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The Glory Of Carolina's 1950 Football Team
by Charly Mann
I was not yet one, but already a Tarheel born, when Carolina played its1950 football season. That year UNC won three games, and tied one. The other games had unsuccessful outcomes. I know that year's team practiced as hard as any other, but did not receive the glory it would have liked. I have created a tribute to that team with a little photo magic.
Billy Hayes 1950 UNC fullback
1950 Football Season
9/23/1950 vs. N.C. State W 13-7
9/30/1950 @ Notre Dame L 7-14
10/7/1950 @ Georgia T 0-0
10/14/1950 vs. Wake Forest L 7-13
10/28/1950 vs. William & Mary W 40-7
11/4/1950 @ Tennessee L 0-16
11/11/1950 vs. Maryland T 7-7
11/18/1950 @ South Carolina W 14-7
11/25/1950 vs. Duke L 0-7
12/2/1950 @ Virginia L 13-44
Lily Pad Waterbeds and Larry Carswell
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.
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Some Things Never Change
March 14th 2009, Florida State 73 - UNC 70
This is a January 1976 John Branch Cartoon from The Daily Tarheel
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WKIX - The Station that Made Chapel Hill Rock
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.
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The Man Who Made the Southern Part of Heaven
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
Cat Baby - The Heart and Soul Of Chapel Hill
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.
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Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.