by Charly Mann

Dianne Fountain, the new owner of The Rathskeller, just sent me the following status report on the progress of the impending reopening:

It has been a tough road, but we are making progress with the Rathskeller! We have finished the "demo" stage, which entailed removing the ceilings, debris, window coverings on Amber Alley, and old electrical. More electrical removal will take place this week, and the old bathrooms and kitchen equipment will come out. The exciting part of this process is that we did discover more windows, another booth location, and a glass door close to the Franklin Street steps. Behind some of the old wall covering in the "prep kitchen", which will be the new bar, we uncovered beautiful brick walls. The memories are all around, and we are working diligently to make the way for new ones.

Students crowd around the bar at the Rathskeller in Chapel Hill to get a beer on tap in 1949

I have already written a couple of pieces on my memories of The Rathskeller for Chapel Hill Memories, but like most things that I hold dear, I seem to have a nearly inexhaustible trove of recollections, and will now share a few more.

Since 1948 the most popular dinning destination on Franklin Street was the Rathskeller. Before that the same location had once housed a children’s clothing store and a popular soda fountain. Immediately before it was the Rat it was used for commercial storage space.

In the early years beer on tap was the primary draw for the Rathskeller. I wonder if the "new" Rat will have specials where they will match these prices?

Ted Danziger originally designed the Rathskeller as small tavern for UNC professors to come and find a quiet place to relax and have a beer. Soon after that Benjamin “B.C.” Carroll took over as manager and helped adapt the RAT into a special place for students to gather. Ted dug out the place to make it larger and hauled the dirt away in the trunk of his car. He also laid its famed flag stone floor.

When the Rathskeller first started to offer meals in 1949 the idea was to make it into a steak restaurant. The idea was soon abandoned and Ted Danziger used this same concept to make The Ranch House Chapel Hill's most upscale restaurant for almost two decades.

Everyone in the RAT worked incredibly long hours and Carroll was there an average of 80 hours a week. Carroll was an amiable man who despite the long hours said “I don’t consider what I do as work because I like working with the staff and customers so much”.

The original student clientele were at least five years older than students today, as most were veterans of World War II. They were also much more interested in beer than food. The Rat was then only one room, and Carroll said that they would consume as much beer in two hours as students did ten years later when the Rat was three times the original size in an entire day. One of first rooms dug out and added was called The French Room, because it was not large enough for tables for four and could only accommodate couples. During the expansion Danziger planned to add a dance floor and stage, but abandoned the idea when he found out he would have pay an additional cabaret tax to Chapel Hill.

The Rathskeller's great long-time manager Benjamin "B.C." Carroll in the early 1960s

There was also an area that I do not remember well called The Chicken Coop which served Southern barbeque chicken until two in the morning. After about a year the Chicken Coop became the Train Room because Carroll could not find enough staff to work the late night shift. Speaking of chicken; the rocks in The Cave are actually made out of mortar, plaster-of-paris, and chicken wire.

By the time I was ten, in 1960, the Rat was already considered a historic dining destination by both locals and visitors. The Rathskeller was the first place in Chapel Hill that served beer on tap and that was its original draw, but by the mid-1950s the Rathskeller became best known for its great food.

A UNC gentleman lights the cigarette of his date at the Rathskeller in 1964. One thing the new Rat will not be able to replicate is smell of tobacco smoke which permeated the poorly ventilated Rathskeller in its glory days.

Over the years I have collected many fascinating stories involving the staff and customers of the Rathskeller. Several involve details about how many of their best known menu items were made. I also had the good fortune to dine with an assortment of sport, political, entertainment, and music celebrities there, and hope to share some of those stories someday.

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by Charly Mann

Chapel Hill has always been hot in the summer, and not long ago that heat had to be endured without air conditioning in homes, cars, schools and most businesses. For those of you too young to remember you might wonder how we endured without melting away. The truth is those days were comfortable primarily because we beat the heat by being outdoors a lot more than today. Much of that time was spent sitting on a front porch where we would socialize with neighbors, or just talk to people who were passing by in front of our homes.

This is the Seaton Barbee House which until 1924 was where the University Methodist Church in the center of downtown Franklin street is now located. Mr. Barbee owned a drug store which was next door. Seaton and his wife spent many summer evenings on their front porch engaged in conversation with their Chapel Hil friends. He was known to greet everyone who passed by; inviting many to join him on the porch. (I believe their daughter married James Sutton - founder and original owner of Sutton's Drug Store).

A typical summer afternoon and evening in Chapel Hill would involve visits from four to six neighbors, most of whom just dropped by unannounced. They would take a seat on your porch or in your living room and stay for two to three hours as other people would come and go. You quickly learned that the better one could tell a story the more popular you were. Early on I enjoyed carefully observing the conversations going on around me, and would always find at least one that I thought was interesting. After more than five years of doing this I had recorded enough interesting events and stories in my brain that I could by the time I was thirteen hold my own in conversation with most adults.

This is the front porch of my mother's cousin Ethel Holbrooke's house which was located on Rosemary Street across from NCNB plaza until 1962. I spent many wonderful afternoons and evenings on this porch.

Whether you were inside or outside everyone would have an iced tea or lemonade beside them. Looking back at those days I actually think that engaging conversation is the best way one can escape from unpleasant weather. Today our conversation is usually limited to a couple of trite phrases like "How are you doing?" and talking about the weather or what we recently saw on television.

In the late 1950's several Chapel Hill families I knew converted their garage into family rooms. Most had overhead ceiling fans. Often these rooms were used by adults to share conversation and alcoholic beverages with their friends during the summer months. 

A staple item on most Chapel Hill porches in those days were hand-held fans, most of which had ads for local car dealers, appliance stores, or funeral homes on them.

Just as often as we had people dropping in on us, my parents would take me and my sisters over to visit one of our neighbors or a friend. Many houses downtown had large hammocks on their front porches which I delighted in relaxing in. Several of the older houses had back porches that were screened in and were referred to as "sleeping-porches". As late as 1960 I knew a couple who would sleep out on theirs on especially hot nights. They swore the evening breezes afforded them an incredibly comfortable slumber.

The majority of the houses on Franklin and Rosemary streets in the 1950s had high ceilings and lots of windows which were strategically placed to ensure cross ventilation, which usually meant catching a nice breeze wherever you were in the house.

At least once a week in the summer I would go outside and crank out homemade peach, strawberry, or vanilla ice cream. It was hard work for a young boy, but the ice cream was incredible and there was one girl in our neighborhood that I had a crush on who seemed to always stop by soon after I made ice-cream.

 
Before refrigerators Chapel Hill families used iceboxes to keep their food cool. The ones I recall were made out of tin and a large block of ice was placed on the top shelf. During the summer months the ice would have to be replaced daily. The top picture above is of a Chapel Hill ice-wagon from about 1900, and the one below it is from around 1939. I vividly remember seeing a horse-drawn ice wagon delivering ice in a neighborhood in west Chapel Hill not far from the Carrboro town line in the mid-1950s. The Chapel Hill ice factory was located on West Franklin street about two blocks from where Crook's Corner is today.

Another great way Chapel Hillians used to avoid the heat was spending time in the water, which in the 1930s and 40s meant Sparrow's Pool, which was located a few miles out of town on the Old Greensboro Highway, and when I was growing up in the 1950s Hogan's Lake.

This is Sparrow's Pool in the mid-1940s. It was where many Chapel Hillians spent their summer days in the 1930s and 40s.

The Carolina Theater was first place to be air-conditioned in Chapel Hill, which attracted many of its customers in the summer well into the 1960s because it was truly the coolest place in town.

The small guy here is me, Charly Mann, with my father inside our Chapel Hill house in July of 1952 in very comfortable attire.

Most cars did not have air conditioning until the early 1970s. In fact I remember as late as 1969 the only car General Motors made that had air conditioning as standard equipment was the Cadillac. As late as 1976 air conditioning was an expensive option on many cars. So to stay cool in summer you always had your windows down and tried to drive as fast as you could while still being within the speed limit to ensure the maximum cooling effect. In 1958 my mother bought a top of the line Oldsmobile which we drove to California over the summer. It got so hot in Texas, even with the windows down, that we bought a bulky contraption called a window air conditioner that we placed outside the right passenger window. It was little more than a ventilated metal box which you had to fill with water every couple of hours. The water was aborbed into a large sponge pad. If the car was moving at a decent clip the outside air would vent from the outside and pass through the water soaked sponge to produce a cooling effect in the car, but believe me it was no substitute for today's real air conditioning in cars.

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 by Charly Mann

1972 marked the year Chapel Hill changed from being a small town to a small city. There were now officially half the number of parking spaces needed in the downtown and campus area (7,000) with 14,000 people looking to park their cars between 9 AM and 5 PM. As a result a referendum (which UNC students over the age of 18 could vote on) was passed to establish a bus system for the community.

This is one of my favorite photos of life in Chapel Hill. It is from 1972 and captures many of the best attributes of the town. The picture is of a 17-year old Merle Slifkin and a young friend. Merle is now a doctor in Israel and has three children. From 1969 to 1975 the mayor of Chapel Hill was Howard Lee, the first black mayor of a predominately white community in the South. His greatest accomplishment was establishing the Chapel Hill bus system.

Many Chapel Hillians like myself who could not find a parking place resorted to riding bicycles to get around. On an average day 2,000 townspeople and students were using bikes. That year there was even a bike day in which 500 bicyclists led by Mayor Howard Lee and Alderman Alice Welsh paraded around downtown. That same year the town established bike paths on nine roads in town. (Until then it had been illegal to ride a bike on many Chapel Hill streets including Franklin, Rosemary, and Columbia Street.) There were several stores doing a boomimg business in bicycle sales.The top dealer was the Western Auto in Carrboro. All these stores bought used bikes and usually were able to sell one for twice what they paid for it in less than a day. At the same time a local crime wave was causing serious concerns for bike owners. Chains, spokes, and brakes were often vandalized, and locks were often sawed off and bikes stolen which resulted in an active market for "hot" bikes in town.

This is me, Charly Mann, in 1972 with my bicycle in front of the Record and Tape Center which I managed in those days. From the age of 8 until I was 22, I got almost everywhere in town on a bike. I did not bother to get a driver's license until I was 22. The girl next to me is Debbie Taylor, Chapel Hill's original flower child.

Sadly 1972 also marked the year that that it was no longer safe being a woman in Chapel Hill. Susan Case the chairman of the Association of Women Students said women were being indiscriminately attacked by men all over the town. The attacks ranged from women being shoved and sexually harassed to being knocked down and raped. UNC Assistant Dean of Women, Marianne Hitchcock, reported that there were several cases of women being chased by men on campus particularly between the library and South Campus. There were also several cases of women who lived downtown finding one or more men trying to get into their apartments. A 17 year old Chapel Hill High School female student who worked for me at my record store on Franklin Street was jumped by a man near Fowler’s Food Store on her way to work one evening about 6 PM, and only escaped her attacker by screaming and then running across the street into the Bus Station. Many women continued to walk alone in Chapel Hill, but were now far more vigilant and no longer felt safe.

The Pizza Inn was a very popular pizza restaurant in 1972 and was located on West Frranklin street between Belk's and Fowler's grocery store.

1972 was also an election year which had the town sharply divided. In the Presidential race Richard Nixon was running for re-election against George McGovern, and for the North Carolina United States Senate Democratic Representative Nick Galifianakis was up against Republican conservative television commentator Jesse Helms. Though Chapel Hill was by then considered the bastion for liberal thinking in the state I recall the people I knew in Chapel Hill almost evenly split in their support in both races. Ultimately Nixon crushed McGovern in North Carolina, and Helms did something no North Carolina Republican senate candidate had done in the 20th century; he beat a Democrat. (His statewide victory margin was 54% to 46%, and in Chapel Hill Helms received just a few percentages less than Galifinakis). For the record the Democrat who had previously held that seat was B. Everett Jordan who was a conservative and had strongly supported segregation.

The Gaslight Inn was a popular sandwich and beer hangout in 1972. I always meant to see what Irish-Norwegian food tasted like, but just never got around to it.

Finally, there was a highly controversial store downtown that was attracting a great deal of national attention. It was called Adam and Eve and located at 123 North Columbia Street. They were the first "love boutique" in the United States, and sold a variety of high end condoms, as well as sex toys, and books with full-color photographs demonstrating esoteric forms of love making. Their landlord was local merchant and politician Carl Smith, who soon began receiving complaints from area residents about the business. Smith decided to not renew the lease after the end of their first year in the location, and Adam and Eve was forced to move to a much less desirable location at 421 West Franklin Street across from Dunkin Doughnuts.

This is the inside of Chapel Hill's "love botique" Adam & Eve when it was located in the Carl Smith Building on Columbia street in 1972. 

The is the first in a series of articles I will write over the next year on Chapel Hill in 1972.

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by Charly Mann

Even though high school is not always the best part of our lives, it is a time many former Chapel Hillians look back on nostalgically. While some of us focused on academics, the majority of people I have spoken to from Chapel Hill High School classes between 1948 and 2006 recall their high school years as a time they were most concerned with just enjoying life, which included the pleasures of the opposite sex, music, alcohol, drugs, and just hanging out with friends. I also found a minority who said their time in high school was hard and they suffered because they could not fit in. While they had some good times in those years, their overall experience was not happy. Thankfully all of the members of that minority who went on to college said that was where the fun began in life for them. Several of these people went on to say that the only reason they look forward to their Chapel Hill High School class reunions was to see if they still hated the same people they did in high school. High school was a wonderful time for me. It was the easiest time for me to make great friends, and I had a lot of time to socialize and not take life too seriously.

This is an aerial view of Chapel Hill High School in 1964 which was located downtown. The high school in Chapel Hill was located on this property for fifty years. The building in the rear of the photograph was Chapel Hill Junior High School then, but had previously been the high school. For many decades Chapel Hill High School sport teams were allowed to practice and play their games at UNC facilities and fields. 

Over the course of the next year I plan to write a series of articles honoring one of Chapel Hill High School's great classes; The Class of 1972, which will be holding their 40th reunion next May. The primary purpose of these pieces will be to recreate what Chapel Hill was like in 1972.

Chapel Hill High School is the Home of the Tigers.

Chapel Hill Memories welcomes anyone with Chapel Hill High School connections to share their high school memories as well as to post information about their former and upcoming class reunions.

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by Charly Mann

An amazing collection of political minds have lived in Chapel Hill including U.S. Presidents James K. Polk and Gerald Ford, as well as Robert Welch the founder of America’s most conservative organization, The John Birch Society, who was a gradate of the University of North Carolina and former U.S. senator John Edwards a leading advocate for liberals until his recent troubles. Now our country is in the midst of an acrimonious political debate on how to reduce our onerous national deficit and lift our debt ceiling. Since I resided in Chapel Hill longer than any of these men I figured my political genes must be as acute as theirs, and I figured I could come up with a solution to this crisis.

James K. Polk was the 11th President of the United States. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1818. The lower quad of the main campus - Polk Place - is named after him. Interestingly he is the only President I know of who kept all his campaign promises after he was elected.

I think the real problem that must be solved is getting control of the ticking time bomb of the vastly underfunded entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare. Because of the demographic shift of the American population over the next 30 years, economic conditions in the United States are going to go from bad to absolutely catastrophic. By the year 2020, 26% of Americans will be collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits, and that number will increase to 38% by the year 2045. Both of these programs are known as "pay as you go" entitlements, meaning they are funded with current taxes or by increasing the already bloated federal deficit.

By 2020, our federal budget will probably be triple what it is today, with more than 70% of it allocated to these two programs. It will also mean the average American will be faced with a tax rate (federal, local and state combined) of 65% by 2025. By 2045, the tax rate could easily surpass 80%. Obviously, such tax rates are unsustainable for our economic health, and probably politically untenable as well.

Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice, first in 1938 when he took several classes at the UNC law school and lived in Carr dormitory, and then in 1941 when he was enrolled in the Navy's Pre-Flight school.  

It is very likely that well before the midpoint of the 21st century the U.S. economy will be close to what is now considered third world status, because our inflation rate will have to soar above 200% in order for the government to keep paying for all of its obligations. After this, things will get worse because other countries, which have been keeping us afloat by buying our debt, will stop doing so because it will be considered worthless.

So, is there a solution to this seemingly inevitable calamity? Yes. There is a great one. The cost to the federal government for these entitlement programs will probably average $225 per day for each retired American by 2025. It is likely that at this time the average wage in India will be $2.25 per day and in China $5.50. The solution, as I see it, is to begin exporting our older Americans to these two countries because the cost of housing, food and medical care for our senior citizens there would be less than $12 a day. This would even include a full-time personal assistant for each American we export.

Former Presidental candidate and U.S. senator John Edwards owns the largest home in Orange County. It is almost 29,000 square feet and was recently valued at $8,500,000. 

This would reduce the cost of our entitlement programs by more than 90%, our federal deficit would almost immediately disappear, and our tax rate could be reduced to about 12%. In fact, we would be the strongest economy on earth, and Americans, by the middle of the 21st century could enjoy a standard of living 3-4 times greater than today.

So would this plan really work? Well, of course some senior Americans, for various reasons, may not be exactly keen on spending their golden years in India or China. Please do not get me wrong, I am not an uncaring person, and I want this program to be accommodating to everyone. After all, America was founded on the principle of equality and justice for all. So I have two options for those senior Americans who don't want to be part of our resettlement program.

One option would be to simply give our "stay-at-home" seniors the daily cash equivalent of what the government would pay for their living expenses in India and China, or about $12 per day. Individuals who had saved well or learned to live very frugally would be ideal candidates for this program.

Robert Welch was considered the smartest person to have ever attended UNC when he enrolled in 1912 at the age of 12. He graduated in 1916. He and his brother made a fortune in the candy business. Among the sweet treats they develped were Junior Mints and Sugar Babies. He was the founder and primary benefactor of the country's ultra right political organization The John Birch Society

The other option would be to allow these Americans to receive the $12 supplement and take part in what I call the "Family First" program, in which loving and supportive children agree to take their parents in and care for them for their remaining years. As a supplement to this, there would also be an "adopt a senior" program, through which younger individuals could adopt and care for a senior who is not a blood relation. This might be particularly popular among people who have issues with their own parents, and want to make the ultimate statement of dissatisfaction with them by taking in someone else in their senior years.

Our resettlement destinations, China and India, have some of the greatest offerings of culture and cuisine of any place in the world, with an array of historical sites and places to visit. I actually think that the problem we may have if this plan is enacted is many younger Americans lying about their age so they can be part of the program early.

Charly Mann lived primarily in Chapel Hill from his birth in 1949 until 1990. Since then he has lived in Boca Raton, Florida, Austin, Texas, and has lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma for most of the last decade. He has never run for any political office, and if he did he never would be elected.

One final thought. The U.S. has the largest per capita prison population of any country in the world. There are now more than 3 million people in federal, state and local prisons. The cost of incarceration is more than $50,000 per year for each prisoner. As you may know, Iceland has recently gone bankrupt, with little hope of economic survival. The population of Iceland is approximately 350,000. My suggestion is that we move all of our prisoners to Iceland (one of the harshest and least hospitable climates on earth) and hire the majority of the adult Icelandic population to feed, guard, and house these inmates, at $25,000 a year per inmate. This would reduce our prison costs (currently $200 billion a year) by half, restore Iceland’s economy, and because of Iceland's remoteness and climate, provide a major disincentive for people thinking of committing crime.

Through these programs, we can restore America’s financial soundness and virtually eliminate crime. However, this vision cannot be realized without dedication and commitment by the citizens of this great nation. We must therefore work together across party lines, age, race, and gender. I do not expect personal recognition or remuneration for these ideas. Having played my small part in solving the current ailments of the United States would be enough reward for me.

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by Charly Mann with additional material supplied by Charles Church

While there may not be any future in living in the past, we should not take it for granted either. It is from Chapel Hill's history that we develop our community identity and the heritage we cherish when we walk along the sidewalks of downtown or root for a Tarheel team. In the past few months two of my Chapel Hill friends passed away, one who was 85 and the other 84. This made me wonder what Chapel Hill was like 85 years ago when they came into the world. After doing a few weeks of research and talking to a couple of people who had friends or relatives living in town at that time, I will now describe what Chapel Hill was like in those days.

Downtown Chapel Hill in 1927 looking directly at the new Sorrell building that housed the Carolina Theater. The sign above the theater was electric and really lit up Franklin street at night. The Carolina Theater moved across the street about ten years later, and this space became home of the Varsity Theater.

In 1927 several of the buildings which are now fixtures on Franklin Street were just being built including the Sutton building. That building would have three new stores: a stationery shop on the west side managed by Mrs. Sutton, the Sutton and Alderman drug store in the middle, and a new and improved Smoke Shop on the east side operated by Dean Paulsen. The Smoke Shop was modeled on the sandwich shops that had recently become popular in the North, and it offered more than fifty different types of sandwiches. The old Smoke Shop was located in a dilapidated one story wood frame structure about 30 yards to the east and was torn down and replaced by a brick building to house Lacock's Boot Company. (Many readers will remember this as Lacock's Shoe Store or Lacock's Shoe Repair.) Lacock's had previously occupied a very small space on Franklin Street since 1922, but this new location gave them the room to greatly expand their selection, which now included the three top brands of men's shoes in America - Nunn-Bush, Friendly Five, and Crossett (how many of you have ever heard of those brands?). The new store would also be the first in Chapel Hill to sell women's shoes and hosiery.

Shoeshine boy on Franklin street in 1927.

Chapel Hill's growth and progress could best be measured in 1927 by the doubling of the number of soda fountains on Franklin Street from four to eight. One of those new soda fountains was in the back of Foister's camera store and another in a new business named Jeff's (soon to be known as Jeff's Confectionery). Moreover two of the old soda fountains had been upgraded to include the very modern feature of electric refrigeration, meaning drinks were now served cold instead of lukewarm.

The most popular new business in town was the Carolina Theater which opened in the just completed Sorrell building (now home of the Varsity Theater), and managed by Carrington Smith who was 22 and would remain the theater's manager for the next fifty years. The centerpiece of the theater was a $10,000 Robert Morton Pipe Organ (that is about $138,000 in 2011 dollars).

This is the Robert Morton Pipe Organ that once was to the left side of the screen at the Carolina Theater. There were often bands and music concerts at the theater before the showing of a movie.

There was also great excitement in Chapel Hill that year because a large number of construction projects were recently completed or soon to be finished. The most significant to the town was that the primary road to Chapel Hill, NC 14 to Hillsborough (now called Highway 86), was being paved and was scheduled to be completed by the end of the year. Also that year the construction of Kenan Stadium, Graham Memorial, and Wilson Library had been completed. Also in 1927 the large amount on traffic on Chapel Hill's streets made it necessary for the town to install its first traffic light - a flashing red light that indicated one should proceed with caution through the intersection at Columbia and Franklin streets. Finally even though Chapel Hill had had phone service for more than ten years it was very limited, and only a handful of residences had phones. That year construction began on a new telephone facility behind the Presbyterian Church on Rosemary street designed to be large enough so that anyone who wanted a phone and lived within about a half a mile of downtown could get one.

The biggest crime story in 1927 Chapel Hill was the arrest of the town's primary bootlegger, "Sheriff" as he was nicknamed, Greeter Lloyd and the confiscation of 125 gallons of his popular corn whiskey. This was the era of prohibition in the United States mandated by the 18th amendment that prohibited the sale and manufacture of all alcoholic beverages. As a result of the arrest Carolina "frat men" began searching throughout Orange and Durham county for another bootlegger. It is said that for several months after the raid nights in Chapel Hill were the quietest in its history, and a large number of UNC male students seemed to have a doleful look on their faces.

That same year many Chapel Hill citizens were also complaining to the mayor, Zeb Council, that hitchhiking was so widespread downtown and those "bumming" rides so rude that it was public nuisance. Among the complaints was that hitchhikers would thumb their noses at drivers who refused to give then a ride, and that every evening at least 60 men would line up in the middle of Franklin Street and try to hail down every car passing them on the street, and would verbally insult those who would not stop.

UNC students who did not want to hitchhike could pool their money together to rent a car from Everett Pugh. The destination of most of the hitchhikers and cars was Durham where prostitutes were plentiful, "bootleg" alcohol was easy to find, and their were several magnificent theaters.

There was also quite a ruckus because of proposed admission standards for UNC students. Dr. F. W. Hanes, one of the state's most respected physicians, addressed the university faculty and students in Memorial Hall and advocated that all freshmen be subjected to a series of physical and psychological examinations to see if they would benefit from a college education. He said, "the human mind can be classified as easily as horses at a horse show," and that most intelligence traits are inherited. He thought the greatest obstacle for such a plan being instituted was that some people prevented from continuing in college because they were deemed to be intellectually unfit would get elected to the state legislature and in retaliation end state funding to the university.

In 1927 there were four large bands made up of UNC students that were much more popular than either the UNC football or basketball team. Pictured above is Alex Mendenhall and the Carolina Tarheel Boys. Below them are Jack Wardlaw and his Carolina Tar Heels. Other bands around this time were led by UNC students Kay Kyser and Hal Kemp, who would both become national music superstars.

Charles Church, whose father Tam Church was a student at UNC in 1927, recalls his father telling him there used to be a huge rivalry between the four classes. This sometimes led to violent outbreaks. He said the big thing was to run your class flag up the main flagpole and then surround and defend it with members of your class. Members of other classes would attack and try to get your flag down, no holds barred. For example, the freshman class might raise their flag and then the Senior class would try to take it down. The biggest guy in his class was a fellow nicknamed "Puny" Harper. He was an athlete, and his job was to stand right at the base of the flagpole and act as a last defense system if attacking students made it that far. Nobody ever did.

On at least one occasion Tam said there was a huge tug-of-war between two of the classes at Carolina. The "rope" was a thick steel cable. Several hundred male students were on each side and the power generated was enormous. One of the sides managed to generate some momentum and began pulling the other side at a fast rate of speed. The team being pulled tried to stop their movement by creating a large loop in the cable and throwing it over a nearby stone column. The force being generated was so great that the cable cut right through the column! As the loop tightened, one of the students was trapped between the cable and column and would have been cut in half, but at the last instant he saw what was happening and dropped to the ground. The loop barely missed him. The tug-of-war continued until the team being pulled managed to wrap the cable around a large tree. The cable bit into the tree, but the momentum was stopped and the tug-of-war was over.

Church also said that annually the women of Chapel Hill would bake cakes and donate them as prizes for finishing a long-distance race through and around town. Any student could enter and all you had to do was finish in order to win a cake. One of his best friends was on the track team and figured he was a shoo-in to win a cake because of his speed. Church took the tortoise-and-the-hare approach and slowly, but steadily, jogged the entire course and won a cake. His friend became exhausted long before the finish.

Tam Chuch is second from right with three fellow UNC students in Chapel Hill around 1927.

When Church arrived from Wilkes County, NC, as a student at UNC he had only one dime to his name. This was his "emergency money" and he was determined not to spend it unless he had to. He never had to. He found a job working for the Woolen family. He lived in their home on Franklin St. and his job was to keep their furnace going during the winter. This meant he had to get up extremely early every morning during cold months and fire up the furnace so that the house would be warm by the time the Woolens got out of bed. He also got a job working as a waiter in Swain Hall, the UNC dining hall at the time. Church also became part of Kay Kyser's cheering group called the Cheerios. They would march onto the football field at halftime and perform. They wore caps that were white on one side and Carolina blue on the other side. By turning their heads from left to right to expose either the blue or white sides, they could create images (same principle as the card sections years later). Charles Church still has his father's Cheerio cap. 

Tam Church also had a job helping to paint the seats in the new Kenan Stadium in 1927. Part of the paint crew were students and the rest were professional painters. Church took off his shirt in order to get a suntan while he painted. One of the professional painters picked up his shirt and cleaned his brush with it. Tam Church, a big, strong farm boy who also happened to be on the boxing team, confronted the painter. Words were exchanged and the painter advanced towards him as if to start a fight. Tam jabbed the painter once in the face and knocked him down. The painter immediately apologized and offered to replace the shirt.

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