Woodstock, Coach’s ‘Front Porch,’ Hair, & Franklin Street

donbosco

donbosco

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Despite what my students think, I did not attend Woodstock. I had just turned 11 and playing third base in the spirit of Brooks Robinson for Harpers Crossroads Little League was much more at the heart of my world in 1969 than Rock ‘n Roll. Still, by the late 1960s we had begun to feel the reverberations of counter culture stirrings in #DeepChatham Bonlee. Looking at photographs from those days closely the ‘bell’ at the bottom of our blue jeans was there, some pop art patterns were appearing in shirts and shorts, and instead of a buzz cut there were bangs. I remember coercing our local barber, “Hunky” Paschal, a beloved man who told mesmerizing stories about the wildness of the woods and hills of #DeepChatham, to back off with his clippers just a bit, with the permission of my Momma of course (who called him Robert, maintaining her blanket abstention from employing nicknames).

“Hunky” was also the unofficial mayor of Bonlee, being a prominent and very available Notary Public and all, living in his shop in ‘downtown’ Bonlee. He held back with his clippers, albeit reluctantly, perhaps he already sensed the inevitability of the coming of The Hippies and the 1970s embrace and neutralizing of counter-culture fashion that would follow - a cultural inversión that woukd signal hard times for any barber that didn’t become at least a part-time ‘hair stylist.’

It was around that same time that I really started working in #BonleeHardware, my Momma and Deddy’s store. I, like so many, slowly but steadily began to ‘grow out’ my hair. Of course there were resisters and I caught some pretty unforgettably nasty ribbing from some of the regular customers. They were the same ones that would continue on that theme when I, beginning in 1976, started attending Carolina. Their suggestions that my school was a nest of ‘Left-Wing Liberals’ and ‘Commies’ engaging in Free Love of ALL types while working to undermine the American Dream were in keeping with their other full-blown Helmsian ways of seeing. Senator No, after all, was in those days still dragging us down from his nightly perch on WRAL-TV where one of his favorite bloviations was calling UNC The University of Negroes and Communists (clever use of UNC there by The Right-Wing anti-intellectuals, eh? A trumpist bit of juvenile name-calling that predated modern times.) I took some of the harassment but once Deddy gave me the go-ahead I let some of the more mean-spirited ones have it right back. I will forever be thankful to him for that “The customers are most definitely NOT always right” talk.

IMG_4236.jpeg

I had begun to fall for Chapel Hill from the first time I laid eyes on the place. My older brother attended, which had gotten me into town early on, and of course a field trip to the #MoreheadPlanetarium left me wanting for more. Dean Smith sealed the deal after he got me on the “Front Porch” with his unselfish, winning brand of team-first basketball. Come to think of it, there was an awful big quotient of the “From each according to their ability and to each according to their need” in his “Carolina Way.” No wonder Helms and his people hated us so very much (dating back to Dr. Frank Porter Graham too no doubt). What a fine set of enemies against which to be measured indeed.

By the time I could drive I started heading over to Chapel Hill (exactly 34 miles through the backroads). The shops on Franklin Street were a whole new world. The Shrunken Head, The Dandelion, and smokey, dimly lit interiors smelling of beer into which, at 16 I only dared to peer but would soon enough come to love, suggested to me that a great deal of education stretched out in front of me. Flower Ladies and long hair and head bands and incense and black light posters and electric guitars all seductively screamed HIPPY!!!!

So when I arrived on Commie Hill in August of 1976 I was ready for the hippies. So what happened? Punk Rock. What a musical mishmash of a time it would be - and continues to be. Of course there are more stories. Still, what happened #OnThisDay in 1969 was key.

#OTD IN 1969 the “Woodstock Music & Art Fair, Three Days of Peace and Music” kicked off - 400,000 attended, far outstripping attendance forecasts and music and youth culture was never the same.

IMG_4237.jpeg
 
One of my friends in HS was related to one of the folks who put up some money for Woodstock. (First person I got high with). She invited me to go but my parents put a big squah on that. I never let them forget it. If you look closely on the movie poster of the crowd in front of the stage you can see her. Damn. Who knows how my life might have gone in other directions.

So of course I was working at a movie theater when the film came out. Was able to watch it tens of times with much regret.

Jubilees were the closest I got to that experience.
 
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grimes70 said:
One of my friends in HS was related to one of the folks who put up some money for Woodstock. (First person I got high with). She invited me to go but my parents put a big squah on that. I never let them forget it. If you look closely on the movie poster of the crowd in front of the stage you can see her. Damn. Who knows how my life might have gone in other directions.

So of course I was working at a movie theater when the film came out. Was able to watch it tens of times with much regret.

Jubilees were the closest I got to that experience.
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Not to kill your buzz on Shrunken Head but I detested that place. Before they arrived you had Kemp's on Henderson St which was a true head shop - incense, beads, lava lamps. S Head had bright lights, erzatz hippie stuff. They were about the $s; Kemp's was about the experience. Still have a small wooden pipe from Kemp's. Works great.
 
grimes70 said:
Not to kill your buzz on Shrunken Head but I detested that place. Before they arrived you had Kemp's on Henderson St which was a true head shop - incense, beads, lava lamps. S Head had bright lights, erzatz hippie stuff. They were about the $s; Kemp's was about the experience. Still have a small wooden pipe from Kemp's. Works great.
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Well, when I was wandering Franklin at 16 in 1974 ALL of those things were exotic as hell...even The Shack.
 
My stepdad lived in upstate New York and was one of the few people who actually purchased a ticket. He was walking in with a friend who had a broken arm in cast in the rain and there was a steady stream of people coming the other way saying the festival was called off and wasn't going to happen. So he and his friend turned around and went home. He saved the ticket for a long time but lost it somewhere along the way.
 
donbosco said:
IMG_4234.jpeg

Despite what my students think, I did not attend Woodstock. I had just turned 11 and playing third base in the spirit of Brooks Robinson for Harpers Crossroads Little League was much more at the heart of my world in 1969 than Rock ‘n Roll. Still, by the late 1960s we had begun to feel the reverberations of counter culture stirrings in #DeepChatham Bonlee. Looking at photographs from those days closely the ‘bell’ at the bottom of our blue jeans was there, some pop art patterns were appearing in shirts and shorts, and instead of a buzz cut there were bangs. I remember coercing our local barber, “Hunky” Paschal, a beloved man who told mesmerizing stories about the wildness of the woods and hills of #DeepChatham, to back off with his clippers just a bit, with the permission of my Momma of course (who called him Robert, maintaining her blanket abstention from employing nicknames).

“Hunky” was also the unofficial mayor of Bonlee, being a prominent and very available Notary Public and all, living in his shop in ‘downtown’ Bonlee. He held back with his clippers, albeit reluctantly, perhaps he already sensed the inevitability of the coming of The Hippies and the 1970s embrace and neutralizing of counter-culture fashion that would follow - a cultural inversión that woukd signal hard times for any barber that didn’t become at least a part-time ‘hair stylist.’

It was around that same time that I really started working in #BonleeHardware, my Momma and Deddy’s store. I, like so many, slowly but steadily began to ‘grow out’ my hair. Of course there were resisters and I caught some pretty unforgettably nasty ribbing from some of the regular customers. They were the same ones that would continue on that theme when I, beginning in 1976, started attending Carolina. Their suggestions that my school was a nest of ‘Left-Wing Liberals’ and ‘Commies’ engaging in Free Love of ALL types while working to undermine the American Dream were in keeping with their other full-blown Helmsian ways of seeing. Senator No, after all, was in those days still dragging us down from his nightly perch on WRAL-TV where one of his favorite bloviations was calling UNC The University of Negroes and Communists (clever use of UNC there by The Right-Wing anti-intellectuals, eh? A trumpist bit of juvenile name-calling that predated modern times.) I took some of the harassment but once Deddy gave me the go-ahead I let some of the more mean-spirited ones have it right back. I will forever be thankful to him for that “The customers are most definitely NOT always right” talk.

IMG_4236.jpeg

I had begun to fall for Chapel Hill from the first time I laid eyes on the place. My older brother attended, which had gotten me into town early on, and of course a field trip to the #MoreheadPlanetarium left me wanting for more. Dean Smith sealed the deal after he got me on the “Front Porch” with his unselfish, winning brand of team-first basketball. Come to think of it, there was an awful big quotient of the “From each according to their ability and to each according to their need” in his “Carolina Way.” No wonder Helms and his people hated us so very much (dating back to Dr. Frank Porter Graham too no doubt). What a fine set of enemies against which to be measured indeed.

By the time I could drive I started heading over to Chapel Hill (exactly 34 miles through the backroads). The shops on Franklin Street were a whole new world. The Shrunken Head, The Dandelion, and smokey, dimly lit interiors smelling of beer into which, at 16 I only dared to peer but would soon enough come to love, suggested to me that a great deal of education stretched out in front of me. Flower Ladies and long hair and head bands and incense and black light posters and electric guitars all seductively screamed HIPPY!!!!

So when I arrived on Commie Hill in August of 1976 I was ready for the hippies. So what happened? Punk Rock. What a musical mishmash of a time it would be - and continues to be. Of course there are more stories. Still, what happened #OnThisDay in 1969 was key.

#OTD IN 1969 the “Woodstock Music & Art Fair, Three Days of Peace and Music” kicked off - 400,000 attended, far outstripping attendance forecasts and music and youth culture was never the same.

IMG_4237.jpeg
Click to expand...
I remember the Flower Ladies on Franklin Street from my childhood. It was a shame when a new ordnance banished them from Franklin Street.

Many Franklin Street merchants resented the hippies and other sellers who set up shop on the sidewalk selling jewelry (mostly cheap), beads, pipes, lighters, bongs, candles, leather goods, incense, etc.

These sidewalk sellers didn’t need to pay for licensing and likely didn’t charge sales tax (and certainly didn’t remit it to the county or state).

The town merchants wanted them gone.

The local ordnance was clearly worded and poorly crafted. So, a local institution (and the income for many Northside and Eubanks Road black families) was immediately gone.

Law of unintended consequences writ large. Of course the flower ladies weren’t included said the town and the town council. The courts said, “No. If the ordnance doesn’t apply to the flower ladies, it doesn’t apply to anyone.”

NCNB plaza gave the Flower Ladies space in the air-conditioned walkway along the side of the bank; but, the Flower Ladies were never again as prominent as they’d been when they were out on Franklin Street.
 
donbosco said:
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1) I remember our parents driving us home from grad student parties in the late ‘60’s……Dad was faculty, but he was 27 when we moved to Chapel Hill……he was younger than ALL the faculty by A LOT and younger than most grad students (he was an assistant professor in a hard science)…..this was the era at parties in which coats were just tossed onto a bed and as the hours went by kids were tossed onto the coats as the kids ran out of gas……young professors and grad students didn’t have babysitter money…..so, the kids ran around the parties until the kids collapsed.

We’d be driving home and look out the window at Rosemary and Columbia and a huge mass of humans was spilled out onto W. Rosemary drinking beer……outside The Shack……or was it Kirkpatrick’s by that point?

2). Did crowds spill out onto Rosemary from The Shack? Or was that from Kirkpatrick’s?

3) Did Tim demolish the shack and build a new building atop the remnants of The Shack?
 
Zoo_View said:
1) I remember our parents driving us home from grad student parties in the late ‘60’s……Dad was faculty, but he was 27 when we moved to Chapel Hill……he was younger than ALL the faculty by A LOT and younger than most grad students (he was an assistant professor in a hard science)…..this was the era at parties in which coats were just tossed onto a bed and as the hours went by kids were tossed onto the coats as the kids ran out of gas……young professors and grad students didn’t have babysitter money…..so, the kids ran around the parties until the kids collapsed.

We’d be driving home and look out the window at Rosemary and Columbia and a huge mass of humans was spilled out onto W. Rosemary drinking beer……outside The Shack……or was it Kirkpatrick’s by that point?

2). Did crowds spill out onto Rosemary from The Shack? Or was that from Kirkpatrick’s?

3) Did Tim demolish the shack and build a new building atop the remnants of The Shack?
Click to expand...


IMG_4256.jpeg


When I arrived in August 1976 I was directed by the experienced sophomores and juniors in my dorm, Everett, straight to ‘Kirk’s.’ There Tim had .55 cans of beer and good pinball and Galaga as well as a fine jukebox. Along with Tim, two Mikes were behind the bar, one was Rogers and the other last name I can’t quite recall. The crowd did spill out into the front of the place often. In the back of the parking lot behind was a somewhat concealed spot centering on what we called ‘The Magic Tree.’

Next door Wheaties ran The Shack where the jukebox was less updated and filled with all those bagger tunes - East Coast Beach Music to shag to. There was a puck bowling game there where 33-33 was the standard contest.
 
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donbosco said:
IMG_4256.jpeg


When I arrived in August 1976 I was directed by the experienced sophomores and juniors in my dorm, Everett, straight to ‘Kirk’s.’ There Tim has .55 cans of beer and good pinball and Galags as well as a fine jukebox. Along with Tim, two Mikes were behind the bar, one was Rogers and the other last name I can’t quite recall. The crowd did spill out into the front of the place often. In the back of the parking lot behind was a somewhat concealed spot centering on what we called ‘The Magic Tree.’

Next door Wheaties ran The Shack where the jukebox was less updated and filled with all those bagger tunes - East Coast Beach Music to shag to. There was a puck bowling game there where 33-33 was the standard contest.
Click to expand...
db,

Please translate that post into English.

I haven’t a CLUE what you just wrote.
 
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