Kern County Museum for B & W Photos

"Cousin Ebb's Pumpkin Center Barn Dance"







Above Lloyd shows me the doors that he and the Bob Manning Trio used to bring there music gear into the Pumpkin Center through. What an honor this was to share this 70+ year reunion with Lloyd. The photos are taken by Lloyd's daughter Anna and myself. Bob Manning's black 1937 Chevy coupe used to park right here while Lloyd climbed out of the trunk, where he used to ride, he folded up like a human pretzel with his guitar and an accordion under him and an old stick holding the trunk lid from falling on his head.


Lloyd standing in front of where he played his music 70 years ago, on the Pumpkin Center Stage. The original asbestos tiles were put in so the bands wouldn't echo, you can still see them dangling above. Lloyd said before the tiles the echoes would mess up the band's timing.


Here is the Pumpkin Center back in the 1950s, looking much the same as it did in the 1930s, people changed. The old place still looks pretty much the same today inside and on the sides.. outside. Note the lamps are still hanging there in the modern photo above.


ABOVE: Lloyd Next to the old safe in the back office of the old Pumpkin Center Honky Tonk, 70 years later in the large quansit hut metal building.
"The earliest strains of the Bakersfield Sound emanated not from the rowdy Blackboard, but from the Beardsley Ballroom in Oildale, the Rainbow Gardens and Rhythm Ranch, both on South Union Avenue, and the Pumpkin Center Barn Dance just south of town." (BKS)


Lloyd at in the old Pumpkin Center Honky Tonk, 70 years later in the large quansit hut metal building. See the curvature of the side and the original windows that were left open to cool off the dances back in the 1930s when Lloyd laid down the swing and fiddle tunes for over 3,000 farmers, wild caters and bar room queens.