Chapel Hill/Carrboro History

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roostra said:
Man, like 8-10 years ago it seemed like no one knew what skirt steak was and it was super cheap. Here in the bay area, the secret got out and it got really expensive. One of my favorite cuts of meat.
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It's similar to lamb. Used to be cheap. Not many here grew up eating it. Now pricey.
 
finesse said:
It's been a dozen years ago but when the Food Lion in Carrboro on Jones Ferry Rd. started catering more to Hispanics than the others, there was a while that I was getting skirt steak and flap meat for 3.99 a pound and frequently would catch manager's specials because people didn't know what to do with it. I didn't mind because I did.
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Bingo on the reason.
 
Oh, they were clear about it. They wanted people to know. They still do but there's not as much difference . The others have caught up.
 
Did any of you ever eat at the Hollywood Restaurant next to the cab company in the building that is now 411? How about Bill's Barbecue on ,I think, Graham. It was where Seeds of Sheba was for a while. I don't know what's there now. It's a little different than I remember in that area.
 
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I got my first gun when I turned 12 years old. It was a .410 single shot shotgun. Knowing Deddy it was a Remington - I don’t perfectly recall. I had fired guns before that and had a BB gun since “I don’t know when” by that time. A .410 doesn’t kick much and is a small person or a boy’s first gun. Deddy, along with my uncles Cecil, Lynton, and on Deddy’s side, Pete, all taught me the lessons of carrying, loading, and firing when they “took me hunting.” Deddy was also a stickler about cleaning and properly storing guns and he showed me that and insisted on good habits in those things.

I only went out with Deddy, Uncle Pete along, hunting on Dunn land a few times. Those excursions took aim at the famous Chatham Rabbit population. Grandpa had beaucoup beagles but for some reason we went dogless. I don’t really think that Deddy enjoyed hunting very much. His time was pretty well doled-out (the Hardware Store was open until 6 Monday through Friday and until 3 on Saturday) and I think there were a great many other things he’d rather do with the little freedom he might have. Uncle Pete was an on-the-clock mechanic in citified Greensboro and tramping the fields of his childhood homestead was much more special to him I think so he thought a lot of those outings.

Uncle Cecil and Uncle Lynton hunted birds and because of that they had dogs. Alton Lee was always along when Uncle Lynton was. Alton Lee was African American and he and Uncle Lynton were close from childhood though Alton was a bit older. The Lees lived very closeby Jordan Grove A.M.E. Zion Church, only a mile or so from the farm where my mother’s family’s old home was situated on the bank of Bloodrun Creek in #DeepChatham. We didn’t hunt there though but went farther out into the country to my Uncle Clyde’s place on The Old Coleridge Road.

The men all had bird dogs and the way the mutts loved those morning excursions was something to see. We would tromp slowly from the edge of a field inward while the dogs worked - eventually flushing the birds - hopefully quail - to fly. The bird dogs tracking was so frantic - manic - or perhaps better said - dog-ic - as they zigged and zagged through the tall grass noses down, tails straight up and sky high. Oh my Prince, with his pointer blood would have loved it.

Uncle Lynton and Alton Lee were pretty serious about knocking out some birds but Uncle Cecil and I weren’t much count as hunters - John Prine summed our day up in his tune, “Paradise” when he sang “but empty pop bottles was all we would kill.” Even when we did bag a bird or two they went home with our partners as I distinctly remember that Aunt Lila didn’t want anything to do with dressing wild fowl.

Sometimes if our hunting stretched past noon we’d check football scores on a transistor radio I brought. In those days we were tuning in on the gridiron feats of the FIRST Great #23 at Carolina - Don McCauley, the record-breaking running back. It may have been off-tackle, off-tackle, off-tackle football but it was a Tar Heel Victory more often than not. Indeed, it was much lower-key (there were no lights in Carolina’s Kenan Stadium and little television money) but Bill Dooley had the Tar Heels winning in those days. It was a different era in college sports - bygone is the word that comes to mind.

My Momma always sent along a sack of ham biscuits for the after-hunt lunch. There were Co-Colas and Ñu-Grapes too. We were tail-gating there in the field on Uncle Clyde’s farm, paralleling the doings in Chapel Hill, only we didn’t know it. Looking back those Fall Saturdays run together very finely in a great stream of crisp leaves, open fields, gunpowder, bird dogs, football on the radio, and salty-good country ham meat.

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donbosco said:
I took it as The Well was established (dug) in 1832 — but it is terribly misleading as is.
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I think the original old well was dug in the 1790s. But I found that picture somewhere else and I believe it was just a typo. The picture was taken in 1892, which is around the time I would have guessed based on the clothes the guys were wearing. (Another reason it was obviously not 1832 was because photographs had pretty much just been invented and it’s unlikely that photographic technology had made its way to Chapel Hill at that point. The oldest known photo taken in the US was from 1839 and it is of very poor quality.)
 
A bit more clarification about The Well and the date on the photo. The photograph was taken in 1892 so this is simply a typo. The well itself dates to around the founding evidently and is often stated as having been the “sole source of water for the university” in the earliest years.

The Old Well that we know was built in 1897 and is modeled after The Temple of Love at Versailles.

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donbosco said:
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I got my first gun when I turned 12 years old. It was a .410 single shot shotgun. Knowing Deddy it was a Remington - I don’t perfectly recall. I had fired guns before that and had a BB gun since “I don’t know when” by that time. A .410 doesn’t kick much and is a small person or a boy’s first gun. Deddy, along with my uncles Cecil, Lynton, and on Deddy’s side, Pete, all taught me the lessons of carrying, loading, and firing when they “took me hunting.” Deddy was also a stickler about cleaning and properly storing guns and he showed me that and insisted on good habits in those things.

I only went out with Deddy, Uncle Pete along, hunting on Dunn land a few times. Those excursions took aim at the famous Chatham Rabbit population. Grandpa had beaucoup beagles but for some reason we went dogless. I don’t really think that Deddy enjoyed hunting very much. His time was pretty well doled-out (the Hardware Store was open until 6 Monday through Friday and until 3 on Saturday) and I think there were a great many other things he’d rather do with the little freedom he might have. Uncle Pete was an on-the-clock mechanic in citified Greensboro and tramping the fields of his childhood homestead was much more special to him I think so he thought a lot of those outings.

Uncle Cecil and Uncle Lynton hunted birds and because of that they had dogs. Alton Lee was always along when Uncle Lynton was. Alton Lee was African American and he and Uncle Lynton were close from childhood though Alton was a bit older. The Lees lived very closeby Jordan Grove A.M.E. Zion Church, only a mile or so from the farm where my mother’s family’s old home was situated on the bank of Bloodrun Creek in #DeepChatham. We didn’t hunt there though but went farther out into the country to my Uncle Clyde’s place on The Old Coleridge Road.

The men all had bird dogs and the way the mutts loved those morning excursions was something to see. We would tromp slowly from the edge of a field inward while the dogs worked - eventually flushing the birds - hopefully quail - to fly. The bird dogs tracking was so frantic - manic - or perhaps better said - dog-ic - as they zigged and zagged through the tall grass noses down, tails straight up and sky high. Oh my Prince, with his pointer blood would have loved it.

Uncle Lynton and Alton Lee were pretty serious about knocking out some birds but Uncle Cecil and I weren’t much count as hunters - John Prine summed our day up in his tune, “Paradise” when he sang “but empty pop bottles was all we would kill.” Even when we did bag a bird or two they went home with our partners as I distinctly remember that Aunt Lila didn’t want anything to do with dressing wild fowl.

Sometimes if our hunting stretched past noon we’d check football scores on a transistor radio I brought. In those days we were tuning in on the gridiron feats of the FIRST Great #23 at Carolina - Don McCauley, the record-breaking running back. It may have been off-tackle, off-tackle, off-tackle football but it was a Tar Heel Victory more often than not. Indeed, it was much lower-key (there were no lights in Carolina’s Kenan Stadium and little television money) but Bill Dooley had the Tar Heels winning in those days. It was a different era in college sports - bygone is the word that comes to mind.

My Momma always sent along a sack of ham biscuits for the after-hunt lunch. There were Co-Colas and Ñu-Grapes too. We were tail-gating there in the field on Uncle Clyde’s farm, paralleling the doings in Chapel Hill, only we didn’t know it. Looking back those Fall Saturdays run together very finely in a great stream of crisp leaves, open fields, gunpowder, bird dogs, football on the radio, and salty-good country ham meat.

IMG_5108.jpeg
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According to a friend of mine, McCauley got his #23 by way of Assistant Coach Moyer Smith (Class of ‘61) who had worn it when he played. Evidently McCauley was casting about for his own number and Smith recommended it, saying that it had “served him well.”IMG_5106.jpeg
 
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Missed connections? Is there where I post looking for the cute blonde girl in the suite beside me on the second floor of Morrison 2008-2009?
 
In re Brick Sidewalks at UNC. When I was in law school school at Pitt, one morning I was walking, ON THE SIDEWALK, from the bus stop to the law school. I saw this guy in a suit and tie, park his car, get out, and walk across non-paved, beaten path to an administration building. I called him out. Told him to walk on the sidewalks and explained that where I had attended undergraduate school, they had a team of people bricking over areas where people had killed the grass. This guy, smiled,
looked at me, and asked where I had gone to undergrad. I told him Chapel Hill. He told me that he had just arrived from Chapel Hill, was now the new President of Pitt, and would get right on my suggestion. All I could do was laugh.
 
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Rambling about Bonlee, basketball, and good breezes. When I was 3 our house in #Bonlee burned to the ground. It was 1961. I have a memory of it but realize it is probably just one that I created from hearing the stories of that day. I’ve never even seen a photograph of that house but know it was a classic two story wooden late 19th century design the likes of which so many were built up in lumber-rich #DeepChatham. It must have had a front porch for afternoon and evening sitting in the coolness of a Piedmont spring or fall. Maybe there was a bench swing. Hand fans like the ones at church would have been mandatory for summer sitting. Front porches in Bonlee were for meeting and greeting as well as just gathering to sit. The purposes to which that part of the home were dedicated are myriad and complex. When we built back — a brick ranch style model — our car port served much the same functions as the front porch and then some.

Bonlee has always had a ‘Good Breeze.’ Indeed, the legend that I was ‘taught’ that is Bonlee meant ‘Good Breeze’ in French but it turns out that isn’t true. French for “Good Breeze” would be ‘Bonne Brise.” A traveling salesman named Glazebrook is given credit with coming up with the name, for which he won a barrel of “White Daisy Flour” from the general store of Mr. Isaac Brooks (presumably the same store that eventually was owned by my Deddy). Perhaps Glazebrook was a linguistic bricoleur and took the French word ‘Bon,’ which does indeed mean ‘Good,’ and combined it with either ‘lee,’ which means a side sheltered from the wind, or ‘lea,’ which means ‘arable land.’ There is also the possibility that Mr. Glazebrook simply told Bonlee folks that “Bonlee” meant “Good Breeze” and it sounded so appropriate that no one ever inquired further. It is interesting that The Bonlee and Western Railroad was chartered in 1908 and Bonlee did not change its name until at least 1910, and itself was not chartered by that name until 1913. The newspapers were still sometimes using the name ‘Causey’ until into 1910. That Bonlee folks are tale tellers is always a good thing to remember when dealing with one. I’ve got to wonder, and probably will really never know, exactly where the name came from and what it means. Still, that breeze was a good and temperate one through the spring and into the late fall and folks, everybody, spent a goodly amount of time outdoors in porches, car ports, and yards.

A basketball goal hung on the side of the car port and the front yard made for a good baseball diamond, at least when I was a little guy and plastic bats and balls were the equipment. My first sports love was baseball. Bob Gibson and Lou Brock of the Cardinals were heroes I clearly remember. By the time I started Little League I was a third baseman and my idol was #BrooksRobinson and my team, the #BaltimoreOrioles — that pairing remains a strong constant in my life. My Deddy was a bigger basketball fan. The same went for my mother. From my earliest years I remember riding through the dark, wintry countryside - returning home at what seemed like impossibly late hours from evenings spent in cacophonously loud, sweaty, smelly of popcorn gymnasiums, where we watched and cheered on the Chatham Central Bears boys AND girls teams. It is important to mention that where I grew up the girls played the game hard, and fast, and with great skill. There was a tradition of great female hoopsters going back into the late forties in #Chatham. Those girls, the Lady Bears, were actually better, to my remembering, at the game than were the boys. I know they won far more of their games.

I think basketball was my family’s favorite exactly for those evenings out. Things do slow down a bit in the winter, or they once did, in a place where agricultural rhythms and good, warm, breezes, rule the calendar. Those games were community events and were church-like in their emotional investment. Deddy had that kind of feeling about Carolina basketball too. I suspect that sentiment was somewhat centered on New York City Frank McGuire and his 1957 NCAA championship squad at Carolina. TV sports pioneer C.D. Chesley brought the Big Four (UNC, NC State, Wake Forest, Duke) into North Carolina living rooms after 1957 and by the late 1960s the lyrics to “Sail With The Pilot” (the theme song for Jefferson Pilot Insurance-THE main sponsor for Atlantic Coast Conference games) bound us — race, gender, religion, or even team allegiance notwithstanding — like no other sound. I suspect it still might for my generation’s survivors.

went with Carolina even when McGuire turned the team over to his unknown assistant Dean Smith in 1961. By the time I turned my own playing attention from baseball fully to basketball, around 1970, we were a very firm Carolina family. Even though the former UNC Coach, McGuire, was at rival South Carolina by then, the new guy in Chapel Hill had managed to keep us firmly on the front porch. Deddy clearly liked Coach Smith. The pass first, pressing defense style was appealing to him and dedication to collective team play touched base with his New Deal allegiances. It appealed to me too as I dove into the game, imagining myself a point guard, calling plays, finding my teammates open in their favorite spot, and scrambling around the court after every loose ball. The 1970-71 Tar Heels won the NIT (a very big thing in the days of a 32 team NCAA tourney) and I think I went a bit crazy. Crazy over the game and eventually crazy over Coach Smith’s worldview.

In the years following, I played out my own rather uneventful high school career, entered Carolina where I tried out for the JV Team and was cut (by no less than Roy Williams, then one of Coach Smith’s assistants), player-coached some good Chapel Hill City League teams, and even played and coached in Guatemala. I always tried to apply the team-centered, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” winning strategies of Coach Smith. The more that I learned about his coaching - and life - philosophy, the more I found admirable and imitable about it. Coach Smith, whether watching how his teams performed or listening to interviews or following his stances in favor of equal and civil rights, against nuclear proliferation and needless war - all in all, his thoughtful, Christian liberal wisdom and opposition to ‘modern conservatism’ - has been a role model and yes, I have often asked myself, when confronted with challenges, what would Coach Smith think and do.

Coach Smith once said of athletics and the university that they served as the Front Porch in getting folks to gather to come inside. I owe a great deal to my twice-over Alma Mater UNC — The education, my livelihood, friends, experiences. The institution has its faults, as well as some powerful enemies, and as an alum I plan on continuing to demand that it rise rather than sink, progress rather than lurch backward. Carolina has indeed had moments when it has done the right - the ethical - thing, but like so many public entities in a Constitutional Democratic Republic it takes a gathering of wills to push it forward. Strong forces constantly conspire to pull it to the negative. From 1961 to 1997 Coach Smith gathered a lot of us on the Front Porch to meet and greet. I’m thankful for the way I’ve been exposed to a bigger picture through that original invite to come and sit down.

I remember this day 27 years ago very well. I don’t mind saying that I wept to hear Coach’s good-bye. He had been a constant source of inspiration and guidance in my life for over 30 years. He continues to be by way of memories and his writings (here I have to recommend, ‘A Coach’s Life: My 40 Years in College Basketball’ in which a lot of Dean Smith’s worldview is explained: https://www.amazon.com/Coachs-Life-Years-College-Basketball/dp/0375758801).

On October 9, 1997 Coach Dean Smith unexpectedly retired as Head Coach of Men’s Basketball at the University of North Carolina. He coached 879 wins to 254 losses with 2 National, 13 ACC Tournament, & 17 regular season ACC Championships. He also coached the USA to an Olympic Gold Medal. Over 96% of his players graduated.
 
donbosco said:
On October 9, 1997 Coach Dean Smith unexpectedly retired as Head Coach of Men’s Basketball at the University of North Carolina.
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I remember this moment. I was living in Australia at the time and somewhere public, maybe a work function, with a muted TV on in the background. They were showing photos of Dean and all his accomplishments. I was sure he had died and they were memorializing him. It wasn't exactly pre-internet, but it was early days. It was weeks before I found out he had only retired.
 
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“
I remember this day 27 years ago very well. I don’t mind saying that I wept to hear Coach’s good-bye. He had been a constant source of inspiration and guidance in my life for over 30 years. He continues to be by way of memories and his writings (here I have to recommend, ‘A Coach’s Life: My 40 Years in College Basketball’ in which a lot of Dean Smith’s worldview is explained: https://www.amazon.com/Coachs-Life-Years-College-Basketball/dp/0375758801).

On October 9, 1997 Coach Dean Smith unexpectedly retired as Head Coach of Men’s Basketball at the University of North Carolina. He coached 879 wins to 254 losses with 2 National, 13 ACC Tournament, & 17 regular season ACC Championships. He also coached the USA to an Olympic Gold Medal. Over 96% of his players graduated. ”
 
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