by Charly Mann

The Flower Ladies of Chapel Hill were a common colorful sight along Franklin Street for more than five decades beginning in the late 1920s. They were a group of African American women who grew and sold flowers. Their flowers were arranged in plastic buckets filled with daisies, daffodils, marigolds, asters, sweet williams, lillies, roses, and cockscombs. The flowers were sold in bunches of one type or as a mixed bouquet. When I was small boy in the 1950s I remember buying bunches for my mother at 25 cents. By the early 1970s the price of a bunch was only a $1.00.

The Flower Ladies during the last year they were allowed to sell on Franklin Street, 1971

In the late sixties hippie merchants decided to imitate the flower ladies and sell a variety of items including used phonograph albums, leather goods, and drug paraphernalia along Franklin Street. Besides making the sidewalks narrower, local merchants, who were often paying more than a $1000 a month to rent store space on Franklin Street, were not happy with this new competition.

Initially the town council tried to stop these new sidewalk sellers by banning sales of anything but flowers along Franklin Street. The street sellers circumvented the new ordinance by “selling flowers” which would come along with “free” merchandise such as the clothing, records, or the hash pipes they had previously sold. As a the city had to ban all sidewalk sales on Franklin Street in 1971. Fortunately exemptions were made to allow the flower ladies to sell their wares in the passageway of NCNB Plaza and the alley a few stores east of the Varsity Theater. But Franklin Street was never the same again, and the number of flower ladies steadily declined. Also over the last couple of decades the few flower ladies who remained rarely grew their own flowers. 

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by Charly Mann

The annual Chapel Hill Apple Chill Fair was a 35 year community event that featured arts, crafts, music, and food. It was the last of a long line of annual Chapel Hill gatherings in which young and old alike bonded in a festive event. Before Apple Chill there were gatherings like the Watermelon Festival in the 1950s which was held in late spring on the UNC campus in which everyone in town got together to enjoy free slices of watermelon. Chapel Hill’s 4th of July Celebration was also much more like a fair when it was held on the Intermural Field located between Carmichael Auditorium and the Institute of Government in 1950s through the 60s.

Apple Chill took place for one weekend every April on Franklin Street. All of downtown became a glorious pedestrian mall as the streets were barracked from traffic and stalls, carts, musicians, jugglers, dancers, and clowns filled the streets. One could always enjoy a wide variety of decadent and exotic foods, and during the 1970s much of the art and crafts offered were first rate.

The first Apple Chill festival was in 1972. Apple Chill got its name by moving the “C” in “Chapel” over to “Hill” and with a few modifications become “Apple Chill”. The festival was originally called the Apple Chill Art and Music Fair, and was held not on Franklin Street, but on the adjacent McCorkle Place on the UNC campus. There was an array of great artists that year displaying their work, as well as music that included Mike Cross and legendary Chapel Hill band Arrogance. Over the years Apple Chill evolved into a real family event that offered face painting, kite-flying, balloons, and clowns for children. The arts and crafts for sale grew progressively downscale, but more affordable.

This was the most threatening scene you could encounter in the first 25 years of the Apple Chill Festival

By the early 1990s the essence of downtown Chapel Hill was starting to change. There were far fewer stores on Franklin Street that were locally owned or catered to a non-student clientele. In 1993 shortly after Apple Chill ended more than 70 shots were fired from a car on West Franklin Street that wounded two people. The festival began attracting gang members from Durham and bikers from several states. Fights during and after the Fair became common and included brawls of more than fifty people in 2003 that ended when Chapel Hill Police had to draw their guns to stop the melee. Finally after three people were shot downtown shortly after the close of the Apple Chill festival in 2006 Chapel Hill mayor Kevin Foy and the city council voted unanimously to end Apple Chill.

Chapel Hill's Police did not have to worry about bikers and gangs during most of Apple Chill's history

The Halloween Celebration is the only annual event that is still held on Franklin Street, but with the rise crime and gang related violence in the downtown area that event is attracting far fewer than the 80,000 celebrants who attended at its peak.  For downtown Chapel Hill to return to its community roots it must make Franklin Street safe for its residents. There are too many empty stores, homeless panhandlers, and gang members these days. Chapel Hill is still a wonderful place with a beautiful campus and beautiful neighborhoods, but the once charming downtown where people felt safe walking around in the evening is now only a memory.

The Apple Chill Cloggers first appeared at the fair in 1975. They performed Appalachian clogging which combines traditional clogging with square dance and Scottish dancing. They thrilled the crowds with their high kicks, energy, and costumes. 
 

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by Charly Mann

Chapel Hill has a long history of producing great bands, but none can match the longevity and outrageousness of Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts. Throughout the sixties they were the most popular fraternity band in the country, and their fame and influence has stayed strong even after the death of Doug Clark in 2002.

Cover of their best album, from 1963, On Campus

Doug Clark started the group in 1955 when he was a student at Chapel Hill's segregated all-black Lincoln High School, which was actually located in Carrboro. The band was originally known as The Tops and then as the Doug Clark Combo in 1956. They performed primarily covers of 1950's rock hits. In early 1957 they added their version of the 1930's blues song Hot Nuts to their set list. The risqué nature of the song, and the rhythm and blues arrangement the band gave it, made it instantly popular among frat boys. From 1957 to 1963 they continued to improve their arrangement of Hot Nuts as well as add new verses to the song. The song became so identified with the group that by 1958 they were called Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts.

Doug Clark Combo 1956

Seeing the appeal of ribald material they soon built a repertoire of naughty songs. They quickly became in demand at fraternities and private parties up and down the East Coast. It was a novelty band because their material was never suited for the mass market, but they were also pioneers in how to be a successful college party band. They did something no other band did: made people laugh and smile throughout their entire show.

This is a picture the band autographed for me at one of their fraternity concerts in 1964

As a young boy of thirteen and fourteen I snuck into at least a half a dozen Hot Nuts shows between 1963 and 64 at various fraternities on Fraternity Court, including Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Nu, Pi Kappa Alpha, and Pi Lambda Phi. All the members of the group were cordial. John Clark, the saxophonist and Doug's brother, was the most outgoing and charming member of the group. Doug on the other hand was always the quietest and most reserved. While I was not the only Chapel Hill youth crashing these gigs, I think I was the only one who enjoyed the music more than the beer which was always readily available. I recognized at an early age that alcohol interfered with one's ability to concentrate on music, and was used primarily as a quick way to reduce inhibitions between members of the opposite sex. 

The Hot Nuts 1963, left to right William "Chicken" Little, John Clark, Ralph Prince (vocalist), Doug Clark. Tommy Booth (piano), Walter Holmes, and Robert Tillman 

In 1963 the Hot Nuts recorded their best album, On Campus, in a New York recording studio. Even though the song Hot Nuts first appeared on their debut album, Nuts to You, the definitive version of the song, both musically and lyrically, appears in On Campus. The album also contains several of their most popular songs, including Bang, Bang Lulu, Roly Poly, Barnacle Bill, and the The Big Wheel. By the time this album was released it was not unusual for the group to perform for between 4,000 and 8,000 people. They had huge followings in  Atlanta, Dallas, and Baltimore, and also had regular gigs at universities throughout the North, South, and West, including the University of Texas, Yale, the University of Florida, the University of Georgia, M.I.T., and the University of Virginia.  Each Spring Break they played to huge crowds at Daytona Beach. In 1963 and 64 they added  three female singers to the band, known collectively as The Three Cherries.

It should be remembered that at the time the Hot Nuts were most popular blacks were denied access to most hotels, movie theaters, and restaurants in much of the South. The band made their living playing for all-white fraternities. Few blacks were even admitted to the universities where they were performing, and some, like the University of Alabama and University of Mississippi, denied access to black students. Nevertheless, the Hot Nuts made a good living off the fraternity crowd. It is ironic that many administrations at southern universities decried and sometimes banned the Hot Nuts for their brand of music, but remained silent on the injustice of segregation at their schools.

Factoid: Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts recorded My Ding-A-Ling in 1961 for their first album Nuts to You. In 1972, Chuck Berry had the biggest hit of his career and his only #1 song with the same song.

Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts Discography

• 1961 Nuts to You (Gross)
• 1963 On Campus (Gross)
• 1963 Homecoming (Gross)
• 1964 Rush Week (Gross)
• 1965 Panty Raid (Gross)
• 1966 Summer Session (Gross)
• 1967 Hell Night (Gross)
• 1968 Freak Out (Gross)
• 1969 With a Hat On (Gross)

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by Charly Mann

Thomas Wolfe, one of the greatest writers of all time, entered the University of North Carolina at the age of 15 in September of 1916. When he was a senior he was editor of the Daily Tar Heel. During his college years he was also an editor of the Yackety Yack and a member of the Playmakers. Like many other UNC students, at the time, he often paid for the services of prostitutes in Durham brothels.

Thomas Wolfe 1918 Debater and Orator for UNC Dialectic Society

Thomas Wolfe (center) on the porch of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity 1919

Wolfe loved Chapel Hill more than any place on earth, and shortly before graduating in June of 1920 wrote his girlfriend in Asheville the following: I hate to leave this place. It’s mighty hard. It’s the oldest of the state universities and there’s an atmosphere here that’s fine and good. Other universities have larger student bodies and bigger and finer buildings, but in Spring there are none, I know, so wonderful by half. I saw Carolina graduates when I was home for Christmas who were doing graduate work at Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. It would seem that they would forget the old brown buildings in more splendid surroundings, but it was always the same reply: “There’s no place on earth that can equal Carolina.” That’s why I hate to leave this big fine place. (May 17, 1920)

UNC campus 1919 when Thomas Wolfe was a senior

UNC campus 1916 when Thomas Wolfe was a freshman

Thomas Wolfe’s honors and activities at UNC, listed here from the 1920 Yackety Yack, far exceeded those of everyone else in his graduating class. Note it is said, “He can do more between 8:25 and 8:30 than the rest of us can do all day, and it is no wonder that he is classified as a genius.”

Thomas Wolfe's  UNC senior yearbook photo and accomplishment list. (Note the reference to Gooch's where Wolfe would often eat his meals late in the evening - see previous article.)

Thomas Wolfe's dipolma from UNC, June 1920 

Wolfe is most famous for four lyrically eloquent autobiographical novels. The first, Look Homeward, Angel was published in 1929. The second, Of Time and River was published in 1935. His last two great novels, The Web and the Rock and, You Can't Go Home Again, were published after his death. Wolfe came down with a highly unusual case of pneumonia in September of 1938. He was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where it was finally determined he had tuberculosis in his brain. The best brain surgeon in the country operated on him, but found the entire right side of Wolfe's brain was covered with tubercles. Nothing could be done, and he died at age 37 on September 15, 1938. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery, Asheville.
 

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by Charly Mann

From left to right, Gooch's Ads from 1912, 1905, and 1913

Gooch's Ad from February 1928

Over the last one hundred and twenty years more than 500 businesses have come and gone in downtown Chapel Hill. Many of the most popular ones of the past are less than a footnote in our history. While the University has always faithfully recorded its past through dozens of histories, the annual year book (The Yackety-Yack), and The Daily Tar Heel, very little documentation and recollections have been left about the growth and changes of our town. There were over a hundred prominent businesses that existed on Franklin Street between 1890 and 1955 that I have tried to get information on, such as their exact location, who owned them, an inside or outside photograph of the store, and a little history on the business, only to find that in most cases virtually no record exists.

One of the businesses that has particularly fascinated me is Gooch's Café. When I was very young I lived on North Street and my playmate was Dianne Gooch. I also attended the Little Red School House with her, and my father often remarked what a bright person "Girlie Gooch" was. When I was eight or nine, Vic Huggins, the owner of Huggins Hardware once walked me out the back of his store which was located at 105 East Franklin Street near the intersection of Franklin and North Columbia. He began telling me about the colonial style building across the the street called the Carl Smith Building. He recounted a number of stores that had been there when it first opened in 1949 (the year I was born) including one called Gooch's Café. Immediately I knew this must have some connection to my friend Dianne.

Me (Charly Mann) and Dianne Gooch (James's granddaughter) in 1951 in front of my house on North Street

This is the Carl Smith building on south Columbia Street. It opened in the summer of 1949. The building cost $75,000 to build. Gooch's was one of the original tenants. It also included a men's clothing store called The Sports Shop and the Western Union office. Gooch's Cafe had been located in a building on this same location in the 1930s.

Gooch's Café first opened in 1903, and was started by James Emmitt Gooch. He was born in 1871 not far from Oxford, North Carolina in Granville County. He had come to Chapel Hill as a young man and operated Chapel Hill's telegraph system in the late 1890s, and in 1901 installed its first telephone line. James was 32 when the restaurant first opened upstairs in the building that now houses Schoolkid's Records and the Carolina Coffee Shop. James and his wife, Amelia, worked from dawn to late in the evening preparing home cooked meals, primarily for Carolina students.

 
Gooch with an "e" Groceries and Cafe 1910. Gooch's moved to the north side of Franklin Street in 1916 next to the original PickwickTheater

James Gooch was determined to succeed in Chapel Hill's highly competitive and ever-changing restaurant business. Over the course of thirty-three years Gooch's was located in at least five different buildings including the current location of the Carolina Coffee Shop, two locations on the north side of Franklin Street, and finally on north Columbia Street. In the beginning it was more like a home apartment where you could go anytime of the day to have a home-cooked meal prepared. By 1910 the business had moved to a street level location on the south side of Franklin Street where Gooch's had a small convenience store in the front that sold food, magazines, sodas, wine, beer, tobacco, and newspapers, and a small sit down café in the back. In 1916 Gooch moved across Franklin Street, Sutton's location today, and became known for a couple of years as Gooch's Lunch Room.

Gooch's Cafe 1927 Ad

Gooch's was located on North Columbia Street in the 1930s, where it was primarily a small grocery store that offered hand made sandwiches, like a Deli or Subway, in the evenings. By the middle of the 1930's the United States was in the depth of the Great Depression. As a university town, Chapel Hill's economy was doing better than most of the state. As many out-of-work people came to town to start new restaurants. Competition became fierce for diners. The prices restaurants charged for meals soon became less than half what they were ten years earlier. At the Carolina Inn, for example, then considered the best and most upscale dining facility in town, you could get a full course meal for 25 cents.

Find the misspelled word(s) and win tickets to Ramona, November 1936

At the end of 1936 the three Gooch brothers, Charles, Floyd and Leon, combined with the Brooks family to make one last attempt at keeping the restaurant open.

Celebrating 25 years of Gooch's Cafe in 1928

James Gooch handed over his restaurant to his sons to run about 1934, but not even their hard work could save the business. The restaurant closed during the summer of 1937. James Gooch died in 1940. In November 1949 Gooch's briefly came back to life in the same location it had been in during the 1930s – this time on the ground floor of the new Carl Smith Building on North Columbia Street. This was a terrible time to open a restaurant. The number of restaurants in Chapel Hill was at an all time historical peak in proportion to the population. The restaurant closed in 1950.

Gooch's in their final days (October 1936) now located on South Columbia Street.

October 1927, Gooch's was still offering home-cooked meals any time of the day

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by Charly Mann

Much of the beauty of Chapel Hill many of us take for granted. It is easy to see and experience it if you simply go outside and walk through the surrounding woods and fields. Since I was five I have enjoyed an amazing joy and clarity when I am closely observing the bounties of beauty and the marvels of creation in our forests, along our creeks, and in nearby pastures. I have especially loved the birds I encounter on trees, fences, or on the ground. Over many decades I have become familiar with the seasonal habitats of a great variety of our feathered friends, and have learned how to get very close to many of them. For the past several years I have taken a camera with me on my walks so that I can photograph some of my favorite birds. This is the fist in a series of photographs of Chapel Hill birds that I have taken in the last three years.

Two baby Eastern Kingbirds (Summer of 2008)

Brown Thrasher Close-Up

Grey Catbird (Spring 2009)

American Golden Finch (Spring 2008)

Ruby-throated hummingbird (Sring 2009) - I captured this fellow at dusk with a professional flash. 

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