by Charly Mann

When I was eleven I read the fairytale Hansel and Gretel to my 5 year old sister Monika, and became enchanted by how the story ended with the two youngsters living happily ever. For some reason this impacted me enough to write down in a notebook that I wanted to have a life like Hansel and Gretel's. Over the course of the next several weeks I began asking several friends of my parents how one could live happily ever after, and added their words of wisdom to my notebook. My father noted what I was doing, and said if I kept this up I might become another Thomas Wolfe. I had never heard of this person, but was sure my Dad meant it as a compliment.

This is a picture of me (Charly Mann) and my amazing sister, Monika, about the time I read Hansel and Gretel to her.

A few months after this my family and I were visiting the home of Dr. Lonnie London, curator of the Rare Book collection of the UNC Louis Round Wilson Library. He mentioned that he had recently been given some manuscripts by Thomas Wolfe to file, and I asked him who Thomas Wolfe was. He told me he was a genius and the best writer to ever graduate from the University of North Carolina. I was inspired enough by this to have my father check out a couple of Wolfe's books from the library so that I could learn not only about the man my father compared me to, but also to hopefully get some insights from a genius about how to live a happy life.

Above is a photograph of some of my journals. I have been keeping a journal since 1961 when I was eleven years old. This article is about the very first entry to my journal. These journals now include more than 40 spiral notebooks. I have just begun to read through them for the first time. I often recorded long conversations I had with friends and other people I met each day as well as my thoughts, insights, and activities. I have been surprised at how many people I write about, including many early friends, I no longer remember at all. I now plan to begin using my journals as the source for many future Chapel Hill Memories articles.

Unfortunately Wolfe had a rather negative outlook on life and the only quote from him that I recorded in my journal was: "The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence." Such an insight from a man who the adults around me called very smart made me realize that perhaps living a fairytale life was not really very likely.

Dr. Urban Tigner Holmes, Jr. (July 13, 1900 – May 12, 1972) lived off of Laurel Hill Drive on Pine Lane in Chapel Hill. He was a Kenan Professor of Romance Philology at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Less than a week later I was at the house of the legendary, haughty and crusty UNC literature professor Tigner Holmes for dinner with my family. After dinner I read him Wolfe's quote from my journal and asked him if he agreed. Holmes looked bemused and said Wolfe was indeed a genius but he had a terrible flaw which was drinking alcohol. He said that the regular consumption of liquor only complicates one's life and usually makes people sadder. When I asked him why, he eloquently explained in scientific terms how alcohol was a depressant because it decreases the activity of the nervous system.

Beer drinking has been a common activity on the lawns and in the dorms and fraternities around UNC since I was a young boy in the 1950s. At one time Chapel Hill was known as the beer drinking capital of the United States.

At this time in my life I had never tasted liquor, and the only alcoholic beverage I noticed much in Chapel Hill was beer, which I often saw students consuming at social gatherings, or by my father and some of his friends and graduate students when they would watch the New Year's football bowl games at our house. As a result of the conversation with Dr. Holmes I began equating beer drinking with unhappiness, and still have never tasted a sip of the brew in my life even though as a manager and promoter in the music business I have spent countless hours in bars.

Tweet

by Charly Mann

In the Fall of 1959 The Kingston Trio was the most popular group in the world. The previous year their debut single Tom Dooley, which was based on the 19th century North Carolina murder of Laura Foster by Tom Dula for giving him syphilis, was the #1 song in the country. Since then they had had four #1 albums and were the most popular concert attraction in the nation.

From left to right the members of the Kingston Trio: Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane, and Dave Guard inside Memorial Hall shortly before their 1959 concert in Chapel Hill.

On Friday October 30th, 1959, at the start of Homecoming Weekend, the Kingston Trio entertained a packed, spellbound, and extremely zealous audience of 2,000 including myself at UNC's Memorial Hall for almost two hours. I was then nine years old and Memorial Hall was at the time the largest venue for concerts in Chapel Hill.

The following is their setlist which included all their recent hits as well as more than half a dozen new songs.

1. Three Jolly Coachmen
2. A Worried Man
3. Shady Grove/Lonesome Traveler
4. Saro Jane
5. Tom Dooley
6. The M.T.A.
7. Pay Me My Money Down
8. They Call The Wind Maria
9. All My Sorrows
10. Hard, Ain't It Hard
11. When the Saints Go Marching In
12. Little Maggie
13. Santy Anno
14. Bay of Mexico
15. South Coast
16. Scotch and Soda
17. Zombie Jamboree

The Kingston Trio performing in Memorial Hall at UNC on the evening of October 30th, 1959

The reception to the show was rousing and they were applauded loudly to perform several encores. As was the tradition in those days, there were dozens of parties at the nearby fraternities after the show where local combos performed until the wee hours of the morning. It was at one of these that I had the pleasure to meet Kingston Trio member Nick Reynolds whose subsequent rendition of the The Whistling Gypsy remains my favorite Trio song.

Kingston Trio member Nick Reynolds on stage in Chapel Hill in 1959. He sang lead vocals that night on the song The MTA, which was the Kingston's Trio second most popular song after Tom Dooley.

From 1959 to 1962 Folk was the most popular form of music among college students, and the Kingston Trio not only epitomized this sound for that generation of students, they also ushered in the next wave of folk artists including Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Joni Mitchell.

That Kingston Trio concert is still one of the most successful and acclaimed shows in UNC history. The next day was not so happy for the Tarheels. The day was cold and rainy and UNC's football team was demolished by Tennessee 29 to 7.

Tweet

by George Steel

In the late 1950s, my brother and I rode our bikes from Victory Village, where we lived with our Mother who was a UNC grad student, all over the south side of Chapel Hill, from Purefoy Road down Mason Farm Road, over to and up S. Columbia Street, down Raleigh (or South) Road to Country Club Road, and up to E. Franklin Street. This was our territory. Summers, we headed toward Woollen Gym by cutting across Manning Drive from Victory Village, going around the east side of Memorial Hospital, around the west side of Kenan Stadium, down to the Bell Tower parking lot, up to South Road, and left, past the Bell Tower and Tin Can. Summers seemed longer then.

Woollen Gym – Bowman Gray pool is inside the structure on the right.

Free Swim Lessons

There in the summer at Woollen Gym, or just "Woollen," the University provided free morning swim lessons for the children of Chapel Hill, five days a week, two sessions each summer. A couple of hundred kids crowded the Bowman Gray indoor pool and the Navy (Kessing) outdoor pool. Kids in the beginners swim class sat on the indoor pool deck with their feet dangling in the shallow end. Mike, UNC wrestling coach, swim teacher, and director of the program, stood in the water, jock strap riding up his back, facing the kids. "Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick!!" Dozens of pairs of little legs furiously churned up a small squall into which Mike disappeared from sight.

An old shot of Bowman Gray pool from the deep end. The pool is enormous, 50-meters long. The balcony is in the distance on middle right side of the photo. The bridge that divides the pool into a 25-meter side and a 25-yard side wasn't installed yet.  (Courtesy North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill)

Kessing pool – 1945. The Kessing Pool first opened in 1943 and provided aquatic training for the U.S. Navy's pre-flight divisions in World War II. Former presidents George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford, and my father, Logan Steel, trained at the center. Kessing Pool is 50 yards long.  (Courtesy North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill)

Woollen's locker rooms were on the same level as the pool deck. From the balcony overlooking the indoor pool, my brother and I entered the men's side by going down the stairs to the left. At the beginning of each season, we were sized and outfitted for swim suits. We undressed in a small locker room and with all the other boys, lined up single-file, and walked naked down the subterranean hall, to the main men's locker room. There the workmen behind the "cage" estimated your waist size (24", 26") and issued you, like dealing a playing card across a table-top, a freshly laundered (and pressed) swim suit. They gave you a basket to store your clothes in, which you gave back to the men at the window for storage, before you went to the pool. When swim lessons were over, you returned to get your basket and a fresh white towel, indelibly marked "WG" in black.

You were not permitted to wear your own swim suit. It might be dirty, and polio had not yet been forgotten. The pool was perfectly clean; I have not seen a cleaner pool since. The girls had to wear caps to cover their hair. The boys' swim suits were incredibly ugly and ill-fitting heavy cotton things, usually a size or two too large with stretched waists and strings hanging out, not to mention other things. After putting on the suits, the boys showered just enough to get wet, and stepped through the chlorinated foot baths onto the indoor pool deck about midway between the shallow and deep ends, or out the back way to the outdoor pool. The girls entered onto the indoor pool deck from behind the diving boards.

The swim classes progressed in skill level from the beginners in the shallow end, 3 feet deep, to the most advanced in the deep end, 12 feet deep. There were probably 4 or 5 classes in the indoor pool, likewise the outdoor pool.

The teachers, mostly teen-agers, helped you learn by having you swim out to where they stood in the water. Then, after a little instruction, they pushed you back to the side of the pool. Soon you could swim all the way across the pool. The teacher promoted you to the next class when they felt you were ready. In the more advanced classes, you learned other strokes, or dove off the diving board.

Sometime during my second summer of swim lessons, feeling overlooked by the teachers of the elementary-level class I was in, I promoted myself to the classes in the outdoor pool, skipping past the remaining indoor pool classes. There was no formal certificate for promotion, so the next day I just mixed in with the other kids already in the outdoor pool. My technique and skills were not quite their level, but no one tossed me back. I had bluffed my way to the outdoor pool!

Kids Using The Gym

Use of Woollen by the kids of Chapel Hill was not strictly limited in those days. Maybe it was the times. What was it about those days? Certainly everything has its price now. The Woollen staff had better things to do, and so looked the other way. My brother and I spent hours and hours there. You could enter the gymnasium area from the back side onto the wooden floor. There were basketball courts, climbing ropes, pommel horses, uneven and parallel bars, and gymnastic rings. You could play pickup basketball games. My brother and I and friends played hours of "BB", often challenging the "College Joe's". Woollen was where the UNC Basketball Team practiced and played until Carmichael opened in 1965. It was not unknown to sneak into the Gym for UNC games either. I know I saw Billy Cunningham miss a dunk one time.

Recreational Swim

After swim lessons were over, you could get a "Dreamsicle" from the lady with the ice cream motor bike parked at the top of the parking lot by the pool. Then you could stay around until "12 to 1", the recreational swim period, when kids and families could swim in the outdoor pool. A pool pass was required, but at a nominal fee. Mother always made sure we had one. The kids played "Marco Polo," dove off the high dive, or practiced their cannon balls and jackknives. Sometimes the indoor pool was open to recreational swimming. A bridge bisected the indoor pool into a 25-meter side and a 25-yard side. You could duck under the bridge and come up inside it. There was another recreational swim period later in the afternoons, and longer recreational swim periods on Saturdays. I absolutely thrived on swimming at the UNC indoor and outdoor pools at Woollen!

Tweet

by Charly Mann

There is nothing like the excitement and anticipation of Christmas morning when you are kid. On Christmas morning in 1957 I was 8 years old and living with my family on Old Mill Road in Chapel Hill. The night before I had hardly slept anticipating what presents Santa might have left for me under our tree. I have always been an early riser, and that morning I got up at 5:00 AM and began creeping down the long hallway from my bedroom past the rooms of my siblings and my parents before I reached our large living room where our tree was located. Bleary-eyed, I entered the darkened room from the opposite side of where the tree and presents were located, and was amazed that there was something covering the floor directly in front of me. As I looked down my eyes began to focus on a large miniature castle filled with an assortment of knights. It was one of the most indelible and incredible sights I have ever beheld. I could never have imagined such a marvelous thing, and somehow Santa had not only brought me the best present ever, but he had set it up with great care. I stood motionless for several minutes absorbing every detail of the large castle and the dozens of knights, some even on horseback, converging near the drawbridge.

This is the Prince Valiant Castle set that Santa Claus got me for Christmas in 1957. At that time one of the most popular television shows was The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Richard Greene. I think it may have been the only British made show ever broadcast by a major network (CBS). I suspect my love for this show inspired Santa to bring me this gift.

This is me, Charly (Charles) Mann, decked out as Robin Hood on that memorable Christmas morning in 1957.

I then decided to turn on a nearby lamp so that I could more carefully see my surprise, but as I switched on the light I noticed something else covering the floor on the other side of the room directly to the right of the Christmas tree. I quickly crossed the room and was overjoyed to discover a Western fort filled with Cowboys and Cavalry that were being attacked by Indians. In those days I loved playing Cowboy and Indians with my friends, and there before me was a full scale Wild West Indian raid. This sight has been as enduring through the years as the one I had just witnessed, and the joy from these two presents is still with me more than fifty years later.

This is the Fort Apache playset I got for Christmas in 1957. It was made by the Marx Toy Company. It came with a plastic snap-together fort that attached to tin-litho barracks. There was also a cannon, a tin American Flag, ladders, a campfire, a totem pole, plus Indians, mounted cavalrymen with horses, and a number of settlers who looked like Davy Crockett. (Top photo is from playsetmagazine.com )

Tweet

by Charly Mann

For most of Chapel Hill’s history Franklin Street was filled with independent stores and restaurants. Christmas shopping downtown was a relaxing experience in holiday ambiance where every store carried unique gifts and customer service was always personalized. 

These are Chapel Hill merchant Christmas Ads from the 1930, long before my time, but I had several relatives who were children in Chapel Hill then. From the 1930s to the end of the 1950s radios were the most popular Christmas gift in Chapel Hill. The console radio in this ad from Shepherd's Furniture on Franklin Street would cost about $9000 in today's money. 

Today most Christmas shopping in Chapel Hill is done in malls, big-box stores or online; all offering deep discounts that small merchants paying downtown rent cannot match. Now Franklin Street is relatively quiet on the Friday after Thanksgiving we now call Black Friday. Most people shopping that day are looking for "door-busters" or heavily promoted deals many miles away.

These are ads from Chapel Hill merchants in 1955. This is the first Christmas I remember. I was five and recall going into the newly opened J.B. Robbins store with my mother to help her select a winter coat. Robbins was a large elegant women's department store on two floors. It would be similar to a Saks Fifth Avenue or Nieman Marcus today. Most of the girls I grew up with have very fond memories of shopping there. 

As a child in the 1950s I always loved when my parents would drive us to see the Christmas lights and decorations around town. The Blaines on the corner of Greenwood and Old Mill Road always had the most spectacular display in Chapel Hill. At night during the Christmas season it was common for groups of five or more carolers to turn up in our front yard to sing two or three Christmas songs.

These are ads from downtown Chapel Hill merchants in 1962. I began almost living at Kemp's Record Store that year, and remember many of his crazy sales like this one when it was open all night. You may be surprised that you could get a large Christmas Tree for $2.29 that year. For most of the 1950s and 60s most people got their Christmas trees from an outdoor vendor near Fowler's Grocery Store.  In 1973 I bought a Christmas Tree farm outside of Blowing Rock that grew fraser firs.

There was something magical about Christmas in those days. The delighted look on children faces as they walked along the Christmas lighted streets of downtown is something I will never forget.

Tweet

by Charly Mann

Chapel Hill has four distinctive seasons and Fall is always the best time of the year to live there. The temperatures begin to cool and an array of brilliant colors decorates the abundant hardwood trees in town.

Cindy Clarkson, perhaps the prettiest coed ever to attend UNC, savors Autumn colors 

Within this gorgeous backdrop UNC football games are played in the most breathtaking setting of any stadium in America. This is also the time of the year when most people first fall in love with the ageless charm and natural beauty of downtown Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina campus.

Patsy Binley on a crisp November morning at Gimghoul Castle in 1967

My two favorite events of the season come in November; The UNC-Duke football game and Thanksgiving. Most of my life I attended the Victory-Bell rivalry whether it was played at Kenan or Wallace Wade stadium. These games from the late 1950s through the 1980s were usually closely contested and often became instant classics. In recent decades they have become too one-sided in UNC's favor to have the same appeal they once had.

Mary Ellis brings sunshine to a Chapel Hill forest

Thanksgiving has always been a joyous occasion for me. It is such a great holiday, with no religious or patriotic significance, no gifts given and cards rarely sent, yet more than any other time of year we gather with friends and family to enjoy each other's company and food with few distractions. Over the years I was fortunate to celebrate Thanksgiving in Chapel Hill in many different settings: as a child with my family and closest relations, as a young adult at numerous co-operative gatherings of friends, and as a married man at my own house or the home of numerous relations who also lived in Chapel Hill.

Cathy McLurd enjoys Fall in Chapel Hill

Recently I began going through my personal photographs and videos to transfer them into a digital format so they could be enjoyed on my iPad. I was amazed to discover that since the late 1960s I had been extensively photographing and videotaping most of the Thanksgiving celebrations I had attended. I also found that I seemed to have had a tradition of filming and taking pictures of downtown, the campus and several neighborhoods on this day. In several instances I would set up my video camera to record an entire meal or long conversation.

UNC coed Penny Raynor brightens her bed of fallen leaves

Fall is the time to gather with friends and honor our past and celebrate our children, who are not only our greatest assets, but our collective future.

Tweet