Fayetteville Public Library, 1960

Before the Fayetteville public library was at its present location and before it was in its previous building on E. Dickson  Street, it was located up a steep flight of stairs in a building on West Mountain Street, just down the block from the Ben Franklin store at the southwest corner Mountain and S. Block Avenue . I think I started to use the library regularly when I was in the 7th grade. I checked out lots of teen books with a plot involving baseball.

The card shown above was issued for use at the new library building on Dickson Street that had replaced the old one on Mountain Street. It was part of the latest in book check-out technology. With the card shown above, you needed only to present the card and the book to the librarian. The card was inserted into a simple machine that stamped the number onto a check-out card, along with a due date, and you were done.

8th Grade Report Card: Good Attendance, Otherwise Pretty Sad

I forget how poorly I did in the 8th grade. I even got a B in physical education from Coach Harness. My only excuses for poor grades are that I was much more interested in sports than in studying and, as Mr. Taylor told my parents at a conference with them, I was exceptionally lazy. I had been put into accelerated classes when arriving at Hillcrest Junior High School and had some tough competition from students were more diligent and, in many cases, smarter than I. So, I muddled through the 8th grade and got smarter and a little more diligent as years went by. (I have to hide this grade information from my friend Natalia, who swears she always earned top grades and best-of-class awards when she was attending school in the Soviet Union and from my 12-year-old godson Danielka who is always being pushed to get better grades in his Russian school.)

Lawdy ah swear, it's Mrs. Shepherd, 1960

Mrs. Shepherd (left)

Mrs. Shepherd was a frequent substitute teacher at Hillcrest Jr. High. I walked into many classrooms to find, with surprise, her standing there waiting for the bell to ring. I instantly knew I would spend the next hour listening to the deepest Southern accent of any person I knew. She was a kindly soul with a no nonsense exterior, and she contributed to my life in one big way: After hearing her talk, I swore that I would never, ever have such an accent -- or anything close to it.

One year, Mrs. Shepherd invited students for a picnic or some kind of weekend get together at her house. As I recall, it was a big old white two-story house out in the country, down a dirt road from Highway 71 before it reached Lake Fayetteville. As the afternoon progressed, a few of us explored the woods around her house and end up traipsing through the trees all the way to the shores of the Lake.

The location of her house, in about 1958, was behind the area where a small shopping center (Barnes and Noble) is now located.  If you drive on the road behind the Shopping Center will can turn off onto Shepherd Lane, which is lined with apartments.

Hillcrest Jr. High Basketball Team, 1960-61