by Jay Bagwell - Chapel Hill High School Class of 1964

I grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was and still is a beautiful place, located in the middle of the state. Whenever I think back about the town, I always remember it as being green with large trees, manicured lawns and lots of flowers and gardens.

Chapel Hill is the home of the University of North Carolina, the oldest state-owned university in the country. Its campus begins just the other side of Franklin Street with a low stonewall marking the boundary line. It is as if the University grew right up next to the town, which I guess is what happened; a real kind of chicken or the egg situation.

Looking down Raleigh Road from South Columbia street in the early 1960s

Large expanses of green covered the campus with brick sidewalks crisscrossing the lawns’ manicured expanse. Growing up I used to think that if I only could have just one penny for every sidewalk brick then I’d be a very rich man.

I still harbor that same wish today.


Yes, growing up in Chapel Hill was a great experience. Being a university town, you were surrounded by a lot of smart people and that’s always an advantage. I grew up with children whose parents worked for the University, along with others whose parents didn’t. All in all, the University was a constant presence in our lives. Like I said, the campus was just a stonewall away from the main street of town.

I guess what I remember most about the town has to be its people. When you walked down Franklin Street, they always made eye contact with you. Nodded and acknowledged your presence, and soon, you found yourself doing the same. When you walked down Franklin Street you spoke to everyone and everyone spoke to you. Simple greetings like, “Good afternoon,” and “How are you?” Even as a kid, you learned to acknowledge the presence of others.

Another memory was the Vietnam protest and how the people of Chapel Hill showed their feelings about the war. You see, each day they would line up along Franklin Street, students and town folk alike. That line would start at the Post Office and stretch down the sidewalk for a whole block of Franklin Street. No one said anything. There were no chanters. Few ever carried signs or banners. You just stood there in line, facing the shops along the way. Like I said, the people standing there were a cross section of Orange County at the time: men and women, students and townies, farmers and professors, shoppers and shopkeepers, even children. How long you stood there in line was up to you: five minutes, maybe fifteen, or even an hour. It didn’t matter. After you stood in line for what you thought was the right amount of time, you’d go on your way. People knew what you were doing standing there. It was a powerful form of protest.

The downtown Chapel Hill Post Office on Franklin Street in 1949

Anti-Vietnam-War protesters camped out in front of Chapel Hill Post Office 

As a kid, I always liked going up town. One of my favorite destinations was the Intimate Book Shop. After all, this was a university town. When my mother went shopping, she’d always drop me off there. The Intimate was located in one side of an old two-story wooden building at the east end of Franklin Street. The place was lined in books. Books filled the shelves and every corner. The wooden floors were old and oiled; warped by time. There were a number of comfortable chairs where you could sit and read. Yes, you could just walk in, sit down and read books to your heart’s content. You didn’t have to buy any! Of course, they did like it when you bought their books, but they seemed to look at reading as something of a “loss leader.” I spent many a Saturday reading books in a far corner of the store removed from the day-to-day. The Intimate helped me establish a habit that continues today: buying books. This way I can really enjoy them, by being able to refer back to them over and over again.

Next door to the Intimate was a record store called, Kemp’s. I discovered this unique oasis as a teenager. Owned by a gentleman named Kemp Nye, his record store was the destination of any recording artist visiting the campus. They all ended up at Kemp’s. Plastered on the walls were autographed album covers, along with concert and promotional posters. Kemp’s was another world, one of college students and hipsters. The store was filled to the brim with 33-rpm albums, sorted by music style, not by artist. This meant that you had to search for the album you wanted and as often happened came across one more to your liking. The store also boasted four listening booths. You could pick out the album you wanted, go into the booth, put it on the turntable and listen away. The booths and Kemp’s sorting system really gave you the opportunity to listen to music you normally would never get near. The listening booths also meant that you carefully inspected any record you bought to make sure it didn’t have bad scratches from too much sampling. Another habit that I’ve kept to this day.

Kemp taught us all about music and jazz. My friends and I would hang out and play the records – old blues recordings, folk music and early rock n’ roll. You name it and Kemp introduced us to it.

He used to have these great sales. The store would fill with customers and people would pile up on the street outside waiting to get in. I remember there was a sign painted over the store’s entrance. It read: “Keep Kemp’s Green. Bring Your Money.”

Kemp used to always refer to me, Alex and James as “Doctor” -- a reference to Ike Taylor, Dean of the Medical School, and their father. I thought it was cool to be considered part of the Taylor clan.

Kemp lived in China before the Revolution and had all these old picture albums. I enjoyed looking at his black & white photos of The Great Wall, Peking, and views of life in China. It was rumored that he was an ordained Buddhist monk and had a network of contacts that the CIA used for getting current information about what was happening in Red China at the height of the Cold War. He also was reputed to have one to the finest jade collections outside of China. The collection disappeared mysteriously the night the old wooden building -- containing Kemp’s and The Intimate -- caught fire and burned to the ground. Some say that Kemp set the fire for the insurance, but this was never proven. After the building burned, Kemp’s moved to a smaller location back on the corner of Rosemary Street, while The Intimate moved further west on Franklin Street, and changed its name to The Intimate Bookstore. I continued going to both stores but it was never the same.

Downtown Chapel Hill in its heyday 

Another thing my friends and I liked doing on Saturdays was taking in a movie. There were just two theaters to chose from: The Varsity and The Carolina Theatre. This was before the introduction of the Multiplex Theater, so each featured only one movie a week. You could go into the first show at one o’clock and spend the entire day there, not coming back out until 5:30 or 6:00. It cost fifty cents to get in, and a large drink and box of popcorn cost about seventy-five cents. A good deal especially when compared to today’s prices.

These Saturday movies made for good baby sitters and spending the day watching the same movie -- repeatedly -- taught you to look closely at the screen. We liked to find the con trails in the sky, or tire tracks in the desert sand of the westerns and gladiator movies that were our favorites. The camera would be tracking the progress of a wooden wheel as it rolled along the ground and there it would be: an automobile tire track. We’d laugh and consider it a real selling point for an otherwise bad “B” movie.

My friends and I also became quite adept at our weekend raiding parties with the trash dumpsters on campus; especially the one behind the Chemistry Department. The treasures we unearthed would in today’s world, cause alarm. Bottles of ether, mercury, potassium permanganate and even volatile magnesium were just a few of our finds from digging around in the garbage; not to mention the assorted beakers, test tubes, rubber hoses and rubber stoppers we liberated. We were able to set up a pretty impressive chemistry lab from these University discards. And the mineral deposits behind the Geology Department helped fill out our rock collections. Our dumpster diving allowed us to walk away with excellent examples of different varieties of quartz, mica, obsidian, pyrite, geodes and even fossils.

Yes, it was cool growing up in Chapel Hill, though we all grew up a little fast because of the University influence.

Early in his career as a political commentator -- before he became a senator -- Jessie Helms used to refer to Chapel Hill as “the Southern Capital of Liberal Atheism.” We always felt that if it upset Jessie, you knew Chapel Hill had to be a pretty neat place.

Photos are from the Charly Mann Archive

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Click to view the large version of this panorama

photo by Kent Wright

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Chapel Hill Memories is meant to be a collaborative effort in which people relate their memories of the people, places, and events in Chapel Hill's past. Since its inception, I have been encouraging others to submit articles to Chapel Hill Memories. Thus far it has been almost exclusively me writing about my experiences and historical research I have done on the community. I am now beginning an indefinite hiatus from writing new articles for Chapel Hill Memories, and urge others to begin contributing their own recollections.

I have been thrilled by the large number of visitors to the site every day, and the hundreds of e-mails and phone calls I get each month relating to it, but what I really want is for others to share their stories about this wonderful place. 

Please submit articles on your Chapel Hill memories to:
chmemories@gmail.com

I can also provide a mailing address if you need to submit hard copies of your pieces.

Thanks for the kind words and for looking at Chapel Hill Memories,

Charly Mann

Charly Mann - Chapel Hill Memories

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by Charly Mann

No place stays the same. Change is inevitable, yet we know that it is not always for the good. When I think of Chapel Hill, it is the downtown I knew so well from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. There was a charm, vitality, and originality to the place then that I loved and still cherish.

The site of out-of-business Carolina Movie Theater on Franklin Street. For more than 70 years it was the most popular and elegant theater in town.  

Huggin's Hardware on Franklin Street was much more than a hardware store. It had an array of unique items, and was Chapel Hill's favorite gift shop for more than thirty years. It also had the friendliest and most helpful sales staff in town. This ad is from December 1950. 

What made Chapel Hill then were its merchants, men and women who owned and operated more than 100 unique businesses that often stayed within the same family for generations. Each store was a treasure to the community, and the quality of service in each was exceptional. In most cases the owner of these businesses was an ever-present fixture in their establishment. For example, does anyone recall going by Varley's Clothing Store without seeing Bob Varley. And as far as I remember, the only time Maurice Juilan left his store, Julian's, was to have his ritual lunch at the Rat. Also Mac McGinty was always at McGinty's Sports Shop, Kemp Nye at Kemp's Record Store, Vic Huggins at Huggins' Hardware, Bob Rosenbacher at The Hub, Spero Dorton at The Goody Shop, and "Old Man" Lacock at Lacock's Shoe Store. And in those days Chapel Hill had a flavor that came from a handful of incredible family-owned and operated restaurants including The Porthole and the Ram's Head Ratskeller. The food in these places was great and highly affordable.

McGinty's Sport Shop had the best selection of atheletic gear in Chapel Hill for decades. They also had a great phonograph album selection. Before The Record Bar opened they were Kemp's Record Shop's main competitor. Their selection was 1/100 the size of Kemp's, but it was often more up to date. I bought several Kingston Trio albums from them in the early 1960s that Kemp's did not have.     

Lacock's Shoe Shop probably lasted longer than any other store on Franklin Street, opening in the early 1920s and remaining in business through the 1980s. In the beginning they made custom shoes by hand and eventually expanded into selling "pre-made" shoes. By the 1950's they were the leading shoe store in Chapel Hill, as well as the best shoe repair business anywhere. I often took in my Bass Weejuns there when they were totally worn out, and after a few days at Lacock's they were actually better than new. Over the years Lacock's tried adding some things to their business. In the 1930s they became the distributor for an electric three wheel automobile, and during the depression they bought and sold used clothes.

The single block of stores on Franklin Street between Columbia and Henderson Street represented the style, culture, and taste of the community. Here almost every Chapel Hillian dined, bought their clothes, books, drugs, records, and other necessities, and saw their movies. While it might seem that this would lead to a mass conformity in the town, the eclectic nature of the offerings actually enhanced the town's diversity.

Wallace Kuralt owned the Intimate Bookstore on Franklin Street from 1964 to 1999. It was the best bookstore in the South for most of those years. It had two floors filled with books on every subject, and bought and sold textbooks at the beginning of every semester. The store had a lot of character. The building was old when the Intimate moved in, and it had creeky wooden floors. Competiton from the major book chains forced the Intmate into bankruptcy in 1999. Wallace Kuralt died at the age of 64 in 2003.    

Foister's Camera Store opened for business in Chapel Hill in about 1910. They originally were a place where you would go to get your picture taken and then developed. By the 1920s they began selling cameras, and during the 1960s even had cameras you could borrow for free (of course Foisters was the only place that could develop your film.) They were always busy and had an extremely knowlegeable staff. In the 1960s they became the exclusive outlet for Sony televisions. They only had small portable sets in those days, but the picture on a Sony was far superior to any other brand. In 1971 I bought a "small" color portable Sony TV from Foisters for $300 (it weighed about 35 pounds and had a rabbit ear antenna for receiving the four channels that were then available in Chapel Hill).  The year I bought the set I was making $110 a week before taxes, which was a good income, but it is interesting to note a small TV cost me more than three weeks of my salary.

While the physical character of downtown Chapel Hill remains the same, what has changed is the community identity that came from being able to link each business with an owner who you knew and saw often. Like most towns the size of modern day Chapel Hill, sprawl has changed the character of downtown. Now there are more than half a dozen malls and strip centers in, or near, Chapel Hill where most shopping is done, and almost all these stores are chain stores, where one rarely even has an idea who the manager is.

This is an ad for the Ramshead Rathskeller in 1964. I actually loved their pizza, but I do not think there was anything on their menu I did not love. Their $1.20 large pizza was really big, and their small was enough for someone, like me, with a healthy appetite. No other business is missed more in Chapel Hill, and Chapel Hill Memories gets five to ten e-mails a month bemoaning its closure.

Ledbetter Pickard was another one of a kind store. They had a wonderful large selection of greeting cards and seemed to have everything else under the sun that was related to stationery. They had impeccable service and one could spend hours looking at their assortment of merchandise. It was also a very profitable business. One of the owners built the most magnificent house in the Greenwood neighborhood around 1959.

Today downtown Chapel Hill has a reputation for premium upscale restaurants that offer some of the best culinary delights in the Southeast, but these are not places where students, teenagers, or families can enjoy a great atmosphere, receive excellent service, and dine inexpensively like they once could.

This is an ad for Julian's College Shop from 1952. I was a loyal customer when I could afford Maurice's goods, from 1967 through 1988. In  those days did he never had a single sale. In 1950 Maurice Julian was indicted by the IRS for significantly under reporting his income tax owed to the federal goverment. In 1948 he had a gross income of $21,877.56. In those days few professors made $5,000 a year, and a very nice house in Chapel Hill would sell for about $12,000.  

This is the former location of Varley's Men's Clothing Store, and Schoolkid's Records from about 1976 to 2008. Schoolkids was the last record store on Franklin Street. For more than 60 years Chapel Hill was renowned for having some of the best and most innovative record stores in the world including The Record Bar, Kemp's, The Record and Tape Center, and Springfield Records. Many college towns like Berkeley and Austin still have very successful record (CD) stores in their downtowns.

One significant reason for these changes is that until the early 1970s most of affluent residents in Chapel Hill lived downtown, and the businesses on Franklin Street ingeniously appealed to not only their tastes and needs, but also those of cash-strapped UNC a college student.

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by Charly Mann

Today, May 26 2010, Art Linkletter, one of the kindest and most gracious individuals I ever met died at 97. In 1957, at the age of seven, I was fortunate enough to be one of the children he talked to on his very popular CBS television show, Art Linkletter's House Party.

I remember the interview process to be selected to appear on the show was quite a challenge. It seemed to me they were looking for kids who were either quite charming or very funny. I did not think I was charming, but thought I could ad-lib funny responses to questions that would make people laugh. A woman interviewed me for an hour asking me several dozen off the wall questions that I knew were similar to what Art Linkletter would ask the kids on his program. I tried my best to come up with answers that an adult audience would find amusing, and was selected to be one of the children on his show on July 19, 1957.

My invitation to appear on Art Linkletter's CBS televsion show HOUSE PARTY on July 19, 1957

On the day of the show I went to make-up, and then was led out into a bright studio in the CBS building in downtown Los Angles next to the Farmer's Market. I had no hint of what Mr. Linkletter might ask me, but knew I better be able to think quickly of an amusing response. You can listen to my conversation with Art Linkletter here to see if you think I did a good job. Years later Linkletter repackaged many of what he considered the funniest responses to his questions in a television program called Kid's Say The Darndest Things in which my appearance was featured. I was most happy getting to say I was from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and then latter finding out that most of my friends had actually seen me on national television.

Charly Mann and a "Police Officer" in Disneyland several hours after he finished appearing on the Art Linkletter House Party television program

Art Linkletter was one of the last surviving adults I looked up to when I was young, and now he is gone. There was so much to admire in him. He never swore or said anything negative about anyone in public. Even in the segregated 1950s, he had black children on his show, and he knew how to make entertaining television that was not only wholesome, but could be enjoyed by everyone. The world has lost a true gentleman.

One funny part of this story was that after the show I was loaded up with gifts for being a guest on the program. My mother parked in the reserved loading area for CBS personnel as I made several trips back and forth to carry items out to her car. Behind her in a Mercedes convertible was a very upset Liberace who was waiting to unload some items for the taping of his television show later that day. By my third trip Liberace had began honking his horn at my mother and his face had turned red. Years later I would learn that was the start of very bad day for him. He was about to give a deposition in his $25 million libel suit against Confidential magazine saying he was a homosexual, and that evening, two men broke into his home in Sherman Oaks and beat his mother. 

In 1957 no one in the entertainment business would admit to being gay, and the fact that Liberace was "outed" could have ended his career if it proved to be true. Liberace actually won his lawsuit in 1958 proving he was not a homosexual, even though today it is widely known that he was.

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by Charly Mann

A Chapel Hill bee that I met on Morgan Creek Road 

Ever since I was very young I have loved being outside in Chapel Hill. When I was eight I would spend hours in my tree house behind my house on Old Mill Road observing the birds around me in the woods. Eventually some cardinals and blue jays would feel safe enough to perch within two feet of me.

A fly enjoying a rose petal on Coker Drive in Chapel Hill

When I was nine I became fascinated with the insects that I would find in my yard, especially the ants, bees, and flies. Flies were so common that many people, including my family, had screened-in-porches to keep them away while they enjoyed the "outdoors". I thrilled at watching flies soar through the air and marveled at their beauty when they landed on my arm. I also spent countless hours watching bees pollinate my mother's flower garden. Today my interest in the outdoors and the creatures that inhabit it has not waned, and I often enjoy photographing nature up close.

A busy bee enjoying a garden along Coker Drive in Chapel Hill

On a recent visit to Chapel Hill I took a long walk starting at where Country Club Road intersects with Raleigh Road and walked down to the end of Laurel Hill Road, before carefully crossing over the 15-501 bypass to Coker Drive where I walked on through all of Morgan Creek Road. My primary purpose was to take photographs of houses for future articles in Chapel Hill Memories, but along the way I was lucky enough to find some insect friends who allowed me to take their pictures.

A hoverfy on a bladle of grass on Laurel Hill Circle in Chapel Hill

I have not lived in Chapel Hill for twenty years, but I still spend an hour or more outside communing with nature. For many years my daughter and I have enjoyed taking photographs of the birds and butterflies that live near us, and last week I began posting some of these photographs to our new web site: oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com

Grasshopper enjoying a flower on Laurel Hill Road in Chapel Hill

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