A Chapel Hill legend died in 2007 – The Rams Head Rathskeller, fondly referred to as “The Rat.” The Rathskeller was a 4,800 square foot restaurant located beneath Franklin Street, Carolina’s version of The Corner at UVA. To access The Rat, you walked down steep concrete stairs off Franklin Street through a place called Amber Alley. At the bottom, you waited and waited and waited. … [Read more...]

I spend about an hour a day in my car, more if I’m on a trip, and I always have the radio on. I pretty much ignore talk radio anymore – too depressing, so I listen to the oldies station or light rock. It’s background noise, mostly, something to occupy the time. But there was once a time when the radio not only made noise, it entertained us. Many Boomers recall the Golden Age of radio. I grew … [Read more...]

  Garner, North Carolina. How well I remember this special place on the outskirts of Raleigh. Today, Garner is a bustling city, a bedroom community of Raleigh, but in the 1950’s, it was a small, sleepy village with a country store, a couple Baptist churches and a post office. Each summer, I spent a week or two in Raleigh with my grandmother, Mama Ida – who pretty much spoiled me rotten. … [Read more...]

One of my very special places was a field of dreams I was 8 years old when my family moved across town in Beckley, WV. Daddy had bought a new house, a modest 2-bedroom, 1 bath Cape Cod with an attic and basement. I believe it cost $12,000. The house was fine, but I found myself in a new school system and living on a block entirely occupied by girls. I was devastated. Then, my life changed. … [Read more...]

  Special places. Special memories. For me, one such place was the West Virginia State Fair. My parents took me as a child. I later took my children and then my grandchildren. You never tire of a State Fair and West Virginia’s showcase in Fairleigh, WV was always special. In the summer of 1956, I was still getting used to small town life in Lewisburg, population 2,000, after moving … [Read more...]

One of those special places in my life is and has been the Greenbrier River. When we moved from Beckley to Lewisburg, WV, one of the first attractions to this young fisherman was this beautiful piece of water. Beckley had nothing like it. The Greenbrier was a gentle river - clear, cold and inviting. The Greenbrier is a major tributary of the New River. It begins in Pocahontas County with  the … [Read more...]

As Boomers look back on a life full of memories, certain places – special places – stick out. For me, one of those special places was the beach – Atlantic Beach, NC, not far from Camp Lejeune. My Aunt Anne and Uncle Sidney had a small cottage in Morehead City, just across Bogue Sound from Atlantic Beach. Every June, after school let out, we packed the family Pontiac sedan with suitcases and … [Read more...]

In December 1956, all of America was glued to a TV set. On Monday nights at 8 pm on NBC, the game show Twenty-One was on the air. It was the All-American boy, Charles Van Doren, in one isolation booth and Herb Stempel, a dorky genius in the other. Everyone in the country except Stempel’s mother was rooting for Van Doren, the Columbia University scholar, to win. And he did, with a little help from … [Read more...]

My first memory of drinking beer was at Atlantic Beach in North Carolina. I was about 12 or 13  and Mom and Dad were having a beer and a sandwich out on the deck of a restaurant overlooking the ocean while I and my siblings were dodging the crashing waves. I came up to see them and watched Daddy drinking a Schlitz. I asked for a sip, he handed me the can. I grimaced as the ice-cold beverage slid … [Read more...]

When I was a sophomore in high school, I enrolled as a day student at Greenbrier Military School in Lewisburg, WV, about a mile from our house. As a day student – a town boy I was called – I did not live at GMS and eat my meals there, but I did everything else – classes, drills, parades, etc. The corps of cadets assembled each morning at 7:30. It took me about ten minutes to walk to school – and I … [Read more...]