Big Don's the Costumier: a protracted retraction
by Jack Neely
Seven years ago I wrote a column about the Old City. Just the other day, I got in big trouble for it.
It seems that long ago. In early 1993 Whittle Communications was still plotting its world takeover, and I was doing what I could to help, helping edit one of their family magazines. Metro Pulse was a weird little bi-weekly to which I contributed occasionally.
Most of the Whittlites I worked with then were relative newcomers to town, but were already waxing nostalgic about how the Old City had been when they'd moved here in 1988 or '89, when Ella Guru's and the Planet Earth were open. In '93 these folks were declaring that the Old City was dead. I figured maybe they could use some perspective. I remembered the Old City when it seemed deader, in the early '80s when I was writing for a monthly magazine which had its office down on Central, in what's now Lucille's barroom.
In that 1993 column I remarked that there was nothing going on down there in '83 except for Annie's then-tiny restaurant and a couple other exceptions, including Big Don's. But felt obliged to add that in 1983 the costume shop "didn't get much traffic except the week before Halloween." That's how I remembered it. I hadn't even noticed that Big Don the Costumier was there until I saw a crowd there just before Halloween.
Anyway, Metro Pulse ran my retrospective. Two years later, I put together my first book and, for reasons I don't recall, included that column. That was the last time I thought about it.
A couple of weekends ago, I conducted a walking tour for participants in the Appalachian Conference at UT. They were mostly visitors from out of state, some scholars and authors. Among the most attentive was an economist from Austria who sometimes leads tours of Vienna. He seemed interested in every alley of downtown Knoxville.
This tour had taken us from the World's Fair site to Blount Mansion to the Presbyterian graveyard to Market Square; we were behind schedule, but before we returned I wanted to give them a full walk-through of the Old City. Down the sidewalk we talked about Central Avenue during the Bowery period, when this one block supported 10 saloons. We'd just stepped around a sidewalk display of furs when an exotic-looking woman I thought I'd seen somewhere before appeared in the midst of the party. I somehow expected her to have a French accent, but she didn't.
"Are you the notorious Jack Neely?" she demanded. She was smiling, but seemed dead serious. I averred that maybe I was.
"You wrote we don't get much traffic except the week before Halloween!"
She said her name was Ramona and added that she had written me long letters and almost sent them. A younger woman chimed in and seemed just a little angrier than the first.
"We read this and said, 'Who is this hot shot?'"
I stammered some excuse. The Austrian economist seemed fascinated at this American scene.
"I walk by here several times a week," I said as I led the scholars up old Vine Street. "I wonder why she never nabbed me before."
"Maybe she didn't know who you were," said the delegate from Pennsylvania. She pointed down toward my tie. I saw the UT ID tag they'd clipped onto me back at the convention center.
Anyway, I dropped by Ramona's one Wednesday afternoon a few days later. I hadn't been inside the place in maybe 15 years. The shop in the old brick building had changed little.
The suit of armor that's been there for years still stands on the sidewalk holding the door open for you. Inside, there's now a lifesized cardboard cutout of Austin Powers and a mannequin wearing a homemade horsehead with a papershredder mane. Framed portraits of Elvis, Marilyn, and Clark Gable hang on the walls. A young man was waiting to be fitted.
I found Ramona and tried to explain that I'd written the column in 1993—about 1983. I tried to explain that by saying she didn't have much traffic, I wasn't saying she wasn't getting much business. She'd have none of it.
"I know it's honest, but it's wrong, and you need to fix it," she said.
"We've got to paint the pig," she added. I realized she was talking to someone else, and not about me. But before I realized it, she was talking to me again. She insisted they did have a lot of traffic in 1983.
"We opened in 1978, and started out with a bang," Ramona said. "And Big Don's Elegant Junk had been there for 50 years," she says, gesturing to the secondhand shop that's still across the street. "On weekends, they used to have a line out the door." The late Big Don was Ramona's dad.
Her business is older than "the Old City," a phrase she never mentioned. Nor did she mention the Old City's usual excuses. I wondered if she'd been too busy to notice.
Ramona was, in fact, too busy to talk much, and both of her assistants seemed to have their hands full, too, so I browsed. In the costume room were masks of all sorts, a rogue's gallery of popular culture: Yoda, the South Park cartoon kids, Hillary Clinton, the Creature of the Black Lagoon, Richard Nixon, Howard Stern, Alfred Hitchcock. They stared at me with accusing eyeholes.
Defending myself in that setting, I started to feel like a cheap lawyer. Even if I could justify that old column, it was clear I might have left the wrong impression about a good costumier's year-round viability.
Lately Ramona's been rushing to fill orders for Carnicus, the ancient UT spring fete; she also makes costumes for Clarence Brown productions, and for Sevier County's tourist theaters. A young blonde who could be a model arrives to be fitted for a costume in the Dixie Stampede.
Ramona, maybe I was wrong. It's nowhere near Halloween, and the Costumier's definitely getting traffic.
April 20, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 16
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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