50 years gone? Seems like yesterday

Walk down Henderson Street in Chapel Hill today and it looks much as it did 50 years ago — quiet and leafy.

Hector’s Greek Restaurant, on the corner of Henderson and Franklin, which made a mighty good hot dog for a mighty cheap price, is long gone.

So too is the Record Bar, just down from Hector’s, where I stopped in at least once a week to check out the latest L.P.s.

But Mrs. Jordan’s house at 215 Henderson St., where I lived during my junior year at the University of the People, is still standing and looks great.

The old house is even still home to UNC students, although now they belong to the members of the Phi Mu sorority which has outgrown its original house next door.

Sorority girls are a far cry from the mixed bag of young men who occupied the upper floor of that house during the 1975-76 school year.

My immediate neighbor was Tony, an Italian graduate student working on his doctorate in English literature. Fluent in Italian, French, and English, Tony took delight in making fun of my Southern accent and the American academic system.

Tony became my closest friend among my housemates, and we talked for hours — well, he mostly talked, I mainly listened — about history, about literature, and about how Europeans viewed the world so differently from Americans.

Americans, Tony said, were far too concerned with job prestige and with money, ignoring the true and simple pleasures of life such as good coffee, good wine, and good food.

Next to Tony was Mr. Ma, a graduate student from Taiwan who was working on his doctorate in some unspecified field of science. Mr. Ma was a quiet man who kept mainly to himself, and no, none of us ever learned his first name.

Not sure about the time difference between Taiwan and North Carolina, but Mr. Ma had the supremely irritating habit of placing long distance telephone calls to his homeland in the wee hours of the morning and talking loudly enough (in Chinese, of course) that had Asia been just a tiny bit closer, the telephone would not have been needed.

The single telephone for the upstairs was on a stand in the middle of the hall, meaning no sleep for any of us until Mr. Ma had completed his updates.

Circling on around the upstairs was the room of Barry, who was taking a “break” from his studies in English to work as a stock clerk at Fowler’s Grocery Store on West Franklin Street.

Barry had ambitions of being a filmmaker or science fiction writer or world traveler or bohemian hermit. In contrast to my serious conversations with Tony, Barry and I talked about the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, space travel, and who would win out in a cage match between Godzilla and King Kong.

I had thought Barry to be a poor working boy, saving money to resume his studies, until one night in the early spring when he asked me to look over his state and federal income tax returns.

Poor he was not. Listed on both forms was more than $400,000 in investment income — the equivalent of $2,400,000 in today’s dollars. Poor was he not.

The final crew member of “Mrs. Jordan’s Boys” was a goomer from South Carolina named Tommy who claimed to be a student in television and film which must have been why the TV in his room was on 24 hours a day.

Amiable enough, but the brightest bulb he was not.

It was this group of young men who often gathered on the house’s front porch after supper in warm weather, sometimes joined by Mrs. Jordan, who always enjoyed a glass of wine in the evenings.

It was this group of young men who sometimes walked across campus in the bitter winter cold to grab supper at the hospital cafeteria. The food was good, cheap, and bountiful. Just what students needed.

It was this group of young men who one Friday night attended a midnight showing of an “adult” film at the Varsity Theater and who spent 90 minutes howling, laughing, and making fun of the X-rated antics on the screen.

And, it was this group of young men who grew to be a close-knit community, whose doors were usually open, and who felt free to drop in for a visit at any time.

I learned the basics of journalism that junior year, completing courses in news writing, news editing, ethics and law, and polling. But I also learned a lot about human nature, human relationships, and human foibles in Mrs. Jordan’s house.

And, lest I forget, I also learned how to cook in a popcorn popper. I started out with simply heating up cans of soup or of spaghetti. I progressed to hamburger patties and bacon, eggs and hash browns. All of it pretty good, considering.

Part of what makes an idyll an idyll is the briefness of its days and so it was with “the boys” of Mrs. Jordan’s house.

Barry moved out as March waxed toward April, deciding to spend some of that investment income on a much larger and much nicer apartment.

Later, Tony learned that his father was seriously ill and that the family finances were in shambles. He would not be returning to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1976.

When a classmate in my public speaking course asked if I might be interested in being his roommate for what would be the senior year for both of us, I initially said “No.”

But then, at his urging, I visited the apartment that was part of an older house on Chase Avenue, south of the hospital off Columbia Street. A fully equipped kitchen. No more popcorn popper meals. Two comfortable bedrooms. A nice study area. And, in the living room, an old-fashioned, wood-burning fireplace.

I couldn’t say “no.”

Tony helped me carry my stuff to my dad’s waiting station wagon when the semester ended in early May. We solemnly shook hands and tried not to cry. I never saw him again.

When I dropped by the house for a brief visit with Mrs. Jordan in September, she told me that Tommy had written over the summer to tell her that he was transferring to a school in South Carolina. He too vanished.

As for Barry, I went by his apartment in the fall also, but he had moved. His landlord did not know where.

Only Mr. Ma remained ensconced in his room, surrounded now by friends from Taiwan in each of the remaining four rooms.

A brief era was ended. A door was forever closed.

And yet when I think back on my college years, now 50 years gone, it is that year that I remember.

Striding across the Upper Quad at sunset on a golden October evening rich with the promise of frost.

A bountiful breakfast at Ye Olde Waffle Shoppe before heading up Franklin for a long and leisurely look around the Intimate Book Shop.

Sitting on a bench in front of the Wilson Library on an April afternoon when the entire campus is literally exploding with green.

And then turning toward home.

Home … to Mrs. Jordan’s.