When I was growing up in Chapel Hill, WCHL was how you found out what was going on. My friend Marilou was a minor celebrity because her dad Jim Heavner was an owner of our local AM radio station, and she had a giant stack of demo 45s to show for it.
Scouts are back
At the time, Chapel Hill offered an adventurous co-ed Boy Scouts of America experience, thanks to Jean and George Holcomb. Aunt Jean and Uncle George, as we all called them, were the leaders of Troop 835, an Explorer troop known for its frequent backpacking, skiing and adventure trips.
The troop owned an old school bus, painted white, that we helped pay for by selling peanuts and hot dogs at the UNC football games. Paul Trimble was the driver of the bus, which would leave for trips from the parking lot of WCHL, across the street from Eastgate.
At the end of the weekend, we’d return to that parking lot. We’d tumble out of the bus, tired, sweaty, dirty, dehydrated, and WCHL would announce “The Scouts are back. Come get ‘em.” That’s how our parents knew we needed a ride home. They weren’t seeing it on Facebook. Nobody was texting their mom, and there weren’t any parents tracking our whereabouts through our phones.
Lost dogs, cats and birds
WCHL also announced lost pets, in case anyone in town had seen them. My mother had a parakeet named Buggiebear who frequently escaped, thanks to her wiring his cage door permanently open. (She didn’t like for anyone to be caged in, which explains a little of how my sister Amanda and I were raised.)
One day in the 1960s when we were living on Marilyn Lane, right off Roosevelt, Buggiebear got out and apparently followed my father to his architectural office, then located at the corner of Franklin Street and Columbia. Charlie Reap’s dental office was in the same building. Shortly after WCHL announced that Buggiebear was missing, Dr. Reap noticed the bird standing on his windowsill. Buggiebear was captured and escorted home in a cardboard box.
Lost snake
This story was told to me by my father, Arthur Cogswell, who was a treasure trove of old Chapel Hill stories. I’m sure some of it is true.
Apparently, there was a fellow in town who had a pet snake, a boa constrictor. When this guy was having the interior of his house painted, the fumes were bothering his snake, so he took him out and put him in the backseat of his car, a pink Cadillac. (I do remember seeing this car in Chapel Hill, and knowing that it belonged to a friend of my father.)
The next morning, his car was not in the driveway. WCHL announced that the car had been stolen. About an hour later, they announced that the car had been found. The pink Cadillac was parked next to a cornfield, with the engine running and all four doors open. The snake was nowhere to be seen.
Sound of the village
When my father died years ago, Jim Heavner had someone at WCHL call me for an interview about him. I was reeling from the shock of losing my father rather unexpectedly, and I don’t remember much about the interview except one thing. The reporter asked me to sum up my father’s personality in one word. My answer: Curious.
For a time, the tagline of WCHL was The Sound of the Village. (Even now, Chapel Hill likes to think of itself as a village.) The tagline was not even remotely false advertising. If you were curious about what was going on in town right that second, WCHL was the source.
