Looking at the Alamance County court house from North Main and Harden Street intersection (the biggest intersection in town). Carey's house is down Harden on the right about 3 blocks and we grew up at what is now 620 East Harden, used to be Route #3, Graham, or Chapel Hill Road, or Hwy 54— all those addresses used to get mail to our house.
Anyway, I digress. We for years coming home from Graham Elementary rode our bicycles right down the middle of the road — Main didn't have a left turn lane then, but there were three lanes with the middle lane - seldom used - as a truck parking lane.
In the middle of the block on the left side— photo taken from the middle of the road - was and still is the Graham Cinema. Doors used to be recessed a bit and the black double doors to the left over the silver kick plate used to be a single door that lead to the balcony and was marked "colored". That was one of the few places in town that I recall so indicated.
We didn't go to the movies often. Occasionally we would go to a big time movie in Greensboro or Raleigh that would never make it to Graham. Big movies I recall seeing were the re-release of Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, and Ben Hur. The first two I think we went to Raleigh to see and the later to Greensboro. I do recall seeing a couple of cowboy movies here and even a monster movie one time.
Almost directly across from the theater was Wrike Drug building. Dad's first office was on the second floor, the two windows on the right side of the sign. His desk was at 90 degrees to the window so he could look north out the window up the street. To get to his office a patient had to go up steep steps to the left of the drug store. The windows to the left of the sign were for his partner Dr. H. We never did figure out how Dad knew we were riding down the middle of the street.
Going into Wrike Drug was a ritual too. It had a traditional soda fountain and one of my big dilemmas was whether to buy a cherry coke or regular coke. Regular was only a nickel but adding a taste of cherry made is 6 cents and that meant breaking a dime into pennies or using two nickels. An additional penny was a big deal to a boy who collected bottles along the highway for the two cents return deposit you got when you returned a soda bottle to a store.
Going collecting bottles along 54 in front of our house was a big deal for the Eric Charles Mark and I. We would get a wagon or two and go up and down the highway looking in the ditch for bottles. At 2 cents each we could make nearly a dollar on a good outing.
Dad's practice was a general practice, that included lots of obstetrics — delivering babies. There was a time when I imagine he delivered several babies a week. — He was a county doctor, made house calls and took us boy with him on those calls occasionally. Those made for some memorable trips.
The northwest corner of court square in this corner was what we called Riverside Cafe - not its real name but a wonderful country food cafeteria/restaurant long closed that we all enjoyed - well not so much Mom.
and looking north from South Main at the Pine Street intersection — coming from the interstate - you can see why when you told someone you were from Graham they may respond "oh the town with the courthouse in the middle of the road".
and further down Pine Street towards home was GHS or the high school we went to until integration and Mark went to Central. The water tower is in what was the football practice field.
The entrance, now with fancy cover for what is now the middle school. I imagine the school is still small - between 4-500 students. Back in the day we had good football teams (the Red Devils) and Charles was on the team — even in the newspaper too.
A block or two behind the high school on McGee Street is the Coumingy Center where clubs like Rotary met. Kelly and Beth live on McGee Street a couple of houses down from the Center now. This place was a very important part of Dad's community life. He was president at least one year and came to lunch here nearly every Thursday for Rotary that I can remember. Back in the day the building was surrounded by trees and did not appear so open.
On Saturday nights there were live band dances here during the late 50's - the 60's. Had some local and regional bands, some of which became somewhat regionally famous. They played what is now known as beach music, rock and roll, and pop music. I usually stood on the edges of the crowd and do not remember dancing more than just a few times.
Between the Community Center and the high school was the high school football field and baseball stadium. Used to have what I thought were high wooden seating around the infield for our minor league baseball team. We did go to games to see the Alamance Indians - Class A of the Cleveland Indians.
The field is now a community park field and is named for Tom Zachary who was our next door neighbor. We liked him very much. Tom was a famous baseball pitcher who won lots of games. He especially liked Eric. Later I was a pall barer at his wife Etta's funeral.
and across the street from the high school is the town cemetery. Graham has a municipal cemetery for some reason and the many of the individual churches do not. I rode my bike through it and as usual saw another interesting tombstone. Most of the big monuments are for textile families.
and a block or two up the street toward the court house in that brick building under the tree on Elm Street is Dad's second office. In 1967 or so after I had left home, Dad left the office over Wrike Drug to practice on his own. The building is now joined to others in a strip office complex but at the time it was just a single small building approached by a sidewalk.
and across the street is Mark's office. He has a "Family Practice" that is what Dad's practice became - Family Medicine. I think Dad was one of the original or initial Family Practitioners.
