Chapel Hill/Carrboro History

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‘Capital of the Southern Mind’

By Peter Range, Dec. 17, 1972, New York Times

Chapel Hill NC — This is the kind of town where an alderperson

(that is, a lady alderman) lofts a helium filled balloon above

the main street on a 90‐foot string to dramatize the visual

damage that would be done if the zoning board approved a

bank's plan to construct a 9‐story building in the center of

an otherwise two‐story town. She helped get the building cut

down to 3 stories.



It's also a town where a 72‐year‐old retired investment

banker, Robert Hudgens, thunders forth at irregular intervals

with editorials on the Vietnam war, the Men's Garden Club or

the promise of youth. He writes, hand‐sets, prints & mails

the editorials out to friends from a basement printshop he

calls The Rooster Press of Chapel Hill. “Everybody here tends

to take you at face value,” Hudgens says. “You can be in

violent disagreement with your neighbor & it doesn't matter.

You can mow your lawn on Sunday & the people who go to church

don't pay any attention.”



Chapel Hill's tradition of individuality & intellectual

ferment is consistent with what has always been its principal

industry: higher education. The University of North Carolina,

which is in the town & is often called, simply, “Chapel Hill,”

was the first state university in the US & has been a leading

educational institution since it was opened in 1795.

Chapel Hill is in the rolling Piedmont region at the center

of the state. One of its blessings is isolation: it's 10 miles

from the nearest city, Durham, a swampy 30 miles from the

state capital, Raleigh, & 12 miles of pastureland from the

tiny county seat of Hillsboro. The old campus of the

university, much like a well‐done but casual English garden,

is the heart of Chapel Hill. Thomas Wolfe, a student there

from 1916-1920, described it in “Look Homeward, Angel”: “The

university was a charming, an unforgettable place...buried

in a pastoral wilderness.... The central campus sloped back

& up over a broad area of rich turf, groved with magnificent

ancient trees.”



Boost the Spirit

-----------------

Overrun with cherry trees, dogwood & hardwoods hung with

wisteria, Chapel Hill has brilliant springs & misty autumns

that do something for the spirit. Meticulously laid brick

walks crisscross the university's undulating grounds with

their hodgepodge of old brick buildings, but the grass

clearly invites you to walk, sit, read or play on it. And

everybody does. It's never surprising to see a graduate

seminar or even an overcrowded freshman class meeting out

of doors under one of the hundreds of oaks & maples. In the

evening sitters or strollers enjoy their own private recitals

outside the practice rooms of the music department. A reverie

may be interrupted by meandering children, dogs & young

lovers, but it's all part of the background, & mildly,

pleasantly distracting.



The campus is a very open one, flowing naturally over a

low rock wall onto the one‐block hub of downtown. Academe &

commerce do not collide here.



Like any university community, Chapel Hill has its town &

gown rifts, but because the rather cosmopolitan academic

community is at least as large as the homegrown business

& farm population, a modus vivendi was reached long ago.

Except for a brief upheaval at the height of the civil

rights movement, the good God-fearing folk of Chapel Hill

& the surrounding farmland maintain a friendly respect for

all of the hairy, book‐toting atheists in their midst &

the intellectual community has less arrogant scorn for its

non‐academic, more fundamentalist neighbors than any

assemblage of eggheads east of the Iowa Writers Workshop.

The modus vivendi extends even to political power, which is

a shared thing. Aldermanic seats are more or less evenly

divided between town & gown; 2 of the 6 aldermen are women,

& while Chapel Hill has a very small black population for

a Southern town (only 10% of the 25,537 inhabitants are

black), its mayor is Howard Lee, a black medical career

adviser at arch‐rival Duke 10 miles away. In his 2nd race

Lee carried every precinct by an overwhelming margin.

Writers, editors, social & political scientists have come

to The Hill to study, work, teach & live.



For many decades the only liberal enclave in a vehemently

conservative South, Chapel Hill was the natural gathering

spot for young Southerners looking for a Harvard within a

day's railroad ride. At the turn of the century, philosopher

& gadfly Horace Williams was the town's intellectual dynamo

& the man who started it on its more or less permanent

ideological collision course with a state legislature

dominated to this day by tobacco & textile interests. As a

student, Thomas Wolfe helped make the outspoken, six‐day‐a‐

week campus newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, the pushy force

for change that it has become. Dramaturgist Frederick Koch

created in the Carolina Playmakers the best Southern

university theater company outside Tulane University. The

Playmakers gave Wolfe his first playwriting experience &

actors like Jack Palance & Andy Griffith their early

exposure to greasepaint.



Chapel Hill sociologist Howard Odum, Dixie's answer to

Gunnar Myrdal, undertook the first major regional study

of the South with his 1936 work, “Southern Regions of the

United States,” which graphically portrayed an impoverished,

prejudice‐bound South on the threshold of its own industrial

revolution. This approach is now being carried on by a

group of intellectuals called the L.Q.C. Lamar Society,

whose current guiding light is Chapel Hill alumnus Terry

Sanford, former Governor & now president of Duke University.

Words are the currency in academe; writers & editors have

always been drawn to Chapel Hill, whether to begin their

careers, pursue them or retire from them. Betty Smith (“A

Tree Grows in Brooklyn”) came to Chapel Hill for a visit

in 1935 & never left until her death last year. Novelists

Leon Rooke, John Ehle, Robert Ruark, Noel Houston & James

Street all thrived in or around Chapel Hill. John Knowles,

after the success of “A Separate Peace,” spent a fructuous

year in Chapel Hill as a writer‐in‐residence.

Playwright Paul Green & short‐story writer Max Steele still

work here. Journalists like C.B.S's Charles Kuralt & The

New York Times' Clifton Daniel, Tom Wicker & Wayne King

all graduated from the university. Gene Roberts, a former

Times man & now managing editor of The Philadelphia

Inquirer, is a Chapel Hill alumnus.



It's no accident that two of the deservedly respected

elders of American journalism, Mark Ethridge of The

Louisville Courier‐Journal & Vermont Royster of The Wall St.

Journal, have chosen to spend their active retirement in

Chapel Hill. They are wise & gentle men who have relin-

quished editorships to renew intimate contact with the

young when lesser men would decline in inactivity. Ethridge,

who built a home here with his writing wife, Willie Snow

Ethridge, calls Chapel Hill “the capital of the Southern mind.”

Chapel Hill has produced a marvelous melding of the

intellectual vigor of youth & the wisdom of longevity.

Professors still commonly practice old school, Mr. Chips

techniques, holding seminars or end‐of‐semester partied for

their students at home.

Cont. in next post.
 
The favorite pastime is to talk & a favorite hangout is a bookstore.

In Chapel Hill a favorite pastime is talk, be it metaphysics

or gossip, & the crowded walk in front of the little post

office is a favorite meeting place. “On Saturday mornings

I go to Fowler's Food Market & the post office so I can see

everyone I missed during the week,” says Anne Queen, who is

director of the campus Y.M.C.A. program but whose primary

role in town is that of gadfly & latter‐day salon keeper

for Chapel Hill's rarified egghead community. Many waves of

young intellectuals have been introduced to that community

at Anne's Sunday morn ing sherry brunches in her cottage

on a lane off Mallette Street. Political & literary guests

often enliven the discussions. Politicans like Mike

Mansfield, Bella Abzug & Allard Lowenstein were there this

year. So was Norman Mailer. Ms. Queen had grits for him &

“he almost licked his plate.”



A favorite nighttime hangout is the Intimate Bookshop, a

high‐ceilinged emporium with creaking floors, 1950s music

from the owner's private record collection, a children's

nook replete with tiny, battered reading chairs, & no less

than 40,000 books in stock. It's one of the few places open

at night & browsers are always welcome. “Once in a while

someone lies down in a cubicle to read for several hours &

we let him stay until he gets in the way,” says proprietor

Wally Kuralt, brother of CBS's Charles.



“The flower ladies” are another of downtown's primary

attractions. Though a city hall disagreement over what to

do about proliferating leather & jewelry sales on the

sidewalks by assorted artisans & freaks forced the flower

ladies off the main walk into a passageway, a half‐dozen

or so black women in billowy cotton dresses still do a

brisk business in fresh‐cut flowers almost every day of the

year. The flowers have gone up from 35 cents 10 years ago

to $1 a bunch now, but they're still sold from old coffee

cans & wrapped in yesterday's newspaper.



Rosa Belle Stone, one of the flower ladies, has withstood

the elements & watched the sidewalk parade for 35 years,

“since I was 8 years old.” She remembers carrying 5‐cent

bunches of flowers as a little girl to the late Dr. Frank

Porter Graham, university president, US Senator, UN mediator

& general guiding light of Chapel Hill liberals. She cherishes

the memory of “one lady who gave me a beautiful doll, some-

thing I'd never been able to have.” And she remembers one

white customer “who came up one day & said, ‘You know, you're

the reason I made up my mind to settle in Chapel Hill.’” In

another place that incident might carry a tinge of racial

condescension, but in Chapel Hill it is a highly believable

story, for Chapel Hillians are the sort of people to make a

lifelong decision for that kind of reason.



Consider Jorgen Petersen, a Danish industrial engineer who

was searching for a new life after 10 years in the Rhodesian

copper mines & 5 more with Chrysler in Detroit & California.

“We rode down main street & people were walking!” he exclaims.

“You know, In the cities, nobody walks, they drive. But here

people were walking in the business district. So I thought,

here may be the place.” It was, & the Petersens now operate

a very popular Danish open‐sandwich cafe just one block off

the main street.



Another immigrant was Edward Danziger, a Viennese Jewish

refugee who in 1939 was looking for the proper outlet for

his talents as chef & candymaker. Though “Papa D,” as he came

to be known, died last year, his Old World Gift Shop in the

center of town is still aclutter not only with rich

confections but also with imported crystal, European woods

& yellowed clippings proclaiming first the Anschluss & then

the fall of the Third Reich.



There's little concern about wealth in Chapel Hill. There

may be a millionaire or two within the city limits, but they

are impossible to spot. Cadillacs are almost unheard of;

those seeking expensive comfort turn to a Mercedes instead

(Chapel Hill has a European bias, anyway). Ostentation is

abhorred second only to intellectual vapidity. The town

fairly exudes classlessness & is utterly bereft of anything

even vaguely smacking of haut monde. The one attempt at a

country club was a bust.



There are some people who think Chapel Hill is changing for

the worse. The town's population has tripled in the last

20 years & the university's student body has grown to 18,000.

In a community where everyone used to come out to see the

automobile accident, traffic has become strangulating &

accidents common.



“Anybody who knew the old Chapel Hill knows it's gone to

hell,” says James Shumaker, the editor of what used to be

The Chapel Hill Weekly. “There's too much of everything.

Too many people, too many cars.” It's perhaps a sign of the

town's alleged ruination that the Weekly is now called The

Chapel Hill Newspaper & is publishing 4 times a week.

Obviously a commercial decision, for Chapel Hill hardly

produces that much news.



Most of whatever ruination has occurred has been, thankfully,

at the bottom of The Hill (Wolfe called it “a long tabling

butte, which rose steeply above the country”). That's where

the motel blight is. But unfortunately there has been

encroachment upon The Hill, too: a couple of hamburger stands,

look alike high‐rise dormitories put up by private capital

to house the growing student population, tasteless boxy apart-

ment houses, an out‐of‐proportion & gargantuan new chemistry

building. Hardee's Hamburgers feeds the motor bike & loud‐

muffler set where a tiny brook used to drive a miniature

water‐wheel surrounded by several Gartenzwerge (German garden

dwarfs) in front of a simple old frame house. The customers

at Belles department store across the street park on asphalt

where two widows used to sit on their long front porch.

And more than the scenery has deteriorated. In the mid‐60s

the town's first murder in memory was committed, in the

arboretum, the romantic botanical gardens near the women's

dorms where all local love affairs were traditionally begun,

consummated & ended. Yes, it was a young white coed, killed

in broad daylight. And yes, to make complete the cliche

preoccupation of the outside world, a “large black male” was

reported to have fled from the scene. Chapel Hill was not

used to this kind of thing. The murder has never been solved,

but garish mercury vapor burners were forthwith installed in

the stolid old milkglass lampposts that dot the campus.

Coeds are counseled not to walk without escort after dark

now, a normal precaution almost anywhere but Chapel Hill.

In August, Chapel Hill also had its first recorded bank

robbery. It's perhaps a measure of things that the perpe-

trators could bag only $2,500. Still, few people in Chapel

Hill bother to lock their cars or front doors.

On every return to Chapel Hill, especially after a long

absence, one anticipates the worst. And indeed, inevitably

one finds yet another shopping center in place of acres of

trees on the edge of town, still more concessions to the

internal combustion engine downtown & too many people every-

where. But one is always startled, in an honestly breath-

taking way, by the patient, unaltered beauty of the old town

& the indomitably intellectual spirit of the people.

“Chapel Hill is like an old lady who won't be looked down

the nose at,” says Robert Hudgens.



Maybe it's the graveled walks of East Franklin Street, or

perhaps the perennial presence of Grand Old Man Robert House,

the classicist & former university chancellor who never

misses his predawn constitutional, or maybe simply the daily

holiday atmosphere of the main business block: There remains

a magical, vibrant village charm.



The danger of provincialism is therefore present, & Chapel

Hill is provincial about some things: like fighting for

months to preserve a single rather insignificant tree that

the road builders wanted to cut down, or standing in the

way of the kind of progress the bank's architect had in

mind with his 9‐story building. But the town is too cosmo-

politan for serious parochialism. It would be hard io go

to lunch with 5 people in Chapel Hill without finding out

that at least two of them had just returned from, say,

Paris, Uganda or at least New York. Chapel Hill may be the

only Southern town with pre‐breakfast doorstep delivery of

the Sunday. New York Times (280 of them & 800 more at news-

stands). It's taken quite for granted here that one knows

what is happening on the broad American cultural scene.

December 17, 1972, New York Times.
 
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Story of a Stone Hippo.



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This tale unfolded from late July through August of 1995. This clip is from 12/31/95 in ‘The Chapel Hill Herald.’
 
And another Chapel Hill Animal Tale!!


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I had a vague memory of this controversy over The Crook’s Corner Pig on a Pole. What I also remember of Crook’s in those days had a bit different, can I say it? New Wave BBQ Vibe in those days? Who else has remembering on this? (Daily Tar Heel, January 18, 1980)
 
donbosco said:
And another Chapel Hill Animal Tale!!


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I had a vague memory of this controversy over The Crook’s Corner Pig on a Pole. What I also remember of Crook’s in those days had a bit different, can I say it? New Wave BBQ Vibe in those days? Who else has remembering on this? (Daily Tar Heel, January 18, 1980)
Click to expand...
Iirc, it was an Arkansas style that wasn't very good. Cam Hill was an investor,I'm pretty sure and I don't remember who else. Cam was also the owner of Rhino-bilt, later changed to Cleora Sterling and had two full sized rhinos made from fiberglass made by Bob Gaston at his house on the corner of Cameron Ave., now a parking lot.

I worked with Bob in what was originally the King's Klub at the Hotel Europa. He was called in to paint some concrete columns in a faux marble pattern and I was running oak rail caps and Corian baseboard.
 
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7 years ago.

I didn’t eat at her restaurant often. It was pretty much what I grew up with and I got home enough not to miss it. But she was an admirable person who made her way well.
 
donbosco said:
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7 years ago.

I didn’t eat at her restaurant often. It was pretty much what I grew up with and I got home enough not to miss it. But she was an admirable person who made her way well.
Click to expand...
My mother was definitely born in the South. She DID NOT cook.

We NEVER ate grits or fried chicken. Or mashed potatoes. Ever.

Pork chops with applesauce was as close to fine dining as we reached
.
 
Zoo_View said:
My mother was definitely born in the South. She DID NOT cook.

We NEVER ate grits or fried chicken. Or mashed potatoes. Ever.

Pork chops with applesauce was as close to fine dining as we reached
.
Click to expand...

My Momma was rural southern and had 7 sisters. Her mother was a good cook but apparently she only taught each of her daughters to cook one thing well. My mother learned "stew beef." She burned pretty much everything else but lots of southern dishes tend to be cooked to death any way so that worked out. I learned early on in life that if I didn't want crusty biscuits that I needed to hang out in the kitchen and pull them myself. I had to keep an eye on the gravy too.
 
My mom mostly learned to cook mostly from my dad's mom after my dad was killed and we moved in with them. Her mom was dead, her dad had remarried and she had six sisters living at home. Their kids were all gone so that's where we went. Mom had never lived with her parents, anyway and didn't associate with them much until she was widowed. She never talked too much about her life with her foster parents but it must not have been to bad. We visited them occasionally later.

Mama (my dad's mom) was a great cook. Didn't do anything but country cooking but she did that well. Hell I was 18 before I discovered that I most disliked vegetables. Mom and my Aunt Thelma both cooked just like her.
 
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