The next morning, though it was only October 1, the ground and the tall pines were dusted with snow. I went to the Florence County Courthouse. My title research showed that Mae and her husband, John Vill, had purchased the Hollywood in 1936. The seller was one savvy guy who held the Register of Deeds office. Only minutes before my grandmother’s purchase, and not acting in his official capacity but as a private citizen, he had purchased the Hollywood from the county, along with a bunch of other properties that had reverted to the county for tax delinquency. Nice cottage industry.

After my morning at the courthouse, I headed to a diner for some home cooking. While I was waiting, I ran into a man who had heard about me and my project. I wondered how he knew who I was. He told me that he knew me by the description he had gotten from the bartender where I had been last night. Whoa! Really small town! He said I should talk to his father about the old Hollywood. I could find his dad having lunch at that very moment at the senior center just a few blocks away.
At the senior center, I found lunch being patiently awaited by a handful of seniors. I sat down and showed my pictures to them. At first, they didn’t show much interest in the pictures. They were there for a more important matter: lunch. But then, the father of the man I had spoken with at the restaurant started talking about the old Hollywood.
“It was a whorehouse!” he frankly stated, exactly as Pat had the night before.11 Both he and his wife recognized the guy in my photos as “Johnny Vill,” but remembered nothing about him. And no one recognized Mae.

It was a slow start, but soon everyone had some tidbit to contribute about the place. His wife, a mild-mannered looking white-haired woman, related that at one time she had been a deputy sheriff. She smiled, recalling with a gleam in her eye how she raided brothels in town along with the sheriff. She said they “rounded up the girls and took ‘em to headquarters where they got fines.”

Another woman reported that one time when she had gone to the gynecologist in Iron
Mountain for a check-up, she had waited wide eyed “across from a row of painted ladies there in the waiting room.”

Looking at the pictures, another woman said, “Johnny Vill was an ordinary man, friendly and polite, short and stocky, dark hair, chunky.” She added, matter of factly, that a number of local officials had owned slot machines in partnership with the Hollywood. But then lunch was put on the table, and my pictures and my project—spicy though they seemed to me—took a back seat to the meal.

The next morning, though it was only October 1, the ground and the tall pines were dusted with snow. I went to the Florence County Courthouse. My title research showed that Mae and her husband, John Vill, had purchased the Hollywood in 1936. The seller was one savvy guy who held the Register of Deeds office. Only minutes before my grandmother’s purchase, and not acting in his official capacity but as a private citizen, he had purchased the Hollywood from the county, along with a bunch of other properties that had reverted to the county for tax delinquency. Nice cottage industry.

After my morning at the courthouse, I headed to a diner for some home cooking. While I was waiting, I ran into a man who had heard about me and my project. I wondered how he knew who I was. He told me that he knew me by the description he had gotten from the bartender where I had been last night. Whoa! Really small town! He said I should talk to his father about the old Hollywood. I could find his dad having lunch at that very moment at the senior center just a few blocks away.

At the senior center, I found lunch being patiently awaited by a handful of seniors. I sat down and showed my pictures to them. At first, they didn’t show much interest in the pictures. They were there for a more important matter: lunch. But then, the father of the man I had spoken with at the restaurant started talking about the old Hollywood.
“It was a whorehouse!” he frankly stated, exactly as Pat had the night before.11 Both he and his wife recognized the guy in my photos as “Johnny Vill,” but remembered nothing about him. And no one recognized Mae.

It was a slow start, but soon everyone had some tidbit to contribute about the place. His wife, a mild-mannered looking white-haired woman, related that at one time she had been a deputy sheriff. She smiled, recalling with a gleam in her eye how she raided brothels in town along with the sheriff. She said they “rounded up the girls and took ‘em to headquarters where they got fines.”

Another woman reported that one time when she had gone to the gynecologist in Iron Mountain for a check-up, she had waited wide eyed “across from a row of painted ladies there in the waiting room.”

Looking at the pictures, another woman said, “Johnny Vill was an ordinary man, friendly and polite, short and stocky, dark hair, chunky.” She added, matter of factly, that a number of local officials had owned slot machines in partnership with the Hollywood. But then lunch was put on the table, and my pictures and my project—spicy though they seemed to me—took a back seat to the meal.


I got in the car and drove to Iron Mountain where I met a friendly man in his 70s with bright red hair. I wanted to take him out to a café where we could speak at length, but he was having difficulty walking and couldn’t leave his house. Thus all the information he volunteered was within earshot of his wife, who also sported the exact same red shade of hair. She hovered in the next room, while appearing to watch a TV that was turned down low.