Chapel Hill/Carrboro History

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finesse said:
When did that exist? I wasn't knowingly a member but there was a group of people in the mid and late 70s that lived on Henderson.
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The porch sitting society met for several years 2002-2005. We would gather on Fridays on the porch of a house on Henderson Street and enjoy being in the Southern Part of Heaven with an assist from legal and not so legal enhancers :cool:
 
finesse said:
Is that the east side of Fowler's. It looks about right and the graffiti suggests it.
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That's the wall of the Carolina Theater. They had just torn down the convenience store on the corner (across from the University Baptist Church) and would soon build Top of the Hill Restaurant in that space. This graffiti does reference the beer cooler in Fowler's, i.e., Big Bertha though.
 
heelinhell said:
The porch sitting society met for several years 2002-2005. We would gather on Fridays on the porch of a house on Henderson Street and enjoy being in the Southern Part of Heaven with an assist from legal and not so legal enhancers :cool:
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I had an Ex sister in law that lived there a couple years.... It kind of scared her parents lol
 
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donbosco said:
That's the wall of the Carolina Theater. They had just torn down the convenience store on the corner (across from the University Baptist Church) and would soon build Top of the Hill Restaurant in that space. This graffiti does reference the beer cooler in Fowler's, i.e., Big Bertha though.
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Okay. I used to go to that convenience store some. Do you remember when there was a head shop called the Purple Dandelion in front of University Baptist?
 
donbosco said:
First place I ever saw a water bed I'm pretty sure.
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My brother claims he open the first water bed Store in Durham I forget-some second generation strip mall. I think he made most of his $ on "paraphenelia"
 
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A tale from Carolina Days Past. Remembering Dr. Reckford.

I had my very first class at UNC, “Classics 31: The Hero and The Journey,” in a corner room of Murphey Hall. It was a recitation with a graduate student. Her name was Nina. We also met in the auditorium there where Dr. Kenneth Reckford gave eccentric and raucous lectures on ‘The Aeneid,’ ‘The Odyssey,’ and ‘The Lord of The Rings.’ It was the Fall of 1976. The whole thing was like nothing I had ever experienced. That campus, those old stone walls, the untapped potential for thoughtfulness enveloped me. I loved that scene so much I decided to make a career of it. For a while I even wore a corduroy blazer with elbow patches. Dr. Reckford also fought for civil rights and is mentioned in John Ehle’s ‘The Free Men,” — if you live in North Carolina and haven’t read it, you ought to.

The fall season often finds me revisiting classics - and in some cases grappling with them for the very first time. In other cases I see them in a much different light. Where we shine the light in 2023 can be quite different than what caught the sparkle in 1976. Almost 50 years have passed and find myself teaching first years this semester and on good days I can kind of feel the spirit of Dr. Reckford looking on. Back then I fell into a bit of a fascination with Aeneas, the Trojan adventurer and progenitor of Rome as well as, Aragorn, Strider, Tolkien’s Ranger of the North.

While Aragorn remains steadfastly a true hero for me, over the years (and yes I have pondered Vergil’s ‘Aeneid’ from time to time over the decades) Aeneas has plied some rough seas in my estimation. I see better the placement of Vergil’s epic poem of Rome’s mythic origins much more for the motivations of those doing the deciding - at least I think I do. As traditionally promoted, and here I mean no disrespect to Dr. Reckford, ‘The Aeneid’ could be a powerful apologia for empire-building. And thus the popularity of the tome with those Imperial Britishers of the 18th century who passed along the reading of Aeneas as a good conqueror who sought his own ‘Manifest Destiny’ to those educated elites of our own founding. All that turns out to be philosophical low hanging fruit really, though my freshman brain missed it way back in my own Days of Yore. I found exaltation far more fun. Today I grapple more with the Bigger Picture but then that’s The Way of the troubled passage of Time.

So now as part of my studying I have learned more of the veneration of Vergil’s actual prose - and of debates and discussions over translations. I never took Latin - I struggled with High School French à la Bear Creek, #DeepChatham, and worked hard at Brazilian Portuguese at Carolina only to discover a great love of Spanish as learned in the bars, basketball courts, and chicken-buses of Guatemala. Intriguing to me was the find, some few years back, of my dear Deddy’s scribbled in and dog-eared Latin book from his time at Bonlee High School in the 1930s. That he might have pondered that singular scholarly language with all its nuance and regulation whilst plowing behind Ole Bic the Mule - conjugating while keeping the rows straight - is a rather sublime imagining.

It is the Magic of that “dead language” that led me back to this topic. Once while reading and prepping for classes on Topics Ancient and Literary I chanced upon a custom I’d never encountered - at least not specifically. Growing up at Bonlee Baptist Church we did a lot with The Bible. There were Bible Drills and plenty of focus on scripture but one quite unofficial (unorthodox?) activity was asking the book of Proverbs for guidance. If you know your Holy Book you know that dead center of it one finds Psalms and Proverbs. Let’s say you need The Almighty’s counsel in a decision - without looking down open your Bible just slightly right-of-center and place your finger on the text. Voíla! Beneath your finger lies your instruction directly from the inspired author of The Book of Proverbs.

This kind of divination is called Bibliomancy - not so much for the Bible root of the word but for the larger meaning of biblio as book. Indeed, my devout Christian Bibliomancy has a parallel that is actually almost surely a predecessor called The Sortis Vergilianae and it involves ‘The Aeneid’ in the same role to Proverbs - as a vehicle for Divination. It seems that early on the poetry of the Roman Vergil came to be associated with prophecy and the author cloaked in mysticism. After all it is Vergil that leads Dante through Purgatorio and Inferno in ‘The Divine Comedy.’ (Another book that Dr. Reckford introduced us to back in ‘76)

So if you’ve read this far I invite you to engage in your own Sortis Vergilianae modern and online. Go to the link here for the “Random Number Generator” ( RANDOM.ORG - True Random Number Service ) and since ‘The Aeneid’ has 12 books (or chapters) set the generator to choose between 1 and 12. Somewhere along here you should think of the question that you want answered.

Now you have your Book - let’s say that you came up with Book 9 (or IX). Now go to this online version of ‘The Aeneid’ ( P. Vergilius Maro, Aeneid, Book 6, line 576 ) - find Book IX on the left margin and click. You will see then the number of lines in Book IX. That one happens to have 777 lines. Now return to your “Random Number Generator” and set it to choose between 1 and 777. My randomly generated number was 348 so I count out the lines until I arrive at my number.

Finding my line and gathering the full phrase my Sortis Vergilianae was:


“Thus round full folds
of sheep a famished lion fiercely prowls;
mad hunger moves him; he devours and rends with bloody, roaring mouth, the feeble flock that trembles and is dumb.”

Fortunately(?) I had no question or counsel in mind when I approached ‘The Aeneid’ this time. One can imagine where The Fates might have guided me had I in this count! Again, if you’ve read this far give it a try - with or without a query in mind - and see where the prose of Vergil directs you - where perhaps your destiny lies should you divine meaning from these words first penned in 19 BC.
 
If I remember correctly
Dr Reckford was arrested for a Civil rights sit in or some such A hero to me as young boy
 
mpaer said:
If I remember correctly
Dr Reckford was arrested for a Civil rights sit in or some such A hero to me as young boy
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It is all in the book I mentioned authored by Ehle, The Free Men. Find a copy. I suspect you'd greatly enjoy it.
 
donbosco said:
It is all in the book I mentioned authored by Ehle, The Free Men. Find a copy. I suspect you'd greatly enjoy it.
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Thank you
I was like 9 when my sister, 2 years my Senior , took my hand and we walked from Couch Lane to Eastgate to meet a protest group walking from Derm up to an AME church in CH There so cell phones back then-so I forget how we called the parents for a ride home when the speeches were done on what I guess was Rosemary St
I just ordered a copy of the book
 
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mpaer said:
Thank you
I was like 9 when my sister, 2 years my Senior , took my hand and we walked from Couch Lane to Eastgate to meet a protest group walking from Derm up to an AME church in CH There so cell phones back then-so I forget how we called the parents for a ride home when the speeches were done on what I guess was Rosemary St
I just ordered a copy of the book
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You may find yourself becoming a fan of Ehle. He's as pure a Tar Heel as you're ever going to find. I have loved his books...The Land Breakers and especially The Journey of August King (both of which are great films IMO as well). He both attended UNC and taught there.

en.wikipedia.org

John Ehle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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Not in Chapel Hill/Carrboro but some miles down 54 heading toward Greensboro. This business changed its giant ornament every month to celebrate a holiday. This was November.
 
donbosco said:
IMG_5599.jpeg

Not in Chapel Hill/Carrboro but some miles down 54 heading toward Greensboro. This business changed its giant ornament every month to celebrate a holiday. This was November.
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It's still there. I've been by it 3-4 times lately but not enough to know how often they change things or if they do.
 
donbosco said:
IMG_5599.jpeg

Not in Chapel Hill/Carrboro but some miles down 54 heading toward Greensboro. This business changed its giant ornament every month to celebrate a holiday. This was November.
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Yes
They are an Erection company-lots of cranes
 
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