donbosco
Iconic Member
- Messages
- 2,178
BTW...Here on Hate/Beat dook Week, some thoughts on sacred spaces.
My Alma Mater and its town have given me fits of both joy and frustration to be sure but the Love is Strong Always. And the Memories are Deep and Everlasting. A perfect Franklin Street Friday afternoon once consisted of some time eavesdropping on the Drinkers in the Carolina Coffee Shop. Most notable among that crowd was Jake Mills of “"Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature" otherwise known as “The Dead Mule in Southern Literature” fame as well as other Tellers and Pontificators. Of course they knew that I, a scruffy graduate student was listening, perhaps they imagined that I might join their club one far off future day if I proved worthy and strong enough. I did chance to offer up a tidbit of a yet to blossom story from time to time but mostly I just absorbed the tall tale telling. Byron (Freeman) was the Master of Ceremonies for those boozy gatherings among the wood-panels and classical background melodies. That spot occupies sacred space for me tucked in with rememberings of wanderings through McCorkle Place or Bell Tower Repasts.
No doubt that there are as many individually revered settings as there are collective. Whether Dan K. Moore’s Wall or Peace Plaza at The Franklin Street Post Office ring your remembering bell loudest or it is the diagonal lean of The Greenlaw Wall by the House Undergrad Library that evokes the gods and goddesses of recollection for you – if you matriculated or even hung on for dear life – you have attachments to that Southern Part of Heaven. The Davie Poplar, The Pit, and the steps of Wilson Library of a mid-day skipping class, looking out over Polk Place toward South Building at hundreds of other like-minded – in that they too were gloriously playing hooky – Tar Heels young and old. My wife (Leah) and I were married in the shadow of “Walter’s Pine” in The Coker Arboretum on a beautiful October afternoon beneath that forever Carolina Blue Sky and we number that spot as another of many dear to our hearts at our Alma Mater and forever-town.
Charles Kuralt suggested that we were not bound to this place by the stone walls, or the well, or the bell, but rather because it is, “the University of the People.” Kuralt hit a nail squarely with his praise of the public character of Carolina and Chapel Hill but he gives far, far too little credit to sacred spaces and their power to raise up within us such love and affection – such deep, profound, and beloved memories. And here I haven’t even mentioned basketball. But we all know that the game is woven into our very souls there in places called Woollen, Carmichael, and Smith.
From the now gone, but not forgotten, soul sanctums of Tijuana Fats, Ye Olde Waffle Shop, and The Internationalist Bookstore — Billy Arthur’s, The Flower Ladies, Nice Price Books, and the squeaky floorboards at The Intimate — The Hardback Cafe, Kirkpatrick’s, Hector’s, and Trolls, and Hell — to those places that carry on like The Orange County Social Club, Local 506, The Open Eye Cafe, Sutton’s, Weaver Street Market, The Dead Mule, Franklin Motors, Bowbar Lapin Bleu, and the subterranean splendor of The Cavern Tavern — our hearts and minds and souls gather together from wherever we may have scattered on cold, winter Saturdays when our happiness is inhabited and animated by dook-hate, or warm spring first-shorts-of-the-new-year Friday afternoons skipping school or work, or summer mornings when town is half-populated and drowsy in the rising heat…
Here’s to that front booth in the Carolina Coffee Shop looking out on Franklin Street, the dusty lawn of He’s Not Here, the Mysteries of Carrboro in The West and its most magnificent sunsets ever, and the many sites of the legendary Cat’s Cradle – lift up your chosen potent potable to The Southern Part of Heaven. “I’m a Tar Heel Born and a Tar Heel Bred. And when I die I’ll Be a Tar Heel Dead. So It’s Rah-Rah Carolina-lina, Rah-Rah Carolina. Go To Hell dook!” (State and Wake) Here’s to Franklin and Rosemary, Cameron and McCauley, and all the other the Streets of Our Town.
My Alma Mater and its town have given me fits of both joy and frustration to be sure but the Love is Strong Always. And the Memories are Deep and Everlasting. A perfect Franklin Street Friday afternoon once consisted of some time eavesdropping on the Drinkers in the Carolina Coffee Shop. Most notable among that crowd was Jake Mills of “"Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature" otherwise known as “The Dead Mule in Southern Literature” fame as well as other Tellers and Pontificators. Of course they knew that I, a scruffy graduate student was listening, perhaps they imagined that I might join their club one far off future day if I proved worthy and strong enough. I did chance to offer up a tidbit of a yet to blossom story from time to time but mostly I just absorbed the tall tale telling. Byron (Freeman) was the Master of Ceremonies for those boozy gatherings among the wood-panels and classical background melodies. That spot occupies sacred space for me tucked in with rememberings of wanderings through McCorkle Place or Bell Tower Repasts.
No doubt that there are as many individually revered settings as there are collective. Whether Dan K. Moore’s Wall or Peace Plaza at The Franklin Street Post Office ring your remembering bell loudest or it is the diagonal lean of The Greenlaw Wall by the House Undergrad Library that evokes the gods and goddesses of recollection for you – if you matriculated or even hung on for dear life – you have attachments to that Southern Part of Heaven. The Davie Poplar, The Pit, and the steps of Wilson Library of a mid-day skipping class, looking out over Polk Place toward South Building at hundreds of other like-minded – in that they too were gloriously playing hooky – Tar Heels young and old. My wife (Leah) and I were married in the shadow of “Walter’s Pine” in The Coker Arboretum on a beautiful October afternoon beneath that forever Carolina Blue Sky and we number that spot as another of many dear to our hearts at our Alma Mater and forever-town.
Charles Kuralt suggested that we were not bound to this place by the stone walls, or the well, or the bell, but rather because it is, “the University of the People.” Kuralt hit a nail squarely with his praise of the public character of Carolina and Chapel Hill but he gives far, far too little credit to sacred spaces and their power to raise up within us such love and affection – such deep, profound, and beloved memories. And here I haven’t even mentioned basketball. But we all know that the game is woven into our very souls there in places called Woollen, Carmichael, and Smith.
From the now gone, but not forgotten, soul sanctums of Tijuana Fats, Ye Olde Waffle Shop, and The Internationalist Bookstore — Billy Arthur’s, The Flower Ladies, Nice Price Books, and the squeaky floorboards at The Intimate — The Hardback Cafe, Kirkpatrick’s, Hector’s, and Trolls, and Hell — to those places that carry on like The Orange County Social Club, Local 506, The Open Eye Cafe, Sutton’s, Weaver Street Market, The Dead Mule, Franklin Motors, Bowbar Lapin Bleu, and the subterranean splendor of The Cavern Tavern — our hearts and minds and souls gather together from wherever we may have scattered on cold, winter Saturdays when our happiness is inhabited and animated by dook-hate, or warm spring first-shorts-of-the-new-year Friday afternoons skipping school or work, or summer mornings when town is half-populated and drowsy in the rising heat…
Here’s to that front booth in the Carolina Coffee Shop looking out on Franklin Street, the dusty lawn of He’s Not Here, the Mysteries of Carrboro in The West and its most magnificent sunsets ever, and the many sites of the legendary Cat’s Cradle – lift up your chosen potent potable to The Southern Part of Heaven. “I’m a Tar Heel Born and a Tar Heel Bred. And when I die I’ll Be a Tar Heel Dead. So It’s Rah-Rah Carolina-lina, Rah-Rah Carolina. Go To Hell dook!” (State and Wake) Here’s to Franklin and Rosemary, Cameron and McCauley, and all the other the Streets of Our Town.
Last edited:
