradise was . . . I’d say a different class because of the entertainment that they had. The Cowboy Inn had good business. It had good business. The bar business was a good business in that area. You had a lot of people that would come in there. They had a little trouble every now and then, but it wasn’t nothing that . . . Very seldom you had something that required the police, you understand. But the Cowboy Inn, it was kind of . . . it was what you call a Cowboy Inn. They’d fight, and next fifteen minutes they drinking together. But on the up and up, compared club-wise to . . . it was pretty low-key. And they had another club, Marge’s, that was a little neighborhood bar. And same thing, no entertainment, nothing but a jukebox.
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