by Charly Mann

Early Ad for Lily Pad Waterbeds

Lily Pad Waterbeds was a phenomena. It was the first waterbed store in Chapel Hill when it opened in 1971, and was an instant success. It started in the basement of the Record and Tape Center, and soon moved next door to a separate location. It was owned and operated by Larry Carswell, a lifelong Chapel Hill resident whose father owned Colonial Drug Store for more than half a century.

By the mid seventies Lily Pad had opened a larger store that also sold furniture on the 15-501 bypass. Carswell made many of the custom frames and headboards for the waterbeds he sold. By the mid 80s the waterbed fad faded and Carswell tried his hand at several other businesses. Larry was a genuinely nice guy. He died at age 54 in April of 2008.

I once managed the record store over Lily Pad waterbeds. Late on Christmas Eve in 1971, James Taylor came in the store with his then girlfriend, Joni Mitchell, after our store had closed, to do Christmas shopping. While James shopped, I took Joni downstairs to talk and sit on one of Larry’s ultra-comfortable waterbeds. 

                    March 14th 2009, Florida State 73 - UNC 70

             This is a January 1976 John Branch Cartoon from The Daily Tarheel

by Charly Mann

We almost all love the music of the sixties. In fact it still seems to have replaced Muzak as our dominant background music. In Chapel Hill, to hear the music of the sixties usually meant listening to WKIX in Raleigh, because Chapel Hill's only station, WCHL, played only easy listening.

I have several recordings of "KIX" shows from 1961 through 1968, and in hindsight I am amazed by the high percentage of mediocre songs and long commercial breaks we had to endure before we got to hear a worthy song. (Thank you Steve Jobs for the iPod, where we can listen to thousands of great songs without a single commercial.) I’ve included a segment from  a WKIX broadcast in August 1964 with dee-jay Gary Edens. He went to UNC and worked weekends during college at WSSB in Durham. WSSB also played some rock, but was not as hip as WKIX, and its signal was not as easy to pick up on our AM radios. Edens went to work at WKIX after graduating in 1964. This was a pivotal year in rock history, as the British Invasion had started in February with The Beatles appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.  After this, British acts began to supplant American artists on the airwaves, and more and more acts also began writing their own songs.

Gary Edens at WKIX 1964

Charlie Brown was one of the original WKIX disc jockeys. His show was usually on from 6 to 9 PM weekdays evenings. The legendary, and still thriving, Nomads band from Chapel Hill did the theme song for his program. It precedes the excerpt of the Gary Edens show on our player.

                               WKIX's Charlie Brown - Then and Now

As a brief history lesson, you can study the charts of the top played songs on WKIX from 1961 to 1969 to see how much changed, but also see how much disposable music was still popular. Note particularly the top two songs in 1969, which many consider the pinnacle year of great rock music.

by Charly Mann

There are many reasons I love Chapel Hill, but the primary reason is its beauty. Much of what we consider beautiful about Chapel Hill is because of one man, William Chambers Coker. He came to UNC in 1902 to teach biology, but his love for natural beauty, and his wise decision to marry the then President of the University's daughter, Louise Venable, gave him the eye and the power to transform a rather bland campus into the southern part of heaven. At the beginning of the 20th century there were few trees, shrubs, or paths on the campus, and more than five acres of it were nothing but swamp.

During the 1920s he had sidewalks built and beautiful trees and shrubs planted to unify the look of McCorkle and Polk Places. He also used his own money to make an arboretum out of the swamp. Over the course of nearly forty years he continued to add trees and plants to this place, including many that are native to Asia. The wisteria arbor on Cameron Avenue was built of native black locust in 1911.

William Coker (1892 - 1953)

right portion of this view is Coker Arboretum

by Charly Mann

In the 1950s and 1960s Chapel Hill High School was located on West Franklin Street, but played its home football games in Carrboro in Lion’s Park located on Fidelity Street. I cannot recall that the team was ever known for its offensive dominance or overpowering defense, but it had something no other team in the country had that made all the difference, George Cannada, better known as Cat Baby, who always enthusiasticly led the Wildcats onto the field.

"Whatta Ya Say Cat" - Cat Baby 1980 photo submitted by Robert Humphreys

Cat Baby was omnipresent in Chapel Hill throughout the 1960s and 70s. He was also probably the most well-known and well-liked person in the community. He enjoyed talking to anyone. He was a large man in both heart and body. He usually had a cigar or chewing tobacco in his mouth when he made the rounds of his town. He was also the “unofficial” greeter every Sunday at the Carrboro Baptist Church.

Some say he was the unofficial mascot of Chapel Hill High School, but I think he was actually the mascot and quintessential spirit of all of Chapel Hill. Cat Baby managed to eke out a living throughout his life as a paperboy. Cat Baby died at 58, in 1993.

by Charly Mann

On May 5th, 1965 Hollywood literally came to Chapel Hill for the World Premiere of movie Joy in the Morning starring Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimeux. The reason the premiere was held in Chapel Hill was was that it was based on local writer Betty Smith's novel of the same name. She had been paid $100,000 for the film rights of the novel. This was at a time when few houses in Chapel Hill sold for as much as $50,000.

This is Kemps as the World Premiere Celebrity Headquarters

For weeks leading up to the premiere Chapel Hill was abuzz with preparations for the celebration. Kemp's Record Store became the World Headquarters for the movie's premiere. Mayor Sandy McClamroch temporarily renamed Franklin Street, Betty Smith Boulevard in honor of the occasion. Tickets for the event were hard to come by, but being friends with Kemp Nye helped me secure two coveted tickets. At that time I was in the ninth grade at Durham Academy, a then small private school in Durham that had almost equal numbers of students from Chapel Hill as Durham. I did not have a girlfriend in those days, but was able to convince a very nice and attractive classmate from Durham, named Dianna Brannon, to be my guest at the premiere.

                                Chapel Hill author Betty Smith

At the time of the movie, Richard Chamberlain was one of the top stars in the United States as the lead in the very popular TV series Dr Kildare from 1961-1966. Everyone was excited about seeing him at the premiere, but he did not attend. The "talk" around Chapel Hill was that some of the movie was filmed there, and that it was based on college life at UNC. Unfortunately this was not true. The movie was semiautobiographical, but it was based on Smith's own romance at the University of Michigan. There is nothing in the movie that sounds or looks like a southern college town. This is probably just as well, since the movie was not very good, and failed miserably at the box office. You can listen to the theme song of the movie, sung by Richard Chamberlain, at the bottom of this article. The quality of the song is roughly equivalent to the quality of the movie. The advertising tagline for the movie may be even worse: "Love is more than a goodnight kiss!" I dare you to work that into a romantic conversation someday.

This is the 1965 graduating class from Durham Academy (then located in downtown Durham, and going up only to 9th grade)
Back Row left to right: Arthur Gordon, Charles Mann, David McGowan, Dan Dye, Peter Anlyan
Front Row left to right: Warrena Delano, Connie Hackel, Daria Witt, Sally Satterfield, Jean Ferguson, Diana Brannon