This Date in History

[donbosco]

#OTD (November 14) in 1953, Chapel Hill’s Colonial recording label released Andy Griffith’s monologue “What It Was, Was Football.” ‘Chapel Hill Newspaper’ publisher, and owner of Colonial, Orville B. Campbell, had heard #UNC graduate Griffith (Class of 1949) perform the bit earlier that year. This was the kick-off, if you will, of a long career as a singer, dramatic actor, and comedian for Griffith. For good or ill (Me? Mainly Good) he and his stylings are deeply associated with the character of the state of North Carolina.

From the troubling portrayal of the potential of Southern populism in ‘A Face in the Crowd’ to the pragmatism of country wisdom in ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ with stops like ‘No Time For Sargents’ and ‘Matlock,’ along the way, the Mount Airy Tar Heel etched his voice into our collective psyche as much as such a thing can exist In These Times.

Here’s where I may ruffle a feather or two — sadly, and as my Momma was so fond of saying, “and I mean that thang” — football is today presenting a pretty strong challenge to the truly beautiful game in North Carolina. To be sure, once upon a time the inimitable ‘Choo Choo’ Justice drew the attention of the nation to Chapel Hill and Wallace Wade’s time in Durham was widely heralded — but that was a bygone era before we North Carolinians had come under the spell of Hard Court Houdinis like Frank McGuire, Everett Case, and Dean Smith and been treated to the graceful homegrown artistry of Lou Hudson, Pete Maravich, David Thompson, Bobby Jones, Chris Paul, Phil Ford, Walter Davis, and Michael Jordan - to name only a very few. I could go on and on. I could name Walt Bellamy, Sam Jones, James Worthy, Stephen Curry, Coby White, Meadowlark Lemon, Rusty Clark, and Curly Neal for example.

There is an irony to the popularity of “What It Was Was Football” in my eyes because the truth is that the true ground zero for our statewide psyche belongs on the basketball court not the gridiron. I will always think of football as something to pass away the early days of Autumn until basketball season begins.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed times have changed some of late, and not for the better in my estimate, and that both college and pro football now appear to rival the truly beautiful game of basketball for primacy in The Olde North State. A few years ago I taught a course titled “Southern Culture on The Skids?: Sports, Food, and Music in North Carolina.” (Apologies to Mary Huff and Dave Hartman) My vision was of a semester dedicated to barbecue, blues and bluegrass (with some ‘alternative’ sounds thrown in for good measure), and a longish consideration of basketball for the semester’s home stretch. And in the main we managed that schedule but I did have to put up with the rude intrusion, student-led even, of a focus on the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League. I probably could have much more graciously accepted a call for greater acknowledgment of the state’s Diamond heritage and the likes of Catfish Hunter, Gaylord and Jim Perry, Brian Roberts, or even Josh Hamilton. But Professional Football? Say it ain’t so Joe.

It is in fact comforting to me that once a fresh-out-of-college Andy Griffith might lampoon a North Carolinian’s ignorance of football. Frankly, I could live with a right smart more of that kind of inexperience with the gridiron and a return to the enthusiasm once so much healthier as expressed on the hard court. It’s not that I can’t enjoy the carnival atmosphere of a brisk and leafy Fall Saturday afternoon in a stadium with 40,000+ compatriots. Taking an ACC Coastal Division Title can do a fan good to be sure. It’s just that I prefer that our hearts be properly dedicated first and foremost to a sport that is more akin to art than it is to warfare.

This is what I believe.



Listen here to Griffith’s telling:

 

[nycfan]

#OTD (November 14) in 1953, Chapel Hill’s Colonial recording label released Andy Griffith’s monologue “What It Was, Was Football.” ‘Chapel Hill Newspaper’ publisher, and owner of Colonial, Orville B. Campbell, had heard #UNC graduate Griffith (Class of 1949) perform the bit earlier that year. This was the kick-off, if you will, of a long career as a singer, dramatic actor, and comedian for Griffith. For good or ill (Me? Mainly Good) he and his stylings are deeply associated with the character of the state of North Carolina.

From the troubling portrayal of the potential of Southern populism in ‘A Face in the Crowd’ to the pragmatism of country wisdom in ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ with stops like ‘No Time For Sargents’ and ‘Matlock,’ along the way, the Mount Airy Tar Heel etched his voice into our collective psyche as much as such a thing can exist In These Times.

Here’s where I may ruffle a feather or two — sadly, and as my Momma was so fond of saying, “and I mean that thang” — football is today presenting a pretty strong challenge to the truly beautiful game in North Carolina. To be sure, once upon a time the inimitable ‘Choo Choo’ Justice drew the attention of the nation to Chapel Hill and Wallace Wade’s time in Durham was widely heralded — but that was a bygone era before we North Carolinians had come under the spell of Hard Court Houdinis like Frank McGuire, Everett Case, and Dean Smith and been treated to the graceful homegrown artistry of Lou Hudson, Pete Maravich, David Thompson, Bobby Jones, Chris Paul, Phil Ford, Walter Davis, and Michael Jordan - to name only a very few. I could go on and on. I could name Walt Bellamy, Sam Jones, James Worthy, Stephen Curry, Coby White, Meadowlark Lemon, Rusty Clark, and Curly Neal for example.

There is an irony to the popularity of “What It Was Was Football” in my eyes because the truth is that the true ground zero for our statewide psyche belongs on the basketball court not the gridiron. I will always think of football as something to pass away the early days of Autumn until basketball season begins.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed times have changed some of late, and not for the better in my estimate, and that both college and pro football now appear to rival the truly beautiful game of basketball for primacy in The Olde North State. A few years ago I taught a course titled “Southern Culture on The Skids?: Sports, Food, and Music in North Carolina.” (Apologies to Mary Huff and Dave Hartman) My vision was of a semester dedicated to barbecue, blues and bluegrass (with some ‘alternative’ sounds thrown in for good measure), and a longish consideration of basketball for the semester’s home stretch. And in the main we managed that schedule but I did have to put up with the rude intrusion, student-led even, of a focus on the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League. I probably could have much more graciously accepted a call for greater acknowledgment of the state’s Diamond heritage and the likes of Catfish Hunter, Gaylord and Jim Perry, Brian Roberts, or even Josh Hamilton. But Professional Football? Say it ain’t so Joe.

It is in fact comforting to me that once a fresh-out-of-college Andy Griffith might lampoon a North Carolinian’s ignorance of football. Frankly, I could live with a right smart more of that kind of inexperience with the gridiron and a return to the enthusiasm once so much healthier as expressed on the hard court. It’s not that I can’t enjoy the carnival atmosphere of a brisk and leafy Fall Saturday afternoon in a stadium with 40,000+ compatriots. Taking an ACC Coastal Division Title can do a fan good to be sure. It’s just that I prefer that our hearts be properly dedicated first and foremost to a sport that is more akin to art than it is to warfare.

This is what I believe.



Listen here to Griffith’s telling:

My family seemed to listen to that once a year when I was a kid. My dad and I also listened to the HG Wells War of the Worlds radio broadcast many Halloweens (believe that was on NPR) and Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving. So I have a weird association of those three things (What it was was Football, War of the Worlds and Alice’s Restaurant), with a dash of Prairie Home Companion. LOL.

 

[05C40]

My family seemed to listen to that once a year when I was a kid. My dad and I also listened to the HG Wells War of the Worlds radio broadcast many Halloweens (believe that was on NPR) and Alice’s Restaurant every Thanksgiving. So I have a weird association of those three things (What it was was Football, War of the Worlds and Alice’s Restaurant), with a dash of Prairie Home Companion. LOL.

In re "Mercury Theater": My Dad was a big Orson Welles fan and listened to Mercury Theater every week on the radio. He had already read H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," and loved it, before Welles announced his radio adaptation of "War of the Worlds." Dad said his biggest annoyance with the radio play (on Sunday, October 30, 1938) was how often it was interrupted by announcements that it was just a radio play, NOT a real news story. Dad said that the constant disclaimers that it was just a Halloween radio play really did disrupt him from getting into the story. When Dad, then 19 years old, found out how many people actually believed it was real, he was both shocked and deeply disappointed at how gullible people actually were.

 

[grimes70]

Knew a kid who talked his father into spending a night with him in the Y in Raleigh to experience where Barney stayed when he came to the big city.

 

[Icky Mettle]

Knew a kid who talked his father into spending a night with him in the Y in Raleigh to experience where Barney stayed when he came to the big city.

That’s funny. Funny to think that NC didn’t have anything close to a “big city” back then. In 1960, Charlotte was the biggest with just over 200,000 people (by comparison it is now estimated to have over 900,000 people). Greensboro and Winston-Salem were the only other two NC cities in 1960 with more than 100,000 people, with Greensboro having roughly 120,000 and Winston having about 111,000. Raleigh at the time had around 94,000.

To put that in perspective, I was just in Concord, NC today, which I have always considered to be a small town. It now has an estimated population of about 110,000.

 

[nycfan]

 

[WaynetheDrain]

Still my favorite sports film of all time, along with Rocky.

 

[farce©]

To put that in perspective, I was just in Concord, NC today, which I have always considered to be a small town. It now has an estimated population of about 110,000.

When I grew up in Concord in the 60's/early 70's the population was ~17,000. There is an area of town now known as the "historic district." That area used to be called "Concord." The area which now consists of shopping centers and subdivisions located between the "historic district" and the Mecklenburg county line was called "the country."

 

[dcphx]

We are...

 

[AmbassadorHeel]

Still my favorite sports film of all time, along with Rocky.

Amazing movie, but to this day I question Norman Dale’s actual coaching ability. You’re telling me his plan was to use Jimmy Chitwood as a decoy on the last possession of a tie game with the Indiana state championship on the line?

Thankfully Chitwood said fuck that decoy shit and told his coach and team “I’ll make it.”

 

[WaynetheDrain]

Amazing movie, but to this day I question Norman Dale’s actual coaching ability. You’re telling me his plan was to use Jimmy Chitwood as a decoy on the last possession of a tie game with the Indiana state championship on the line?

Thankfully Chitwood said fuck that decoy shit and told his coach and team “I’ll make it.”

Well, I mean, his great defense to force that crucial turnover at the end of the state championship game was simply him yelling, “Get the ball! Get the ball!” Norman Dale likes to keep it simple.

 

[05C40]

Knew a kid who talked his father into spending a night with him in the Y in Raleigh to experience where Barney stayed when he came to the big city.

About 20 years ago, I was in the Northeast on a business trip when my brother contacted me about attending his daughter's graduation ceremony from Sloan-Kettering in NYC. Because, then as now, I am cheap and my wife would not be with me, I decided to stay somewhere cheap that was centrally located for all the places we would meeting/going to. I picked the Westside YMCA. I have never regretted being cheap more than I did that trip to NYC. Yes, the YMCA was cheap. But it was horrendously filthy. I have never stayed in a Y since and I never will again.

 

[lawtig02]

About 20 years ago, I was in the Northeast on a business trip when my brother contacted me about attending his daughter's graduation ceremony from Sloan-Kettering in NYC. Because, then as now, I am cheap and my wife would not be with me, I decided to stay somewhere cheap that was centrally located for all the places we would meeting/going to. I picked the Westside YMCA. I have never regretted being cheap more than I did that trip to NYC. Yes, the YMCA was cheap. But it was horrendously filthy. I have never stayed in a Y since and I never will again.

Had that same experience when I stayed in a hostel on the south England coast on foreign study. At about 1:30am on that sleepless night, I started thinking, "Why did I think it was a good idea to save $30 compared to the private room at cheap hotel down the street?"

 

[grimes70]

American inventor King Camp Gillette was granted a U.S. patent for the first razor with disposable blades.


Thought this was interesting, especially the last paragraph.


King Camp Gillette (born January 5, 1855, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, U.S.—died July 9, 1932, Los Angeles, California) was an American inventor and the first manufacturer of a razor with disposable blades.

Gillette, reared in Chicago, was forced by his family’s loss of possessions in the fire of 1871 to go to work, so he became a traveling salesman of hardware. An employer noted his predilection for mechanical tinkering, which sometimes resulted in commercially profitable inventions, and advised him to invent “something that would be used and thrown away” so that the customer would keep coming back.

While honing a permanent straight-edge razor in 1895, Gillette had the idea of substituting a thin double-edged steel blade placed between two plates and held in place by a Τ handle. Instead of being sharpened, the removable blade would simply be thrown away once it became dull. Gillette had no background in metallurgy, and manufacturing such a blade proved a challenge. It was some six years before William Nickerson developed a way to mass-produce the blades from sheet metal. The Gillette Safety Razor Company’s first sale, in 1903, consisted of a lot of 51 razors and 168 blades; by the end of 1904, it had produced 90,000 razors and 12,400,000 blades. Gillette’s innovative sales strategy—he sold the razors for a loss and made his profits on the blades—helped make the product a success.

Gillette then turned his intellectual energies to publicizing a view of utopian socialism in a series of books and other writings. He found competition wasteful and envisaged a planned society in which economic effort would be rationally organized by engineers. In 1910 he vainly offered former president Theodore Roosevelt a million dollars to act as president of an experimental “World Corporation” in the Arizona Territory. Gillette remained president of his company until 1931 but retired from active management in 1913.

 

[donbosco]

#OTD in 1933 Blue Ridge Parkway was approved-NC lobbied hard for the road & won (over TN) 252 miles of the total 469. This Federal Project provided work during Great Depression years & today is a boon to the #WNC economy.





Approximately 22 million people visit the BRP every year. Blue Ridge Parkway Project Approved Link to Map Below Here: https://www.blueridgeparkway.org


Of course Helene has dealt a harsh blow that will take years to address.

 

[donbosco]

Remembering Cameron Village! We didn’t go to Raleigh like we did Greensboro when I was a boy but of the few places we did visit, aside from the NC State Fairgrounds and Dorton Arena, Cameron Village stands out. Raleigh, after all, meant The Wolfpack, and we were a Tar Heel family. In those days in #DeepChatham that the NC State (just ‘State’ will suffice) fans far outnumbered the Carolina ones was a given. Perhaps that is still the case, I don’t know. State was first and foremost an agricultural institution and Chatham County was a farming center. I’d venture that considerably more Chatham Central High (my Alma Mater) graduates attended State than Carolina. The number going on to 4-year schools was never that great anyway.

But State had been a basketball powerhouse from the mid-1940s into the 1980s, first with the “Silver Fox” Everett Case, then “Stormin’” Norm Sloan, and finally with the beloved Jim Valvano. Sloan presided over the dominating 1973-74 David Thompson/Tommy Burleson-led NCAA winners while Valvano’s “Heart-Attack Pack” 1983 national champions almost made rivals happy for them (I emphasize “almost”). But it was Case that laid the ground work of building that fan base through the ‘50s and ‘60s with consistent winners, fast-break offenses, and the nationally acclaimed Christmas-time Dixie Classic Tournament. The Wolfpack’s miracle run during last year’s March Madness surely awakened some of the allegiance to the Glory Days once so rampant in the outlands. It is interesting that the heyday of State hoops seems to coincide rather well with that of Cameron Village.

As a “planned residential subdivision with shopping services,” Cameron Village was like no other space to most folks. It bore a magical sense about it, especially during the holidays with the lights and sounds of Christmas everywhere. It was certainly like nothing down in #Bonlee. The layout, with blocks of shopping, easy parking, and homes and apartments all around was frankly, futuristic in a way - not in a Jetson’s way - but maybe a sort of imagined Big Apple kind of way. The design preceded the eventually ubiquitous mall but transcended the shopping strip landing somewhere in an outer limit of imagination - at least for a while in my own dreaming of a world beyond rural North Carolina during the 1960s and early 1970s.

In the mid-1970s I went off to my true fantasy destination of Chapel Hill and the sense of Raleigh as the home of my rival intensified. Duke/dook was an also-ran in most every way at that time - a laughable last-place finisher in all sports and already inhabited by zero folks from down home, unless they were in the hospital. State was the focus of most all of the enmity that bubbled up out of The Southern Part of Heaven in those days. There is great truth in the bumper sticker, “Duke is puke, Wake is fake, but the team I hate is NC State.”

I did return to Cameron Village (now known as The Village District) in the early 1980s and it was the unifying force of rock n roll, blues, and bluegrass that got me there. I didn’t go that often, after all we had The Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, but a few times shows at The Pier in the Cameron Village Subway drew me east. Great bands played there like R.E.M. (there’s a YouTube of a 1982 show there online - look it up), Sonic Youth, Pylon, The dBs - all wasn’t Alt-Music either, one of my all-time favorite shows there was David Bromberg. I can’t name the artists here but I will mention one more - a 1981? visit to Raleigh by an about-to-be-discovered all-woman band, that thanks to WXYC, the campus station at UNC, I was aware of and had already been dancing to (Chapel Hill danced in the early ‘80s - shoe-gazing had yet to set in). I have friends that have adjacent stories about that show and meeting The Go Gos in a nearby supermarket.

Enough and on to our #OnThisDay…Suffice it to say that I’ve never come to know Raleigh well enough but I ‘get’ that it has its own mystique and grand history. There are folks that I associate with the town that are mighty cool (you know who you are) and the music that has rock and rolled out of there is some of NC’s finest. Fabulous Knobs, Connells, Corrosion of Conformity, The Hanks, and Tres Chicas ring bells right off. To bring it back around I’m always reminded of a fantastic show at The Pier that I missed - For years I have cherished my copy of the most beloved and listened-to Chatham County’s own, “The Bluegrass Experience: Live at The Pier” (1976).


#OTD (November 17) in 1949 Cameron Village (now The Village District) among The South’s 1st Shopping Ctrs, opened in Raleigh. Very popular in ‘50-60s, malls came along and to hurt business in the ‘70s but that same decade saw ‘The Underground’ thrive. Renovations have kept it alive to this day. Cameron Village Trend-Setter for Raleigh and the South

 

[mpaer]

Remembering Cameron Village! We didn’t go to Raleigh like we did Greensboro when I was a boy but of the few places we did visit, aside from the NC State Fairgrounds and Dorton Arena, Cameron Village stands out. Raleigh, after all, meant The Wolfpack, and we were a Tar Heel family. In those days in #DeepChatham that the NC State (just ‘State’ will suffice) fans far outnumbered the Carolina ones was a given. Perhaps that is still the case, I don’t know. State was first and foremost an agricultural institution and Chatham County was a farming center. I’d venture that considerably more Chatham Central High (my Alma Mater) graduates attended State than Carolina. The number going on to 4-year schools was never that great anyway.

But State had been a basketball powerhouse from the mid-1940s into the 1980s, first with the “Silver Fox” Everett Case, then “Stormin’” Norm Sloan, and finally with the beloved Jim Valvano. Sloan presided over the dominating 1973-74 David Thompson/Tommy Burleson-led NCAA winners while Valvano’s “Heart-Attack Pack” 1983 national champions almost made rivals happy for them (I emphasize “almost”). But it was Case that laid the ground work of building that fan base through the ‘50s and ‘60s with consistent winners, fast-break offenses, and the nationally acclaimed Christmas-time Dixie Classic Tournament. The Wolfpack’s miracle run during last year’s March Madness surely awakened some of the allegiance to the Glory Days once so rampant in the outlands. It is interesting that the heyday of State hoops seems to coincide rather well with that of Cameron Village.

As a “planned residential subdivision with shopping services,” Cameron Village was like no other space to most folks. It bore a magical sense about it, especially during the holidays with the lights and sounds of Christmas everywhere. It was certainly like nothing down in #Bonlee. The layout, with blocks of shopping, easy parking, and homes and apartments all around was frankly, futuristic in a way - not in a Jetson’s way - but maybe a sort of imagined Big Apple kind of way. The design preceded the eventually ubiquitous mall but transcended the shopping strip landing somewhere in an outer limit of imagination - at least for a while in my own dreaming of a world beyond rural North Carolina during the 1960s and early 1970s.

In the mid-1970s I went off to my true fantasy destination of Chapel Hill and the sense of Raleigh as the home of my rival intensified. Duke/dook was an also-ran in most every way at that time - a laughable last-place finisher in all sports and already inhabited by zero folks from down home, unless they were in the hospitable. State was the focus of most all of the enmity that bubbled up out of The Southern Part of Heaven in those days. There is great truth in the bumper sticker, “Duke is puke, Wake is fake, but the team I hate is NC State.”

I did return to Cameron Village (now known as The Village District) in the early 1980s and it was the unifying force of rock n roll, blues, and bluegrass that got me there. I didn’t go that often, after all we had The Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, but a few times shows at The Pier in the Cameron Village Subway drew me east. Great bands played there like R.E.M. (there’s a YouTube of a 1982 show there online - look it up), Sonic Youth, Pylon, The dBs - all wasn’t Alt-Music either, one of my all-time favorite shows there was David Bromberg. I can’t name the artists here but I will mention one more - a 1981? visit to Raleigh by an about-to-be-discovered all-woman band, that thanks to WXYC, the campus station at UNC, I was aware of and had already been dancing to (Chapel Hill danced in the early ‘80s - shoe-gazing had yet to set in). I have friends that have adjacent stories about that show and meeting The Go Gos in a nearby supermarket.

Enough and on to our #OnThisDay…Suffice it to say that I’ve never come to know Raleigh well enough but I ‘get’ that it has its own mystique and grand history. There are folks that I associate with the town that are mighty cool (you know who you are) and the music that has rock and rolled out of there is some of NC’s finest. Fabulous Knobs, Connells, Corrosion of Conformity, The Hanks, and Tres Chicas ring bells right off. To bring it back around I’m always reminded of a fantastic show at The Pier that I missed - For years I have cherished my copy of the most beloved and listened-to Chatham County’s own, “The Bluegrass Experience: Live at The Pier” (1976).


#OTD (November 17) in 1949 Cameron Village (now The Village District) among The South’s 1st Shopping Ctrs, opened in Raleigh. Very popular in ‘50-60s, malls came along and to hurt business in the ‘70s but that same decade saw ‘The Underground’ thrive. Renovations have kept it alive to this day. Cameron Village Trend-Setter for Raleigh and the South

Must have been about 1961 Mom took us to cameron for "school is about to open " shopping. To get there you had to go through the swamp on 54

 

[grimes70]

Downtown and Cameron Village. Where to shop 50s and 60s.

The upper building close to Oberlin housed my pediatrician's office along with a bunch of others. The Hobby Shop a long tine tenant was the home of model trains, model kits and all kinds of neat shit kids and some adults loved.

I've posted before on IC that the Sears store (where HT is - both up and downstairs) had the White and Colored drinking fountains. My brother and I would wait for the blue/white haired ladiies to come by and drink from the Colored. Shocking! We said the water always tasted better from that one. If mom was nearby she would agree and sometimes take a gulp herself. Our little form of Civil Rights protest.

Knew a couple girls who worked in the "mod/hip" clothing stores in the Subway and waited at the Pier as well. Later a friend lived in one of those townhouses right behind the Subway. Spent quite a few nights on the couch there... Buffet decided he needed a regular backup band while hanging around the Pier one night after a show; thus the Coral Reefers. Cafe Deja View was a more jazzy place. Many memories and even more lost from the fog and haze of the times.

Now weekend nights might find you driving around a while trying to find a parking space if you want to dine there.

 

[05C40]

In re: Entertainment venues under Cameron Underground, a/k/a, The Villiage Subway. Back in the day, there were rumors of some sort of government facility under Cameron Underground. Some time in the late 1970's a reporter for the News & Observer, who--just by happenstance I'm sure--was accompanied by an Otis Elevator repairman, somehow pushed the wrong button on a elevator and was taken down to a level below the nightclubs and music venues in Cameron Underground. Immediately upon disembarking from the elevator, the reporter and repairman were surrounded by what the reporter described as, IIRC, government types, who escorted them back to the surface level and advised them not to return. I was unable to find anything on the internet about this story/incident/place, but I swear I read it at the time.

 

[grimes70]

In re: Entertainment venues under Cameron Underground, a/k/a, The Villiage Subway. Back in the day, there were rumors of some sort of government facility under Cameron Underground. Some time in the late 1970's a reporter for the News & Observer, who--just by happenstance I'm sure--was accompanied by an Otis Elevator repairman, somehow pushed the wrong button on a elevator and was taken down to a level below the nightclubs and music venues in Cameron Underground. Immediately upon disembarking from the elevator, the reporter and repairman were surrounded by what the reporter described as, IIRC, government types, who escorted them back to the surface level and advised them not to return. I was unable to find anything on the internet about this story/incident/place, but I swear I read it at the time.

Saw a few passed out folks in the elevator back in the day.