Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / May 24, 1974, edition 1 / Page 4
Part of Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
T1" m m"wi Hiiiiinw, Mi-M,.,...-.,,.. jj 'WW l I 3i 1 spent the other morning arranging a tentative budget for the first summer session. I say tentative because I am hoping to become the heir to millions slor.5 about mid-June, but I only counted on part of that in my figuring. After much complex shuffling of priorities, I found to my surprise that a bottle of bourbon could easily be afforded mathematical reason typing paper while and could not. Rather than investigate my math, to drive down to the famous Orange County number five and stock up. "1 want a fifth of bourbon," I told the man behind the counter. He did not look up from his newspaper, but pulled on his ear lobe in intense concentration. "You know a six letter word for sexT He finally asked. 1 walked up and down in front of the glass case pressing my face up close to the expensive brands. "1 want a medium range bourbon," I said, "about five or six years old." "How about 'frigid?" He leaned back and shook his head as if answering his own question. "I want Kentucky Tavern," I said. "I can pour that in my Jack Daniels bottle and no one will know the difference." . Liter son A. v . j A Who owns Chape! Hill? The problem with Chapel Hill is that she paints too rosy a picture of herself. The result is a magnolia tree-Baskin-Robbins-mint-julep tinted town. In doing so, she leaves herself open to the hordes that would clamor to worship at her feet. So now, gorged with a summer excess of idolaters and calf-worshipers, the growing village lurches into June. All the conflict began back in April when seven outgoing seniors wrote individual perspectives on the magic that Chapel Hill had cast upon them during their four years here. Their stories were chock full of escapades and bravado, exclamations of our "pony days," and the respect for this "lady of a village." They whipped up a frenzy of passion for the "sanctity of this land." If only they were here now to see the lady. The faithful few that weathered the lull from exams to summer school can only raise they eyebrows and say "Well, there seems to be a lot more people here to rnc 1 1 i I i A "w Valerie Jordan TD) nime After a very long morning with classes, professors and general nonsense, I trudge to the very heart of the UNC campus, the Pine Room, for my first coffee of the day. For those of ycu who are new to the Chapel Hill campus, the Pine R.oom is a cafeteria-type place in the basement of Lenoir Hall, which also houses the Art lab and the ROTC offices. Any hour of the day you may observe students loitering in and around the Pine Room. They lounge on the grass and sit on the ROTC steps, just studying the passers by. I wave to friends and friends of friends who sit at the entrance. Down the steps and into the gloom of the hi ry e room. I see a table of friends who are talking, reading and malingering. With a brief greeting I leave my books and head for the coffee machines. In the corners are many of the types who inhabit the place. Sitting alone at a side table there is a skeletal-looking student, who simply stares off into space and occasionally s;"hs. Near him is a table of three friends who arue violently about the politics of the University and sneak' sly looks at the bare midriffs cf passing coeds. At another table in the darker section is a lovely coed and her older admirer, who is quoting a sonnet by John Donne to the guffaws cf an audience at a near-by table. Graduate students aren't the only ones who live in the Pine Room and not all of them are contemplating suicide or the decline and fall cf an empire. Some of the r there are really undergraduates who zxz escaping from the raucus atmosphere tni jukebox noise of the Snack Dar in the Unbn. Others are visitors and employes who m jw w m m p. ri I He walked down the long aisle and came back with what I wanted. "You know that bottle will cost you twenty cents more soon. Price is going way up." "What for?" "The state owned warehouse has been losing money. They have dropped or lost about three times as many bottles since Governor Holshouser changed the private warehouse into a public owned operation." I peered into the glass cases again. The expensive whiskies seemed farther away. "I thought the state always ran the alcohol distribution." "S-e-x ..." the man scratched his head. "Well, in a way the state has. I mean the state has always controlled the way the alcohol was sold, but the Raleigh warehouse used to be privately owned and operated, and, you see, Holshouser changed all that." He sat up and erased madly. "Holshouser told everybody that it would be cheaper to have the state own the liquor warehouse, so, when he gets elected, he hands the job over to one of his relatives, and in less than a year the place has lost a bundle of money. Have you ever broken a bottle of whiskey?" "Once," 1 nodded. "I was making my father a gin martini from the half gallon bottle and I dropped it. He for some toothpaste I decided than 1 expected." The truth is that this place is teeming with new people students, teachers, and other assorted pleasure-seekers. The native (regular-academic-year-round) Chapel Hill teachers and students (none of the students are really ' natives; they've just been here for what seems to be a long, long while indeed much longer than those that have invaded for the summer), feel a sense of intrusion about the newcomers that try so easily to lounge about the campus. So where is Justice? These Educational Gypsies have just come into Chapel Hill to partake of the atmosphere. Where are their dues? Have they spent an entire freshman year on the tenth floor of Morrison? Have they been forced to take meals at the Pine Room? And what about Hector's? Can anyone really say that they have lived in Chapel Hill until they have eaten a late night dog, smothered with Mrs. Sophie's chili? What happened to rites of passage? And now these transients just saunter into the village, probably buying "I'd rather be in Chapel Hill" bumper stickers, and expect to get away with it. Some of the hard-nosed Chapel Hill freaks equate the entry of the new masses in the village to the rape of a beautiful lady. They are alienated toward the lackeys that are attempting to sip of the sweet wine before they wince at the bitter. Well . . . that's what some of them say. C5 I Letters The summer Tar Heel not only welcomes, but urges the expression of all points of view on the editorial page through the letters to the editor. Although the newspaper reserves the right to edit all letters for libelous statements and good taste, we urge you to write us, whatever your problem, point of view or comment. ! y'i w A A A indulge in a coffee break or a sandwich. The twilight of the Pine Room comes after 2 p.m. when the lunch crowd leaves and the skeleton . crew of employes and graduate students remain. Some undqrgrads complain they feel unwelcome after this hour. The other half of the Pine Room devotees are grad students and professors who sit in small groups and talk about depressing subjects. Some of the others are on the make. The only real difference between the two is the latter look less depressed and their stares are less blank. The Pine Room is a haven for all graduate students who wish to sit over coffee and brood for hours in the heat of the summer or the cold of the winter. (All universities have some such convenience for grad students, although it is usually called a Grad Club.) After the beginning of the twilight time, you may see in the dimly-lit room, tables of graduate students who just sit musing over the outrageous murals on the walls or trying to think of somewhere more exciting to go. By the turnstile, there are the remnants of several unappetizing lunches. There is a girl standing by the coffee machine whp happens to have a two-inch roach climbing up her pant leg. Naturally I rush up to her and try to brush the creature off with my sweater, at which point she turns as if suspecting I am a potential masher. I explain and she moves off, leaving several counter-workers and myself to battle the roach. We cower until someone else comes to the rescue and kills it. I buy my coffee and sit down. I soon discover that no ose at my table is interested in my , roach story, they have all seen or heard all the roach stories there are, especially about of bounirlbo m got very depressed, afternoon." The rest just slink around, mumbling something about the ungratefulness of those that haven't paid their dues. They forget that they were once rookies too. They let it slip their minds that we are all temporary tenants here. No one can claim dibs on the flavor that floats around Chapel Hill. And yet the old time students feel that an improper intrusion has been forced on them. What they actually feel is the passage of time. Theoretically, new people come into the village, and gradually the old guard must give way. It's not like saying that the "Gypsies of today are the Chapel Hillians of tomorrow," for the feeling of belonging can only come when one least expects it, if at all. But the people that feel threatened are the ones that have been here too long. They know that the time has come for them to move on, and yet they linger, muttering that the school, the town, the people owe them something. What they forget is that the ultimate point of their schooling has been to teach them the maturity necessary to say goodbye' to what they perhaps love and cherish the most. And at this time of year a delicate few falter in their ability to move over, allowing the newer, hungrier ones into the mainstream of Chapel Hill. The older ones trip over Apple Chill Fairs, they linger with memories of flower ladies handing out daisies, and they stumble over remembered late afternoon walks across a deserted campus. These are all lures that pull you into the mainstream and yet hold you back from swimming upstream. And so it will be true again this year that a few refuse to realize that their time has ended here, and that they should move on to something else. In the meantime, this stately village's newest inhabitants silently bide their time, content that their Apple Chill Fairs and trips to Hector's will soon come to pass, but only in the light of another's self realization. devotees the big ones that got away. Generally speaking, you have to have something BIG to say if you want any attention at all. Most graduate students have read Flowers oj Evil and The Story of O, so really you have to do something exceptional to be interesting; like slitting your wrists. It is understandable that no one ever streaked the Pine Room. Just walk in and take a look, it is the geriatric ward of UNC; most of the graduate students spend months in the Pine Room over one cup of coffee and a Copy of Sartre's Nausea. For me, the Pine Room is a lot like TV; 1 realize it is a useless experience and yet I become an addict. But I am not the only one who has spent upwards of four hours in the Pine Room, drinking as many as six or eight cups of coffee. . . The Pine Room is one of the major reasons for cutting classes. If a group of friends sit around and talk long enough, almost anyone of the people can be convinced by any or all of the others to stay just a few minutes longer, and then no one gets to any classes at all. There are people who honestly come to the Pine Room only for some lunch and they never leave. They simply go home at the end fo the day without ever having left that room. . So, if you have had a bad day and the heat is getting to you, just head for that basement room and you'll find the company you need to feel at home at UNC. If you don't have anything to avoid, and you don't want to get picked up, then you can just buy yourself a coffee and brood about life in general. HI He went to bed at four in the "Dropping a bottle of liquor can be very traumatic," the man agreed. "Yet at the rate they're breaking them in the warehouse they must be playing basketball with whole cases. The Governor wanted to put the liquor back in the hands of the people, and, 1 gotta admit, that's probably where it is. Now the taxpayers have to make up the slack. "1 think they ought to go liquor-by-the-drink. Restaurants and hotels never break bottles." "But wouldn't you be out of a job?" He shrugged. "I'd rather be a bartender anyway. The bums who come into bars are great for crossword puzzles. You sure you don't know any six letter word for'sexT 1 shook my head. "God, you college kids! You don't know nothing." The drive back was spent considering alternatives. Now that liquor was going to cost more I could do one of two things: either I am going to have to give up cocktails altogether, or I am going to have to get a job, hopefully at the Raleigh warehouse. The decision needs sober thought. gasggaggBBsaaagflggsaa zasasasiariB a UJf? OJar Bed Elliott Varnock Editor Valerie Jordan Managing Editor Joel Drinklsy News Editor Jean Swallow.... Associate Editor Bill Kay Sports Editor Alan Cisbort Features Editor ichael Leonard In This is a Southerner's counterattack. It is an answer to all you Yankee cross-eyed carpetbaggers and southern born expatriates who attack the southland for all that makes it awful, unique and hauntingly beautiful at the same time. The South, what is .it? It's dead 'possums on the shoulder. It's pokeweed along the flatlands. It's rolling hills and green shoots coming up through red clay. It's pine trees standing soldier straight green against the sky. It's kudzu growing right up over everything. It's mimosa trees, and don't they smell pretty. When black children file off an orange school bus and enter a pitiful shanty set beside peach trees and cotton, it's the south. When the rocks along the curving highway say "Jesus Saves," it's the south. When the night is warm and damp and something rustles in the broomstraw, it's the South. Many people stereotype the South as backward and the South is backward according to many of the common notions of progress. But don't most common notions of progress include steel mills, eight lane highways, suburban sprawl and liberal ideas n J fi Pine Room Senior Stave Davenport makes uss cf the affsrnoon tranquility of the Pina Room fcr studying. With the lunch hoyr rush over, th 3 place Is almost empty. 82nd Year oj Editorial Freedom All unsigned editorials are the opinion columns represent the opinions of ethers. Founded February 23, 1893 EEsrKSBSSBrasau ssnnisEissii f"T "m r nimiL The human race can't seem to keep its mind off numbers lately; everyone is concerned with zero population growth, levels of tar and nicotine in cigarettes, and that four out of five doctors interviewed recommended Crest. Probably the single largest concern over numbers surrounds the value of the United States dollar. Once the world's most stable currency, the dollar is in the rumble seat while the German mark roars down the road to economic dominance. Everyone grumbles about the dollar: how you used to be able to get in the movies for 25 cents and now it costs three dollars just to get in to see The Exorcist how Coke used to cost a dime and now it's boomed up to a quarter of a dollar; ad infinitum, add nauseum. Of course, college students, that rare and charmingly naive group of fun loving kids, have yet to feel the real crunch of the disappearing act the dollar is presently performing. But soon, very soon I predict, something will occur that will shock everyone into reality: the Tar Heel Special will cost one dollar. Yes ... we all watched in our youth how millions of American Graffitti-type drive-ins all over the country bit the dust, crushed under the heel of the onward pressing a n ri rrir nrM rr cn defense of that are in many ways just a loosening of roots and principles which at least give a basic meaning to life? Other people call Southerners ignorant or uneducated, and indeed many Southeners are uneducated. But are they any more uneducated than a Pittsburgh steel worker or New York longshoreman? Liberals scoff at the low educational level of Southern state legislatures, but will not these same liberals also praise government by the people and blast professional politics? The Yankee coming down Interstate 95 on his way from" New Jersey to Miami pulls off the highway and snickers at the "redneck" in his "red camels" and work boots. But which man is more sickening, the neurotic, flabby, impotent CPA from Bayonne or the man who can plant tobacco in arrow straight rows and work all day under a July sun with the only air-conditioning coming through the holes in his straw hat? Northern liberals from towns which have few or no blacks attack Southerners for their bigotry, but they forget that the South has a tragic history that has made men bigots. Also, they tend to overlook the fact that the SUsfJ photo toy C ary Lt V a Pondering of the editor. Letters and Friday, May 24, 1974 fsxsms'Ka saxes O peosiii O EMails irgeir hamburger franchise. Hardecs, Crystal-Burger, Burger King and Burger Chef, but most importantly, and most profitably, MacDonalds swept cross the face of America, grabbing up dimes, quarters and any stray cow in the way. Countless filet offish and french fries followed in the wake of the micro-burger and mutant horrors like the Servo mation hamburger were generated by fears of radiation poisoning. Scrvomation, yet to be put on the Surgeon General's list of health hazards, is the friendly little group of people who run the Carolina Union Snack Bar. Those of you who were in UNC for the spring session remember that a .cup of coffee cost 1 1 cents; now it is 1 5 cents a cup, just about a 30 per cent increase. But the best of all, the horror story which has unfolded before the bleary eyes of summer school students has to be the price of the Tar Heel special: 85 cents. Good lord, 85 cents for a slab of ground beef and chicken necks (maybe) plus some lettuce and various other window dressings. Ahh . . . and soon my flock, you will see the day when Servomation finally moves in for the coup de grace and the dollar hamburger. ' Can you imagine trying to trade three Tar Heel specials for a ticket to The Exorcist'! e cjOui past twenty years have brought changes n the South's race relations that have not been comparably matched in the North. Indeed, the South has no monopoly on bigotry. The reaction of Pontiac, Michigan to bussing proves this. Also, Northerners tend to miss the poetic and tragic beauty in Southern bigotry. They miss the feeling of something which is horrid and needs to die but still gives a certain meaning to life. They miss the anthetic beauty tied to the tragedy. It is the haunting degenerate beauty that Faulkner captured, and it has created passions that are savage and strong. A life of passion will always be more beautiful than a life of wishy washy blase indecisiveness, and all the ignorance, bigotry and backwardness of the South are in many ways the things which give it passion and its character. Hidden in these evils is something which is basically good, a feeling of roots and an unwillingness to indiscriminately destroy the old in a race to be fashionably modern. The evils should go but the basic feeling should be retained, yet even as the evils go I, for one. feel a sense of loss, for with them go a way of life that was powerful and somehow grabbed you at the throat and refused to let go. It was a life with limits and rules. It was cruel and it was hypocritical. It was also honest in many instances and it produced both insanity and much "good old boy" cotton patch common sense and humor. Often it was full of hate and fear but which is better, hate or apathy? Yet now the Old South is dying. It will be a long slow death but it is going. It's not really a thing w hich I would want to keep intact but as it is lost 1 fear that Southern uniqueness, passion and character will go with it. Differences will remain in Southern politics and attitudes, but a Republican governor in North Carolina and black mayors in Raleigh and Atlanta are symptoms of great change. South Georgia. Alabama and the backwoods fields carved from pine forests will remain the same for years to come, but they too will change. Mass media and a massive sameness are sweeping the nation and the South. In 1972 I took a trip through the deep South and when I saw long hair behind the hamburger grill in Ludiwici and Waycross 1 knew that the old was going fast, for the great symbol of conformity to the modern liberal status quo had gone right down into Lester Maddox's back pocket. Atlanta is the symbol of this new South. It is much like Dallas or Kansas City, and Charlotte and Raleigh are much like Atlanta. The new symbol shows mainly conformity to the national norm. It has hippies, a central city with heavy black population, freeways, and integrated schools. It has a Ford plant, an international airport and giant shopping malls for the sprawling suburbs. If the rest of the South becomes new in like fashion, the Southern character and uniqueness will eventually fade and go with the wind. This change is taking place now and will continue to take place. The "Pickrick Drumstick" is now an anachronism in most of the South and Southern uniqueness will follow its route. The change is needed but conformity to some national media packaged norm is not, and sadly this is the price that the South is foolishly coming to pay. h
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
May 24, 1974, edition 1
4
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75