Stream Of Consciousness Memoir Of Raleigh, North Carolina, 1960-1980
by
H. Kent Craig
My first memory of anything in Raleigh is much like
my first memory of anything in my sister hometown of Cary,
that of a grocery store when I was just 2-3 years old, in
this case it was the old A&P at what would become Ridgewood
Shopping Center, before Wade Avenue was a major
thoroughfare and way before it connected to I-40; I
remember how much larger it seemed than the old Winn-Dixie
in Cary, though in adult hindsight they were probably close
to the same size; for some reason, I remember a giant
wooden chicken placard above the egg and dairy section at
that old A&P; it's now Wellspring Grocery, selling upscale
and organic and exotic foodstuffs to those of those
tastes...
...Even though I was just 3-4 when construction on
it first began, I swear I remember when "the Beltline" was
being built, I distinctly remember seeing heavy equipment
along where it intersected Hillsboro Street...
...For years and years in the 60's, there were
only three local television stations, WRAL-TV Ch. 5 in
Raleigh which was an ABC affiliate, WTVD Ch.11 in Durham
which was CBS, and UNC-TV Ch.4 in Chapel Hill which was our
local PBS outlet; when I was 5 or 6, I remember a local
kids program on Ch.5 called "Captain 5" which was a
space-themed little monsters afternoon show, and I remember
going to WRAL's studio a couple of times to participate as
an audience member, 'still having a large, shiny, colorful
badge that identifies me as a "Captain 5 Space Crew"
member...
...For years and years also there were only two
main radio stations in the area, WPTF-AM 680 for the "old
folks" and WKIX-AM 850 for the "younger set"; I could see
the 'KIX broadcast towers above the tree line a mile or so
away north of my house just past the thick slice of trees
between Hillsboro Street and Highway 54, and I could hear
'KIX and not much else at night because of their radio
shadow as I snuck my 8-transistor radio under my pillow and
listened to Rick Dees, who eventually would become a
demi-celebrity and an embarrasment to himself with his
infamous recording of his novelty hit "Disco Duck", spin
the local Top 40 countdown and play such radical music as
The Temptations, The Tams, The Drifers, Gladys Knight & The
Pips, and of course "little" Stevie Wonder; eventually, we
would get and eventually lose a pioneering album rock
station in WQDR-FM, and the campus radio station at NC
State U., WKNC-FM, would help drive the revolution that
became the "campus rock" format, but for that brief time
and place 'KIX was IT...
...As much as Cary and my actual neighborhood of
Asbury and the adjacent neighborhood of Westover in west
Raleigh reflected a time and place not dissimilar to what
was being portrayed on television at that in the fictional
town of Mayberry in "The Andy Griffith Show", Raleigh, with
its cosmopolitan influence of NC State University, and its
power influence of being the seat of state government,
reflected a more staid and status quo if diminutive
urbanity than Asbury or Cary did, and the corridor to all
that contrast was Hillsboro Street...
...Even though moderately crippled by juvenile
rheumatoid arthritis, I rode my bike an old Schwin Stingray
with a banana seat and high hanger handlebars as much as
possible, had an afternoon paper route for The Raleigh
Times when they were still in business, and eventually
won enough trust and freedom from my parents to start
riding into "town" down Hillsboro Street, where I found and
eventually joined The Y, the Raleigh YMCA; at The Y, the
Monkees TV show played in the lobby, I hustled dime-a-game
bumperpool at the table near the big picture window, and
lost my winings to chess hustlers at the boards at the back
of the room; I also had a very excellent archery teacher
who taught me and others the basics of the zen of the way
of the bow and about focus, self-discipline, and maximum
effort for its own sake too as we would hike the mile or so
from The Y down to the large lawn area at the NC School For
The Blind and shoot at butts set up hundreds of feet away;
becoming such an excellent bumper pool hustler, it was only
a matter of time before discovering "The Empire Club", a
pool hall run by a certain Capt. Mosley that had ten 5x10
snooker tables with snooker-size pockets and balls and
where I developed a game that was world-class before I
turned 12, running straight pool frames of 125
consecutively made balls twice, once when I was 10 and
again when I was 11; eventually, I became a pint-sized
hustler, often making more than a few bucks from the sucker
adults who didn't think someone my age would have a decent
game, which I gave up along with gambling entirely when a
.38 snubnose was shoved in my face when I was 13 and Capt.
Mosley called the cops on the guy; Zig Zag Boutique,
Raleigh's first headshop eventually opened up next to The
Empire Club at the corner location of Hillsboro St. and
Oberlin Road, I remember the funky Jimi Hendrix/Janis
Joplin/Mod-style clothes and the old clawfoot bathtub full
of fish there as well as the glass display case full of
hash pipes, hookahs, rolling papers, roach clips, brass
screens for your pipes, and the like; The Y is still there,
but The Empire Club is gone though its child Blue Moon BBQ
& Billiards just above Jersey Mike's down the street from
where Empire used to be is going strong under the ownership
of Capt. Mosley's son Bob, and Zig Zag is long gone gone
before even anti-headshop legislation could put them out of
business, both spaces where they once were now being
Darryl's 1906 Restaurant; if you go to the very back wall
row of booths on the lower level which shares a common wall
with Weatherman's Jewelers next door at Darryl's, that's
where I developed a world-class billiard game at The Empire
Club as a kid...
...Downtown Raleigh in the
pre-mall-on-every-vacant-lot days was where my Mum used to
take shopping for school clothes and such at Hudson-Belk on
Fayetteville Street, and where we used to go sometimes to
eat at Clyde Cooper's Barbeque over on Davie Street, and
sometimes over to the Governor's Mansion sometimes to take
a tour and on an occasion or two to meet the governor
himself who my father happened to know as a family friend
because the governor's mother, Mrs. Hudson, used to run a
boarding house on Hillsboro Steet for NC State students
that my father did the plumbing service work for, and
downtown was also where I saw my first movie unescorted
when I was 8 or 9 at the old Ambassador Theater, "Maya";
downtown was also home to the State Capitol Building at the
very end of Hillsboro Street where on one Saturday I
harmlessly wandered in and stumbled across our most beloved
NC Secretary Of State, Thad Eure, and became one of "his
kids", having blanket permission to stop by anytime and
say hello, sometimes wandering just outside to fetch him a
bag of fresh hot peanuts from The Peanut Man who sold his
freshly cooked legumes primarily to those visiting Capital
Square to feed the park pigeons with but sometimes also to
feed Thad; when I helped the Republicans and became State
GOP Chairman Frank Rouse's gopher in the summer of 1972, it
broke both the hearts of Mrs. Hudson and Thad, though when
I would run across Thad at political functions in the years
to follow he was always friendly and amicable to me, one of
the truly most genuinely nicest people I've ever met in my
life; while the Legislative Building down the street reeked
of politics the old Capitol Building where Thad Eure's
office was at for the longest number of decades reeked of
history and a charm and grace that made me feel very
special to have a friend in Thad (and Thad never meet a
youngster he didn't like) who worked in such a special
place...
...If Hillsboro Street was the gateway avenue to
the State Capitol and the governmental complex, then its
sister boulevard, Western Boulevard, which parallels
Hillsboro Street a mile or so to the south for their mutual
and respective lengths, was the gateway avenue to much of
the rest of Raleigh before the city began its economic and
political expansion north of The Beltline, to the older
neighborhoods such as Boylan Heights which was Raleigh's
first actual development begun back in the early 1900's, to
the Dorthea Dix State Hospital For The Mentally Ill named
for the medical reformer Dorthea Dix post-mortem despite
her very outspoken desire when she was alive never to have
her name memorialized in such a way, to Central Prison
which is North Carolina's maximum security and death-row
prison, and to the lower economic in scale neighborhoods of
Maywood, Caraleigh, and Chavis Heights...
...Especially past my thirteenth birthday when my
best friend Tom Robinson and other close friends Ronnie
Rice and his sister Sue Rice turned me onto the vices of
the sixties on my thirteenth birth day on November 21, 1969
up until the summer of 1973 when I swore off all vices, the
old Raleigh neighborhood of Boylan Heights took on a
special significance because in the middle of cut-through
street between Cabarrus and South streets Cutler Street sat
what everyone affectionately called "The House", otherwise
known by its official title of Outreach Facility For Drug
Action Of Wake County Incorporated, The House was part
drug-induced-state crisis center, part teen-age runaway
intervention counseling center, part hippie culture
celebration central, part crash pad, and part gathering
point for the Raleigh version of the rainbow tribe; located
in a 60-70 year old multi-story home on a quiet residential
neighborhood, The House lived and breathed and sweated and
sexed the energy of the 60's and 70's, 'was Raleigh's own
one-house version of our reincarnation of the spirit of
Haight-Ashbury; and in the summertime of the early 70's,
when nearby Pullen Park still permitted this to happen, a
local acid or hard rock band would load up on a flatbed
truck, pull into a public picnic area at Pullen Park, plug
in, and start jamming, the music filtering around and down
and up the hills the couple of miles to Boylan Heights and
The House, where an almost Pied Piper-like migration would
begin, people leaving their houses and The House walking
down Western Boulevard past Central Prison and the south
lawn of The Blind School to Pullen Park, where alcohol
would be openly consumed, sex by every combination of male
and female and female and female and male and male would
take place in full public exhibitionistic glory, dope would
be openly smoked and sold as well, the music would shake
your very bones from its sheer decibel levels, and the cops
would always wait at least three or four hours before
making a token appearance and then leaving us untouched and
unmolested, never a single arrest being made at any of the
times I attended these impromptu mini-Woodstocks in the
staid and stuffy little Capitol City of Raleigh, N.C.; to
Bev & Bag, to Fluff, to Massah Brian, to Dale, and
especially to Mia, I shall never forget you guys, I'll
never forget how much you meant then and still mean to me,
and wherever you are, I hope you're healthy and happy and
are at peace...
...Some truly random memories; RAMS & ROMS, North
Carolina's first computer store which was on Hillsboro
Street near NC State, opened when a 2K chip cost over $500;
my unbroken string of 21 years going to the NC State Fair
at the NC State Fairgrounds near my home from the time I
was one until twenty-one, of the nightly fireworks display
at the Fair I could easily see from my house, of Jack
Kochman & His Helldrivers which thrilled us at the Fair's
dirt track; of seeing Jimi Hendrix in concert at that same
Fairgrounds, in the Dorton Arena building, Dorton Arena
being originally designed as a cattle show building but
also to be one of the architectural wonders of the world
with its two interlocking parabolic elipse arcs which
support the entire roof of it, the ticket costing me $5.50
in 1970 if I'm not mistaken, Jimi's music being almost
unlistenable to because of Dorton's acoustics which made it
sound like he was playing inside a 55-gallon steel drum, of
the clearly visible haze of dope smoke which rose into and
above the crowd making everyone high whether they wanted to
be or not which was ignored by the Wake County sherrif's
deputies and the State Highway Patrol officers as they
walked in uniform among the throngs of children of the 60's
and 70's; of Dwight and Coyt at Westover Barbershop next to
Burke Brothers Hardware near the Fairgrounds who cut my
hair from the time I was little until it turned from blond
and straight to dark and curly when I hit puberty and I had
to find someone who could cut that kind of hair; of Paul
and James who owned Fish Pros Aquarium Shop just down from
Westover Barbershop and with whom my wife Cathy and I when
we first got married obtained a 15% equity stake in their
business and from whom we were introduced to the wider
reality of Raleigh's and the world's gay community, being
clued into a ton of juicy gossip before outing was either
popular or common such as the fact that Rock Hudson was gay
(my, my, the shock of it all!), and being their guests at a
private New Year Eve's party at the height of disco era at
Raleigh's premier gay club The Capitol Corral where someone
poured a bottle of amyl nitrate into the bubble machine
inside the mirror ball above the dance floor creating a
scene I won't ever forget even if I want to; of the deep
woods that began at the headwaters of Richland Creek which
were on my father's old corner property at the corner of
Trinity Road and Chatham Street in Cary and which went
endlessly north into Umstead State Park, before being
leveled down and replaced by the concrete of I-40, where I
spent many happy days exploring new growth forest on old
farmlands gone to trees; of that curious old block building
atop a hill almost due north of my house on Highway 54
adjacent to a long-abandoned and fallow field where one
could find fresh deer tracks daily, that was sans doors and
windows but always had a usable but rotting mattress that
was obviously frequently used but little else inside the
building itself; of the open mike poetry readings that
started at Glory's on Salisbury Street and then moved to
John Jone's 'Paper Plant across the street and then with
him when he moved to Hargett Street and then to Berkeley
Cafe when the Paper Plant was no more; and of the total
bohemia which was The Raleigh Artists' Community at 908
West Morgan Street in the 70's, that helped shape and
define my style and integrity as an artist...
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