Breaking news from Chapel Hill! A major local protest broke out February 15 on MLK Boulevard near downtown Chapel Hill. The only seven men who still play hand ball in town gathered outside the local YMCA to protest the Y's decision to close the handball courts. Police were not called in.

I love that town. I went to school there – at The University of North Carolina. After I finished my education, I moved back home to Jacksonville, Florida. I found work in my field of study in Jacksonville. But that city in Florida wasn't quite the town I left in Carolina.

At some point, shortly after leaving school and Chapel Hill in 1976, I returned for a visit. Now, at that time, the city streets of Jacksonville were frequent avenues of blaring sirens and speeding police squads. Had I never lived in Chapel Hill, that wouldn't have bothered me too much. After all, the same was true of my hometown when I was growing up in Jacksonville. But on that return visit, I found myself eating a meal at Breadman's on Rosemary Street, sharing it with no one but the print in the local newspaper. Most of that newspaper back then was all fluff. You know, social events and stuff like that. And upbeat stories about the local university's athletic successes – even when the teams were failing. So, as I ate my scrambleds and home fries at Breadman's, I chose to read the hard news in that paper. The “Police Blotter.” Concise crime accounts from all corners of that town.

During my meal that day, I discovered quite the crime spree in Chapel Hill. An old college friend of mine was even on the police force back then. “How the hell could he allow all this to take place in our quaint little college town?” I asked myself that day at Breadman's. The details right there in black and white in “The Chapel Hill Newspaper” spelled it all out for me. The town and it's residents were simply out of control.

On any other day, the story of a major break-in and near larceny at a college campus fraternity house would have been the lead story in the “Police Blotter.” It was horrifying. I can only imagine how the parents of all those guys in that frat house must have feared for the lives of their sons after hearing the atrocious details of that break-in.

But the top story in the “Police Blotter” that day involved a crime committed by a young boy. Child crime in Chapel Hill. That was news to me. Real news. When I read about that poor kid and about the lengths to which he so blatantly flaunted his delinquency in front of one of my college friend's colleagues on the force, I nearly choked on a home fry. The kid was only 7 years old at the time of the crime in question here. He is probably around 43 years old now. There is no doubt in my mind that the kid is doing time these days for some other crimes of which I have not yet heard. Even at age seven, the kid was a bad seed.

When I was in college, late night meals at Breadman's pretty much always gave me indigestion. I always blamed it on attempting to digest greasy breakfast sausage on top of a belly full of Blue Ribbons. On that day, during my return visit to the Hill, it was the printed news that lodged in my esophagus for hours. It was just really hard to swallow while “The Chapel Hill News” gave me details of some despicable human being, sneaking through an unlocked door at that fraternity house and stealing a bottle of barbecue sauce. And of the young seven year old, dropping a paper gum wrapper on the sidewalk just yards from where a Chapel Hill cop was standing and surveilling.

It was during that meal, and after reading the town's hard news, that I decided Chapel Hill was where I needed to live. It seemed like Mayberry with an edge to me. That was 32 years or so ago. It seems fitting to me that around the time I chose to move away from this crime-ridden town that seven near-geriatric hand-ballers decided to protest the local YMCA.

It is absolutely true that during that meal and while reading “The Chapel Hill News'” accounts of crime in Chapel Hill that I decided my quest to return to my college town to live was to be my destiny. It wasn't easy getting back there. I had to do time.

I left Chapel Hill in the late summer of 1976. The following four years, I tried my best on my own to get back there. I applied for job after job at television stations in the Raleigh-Durham market. When I ended up in Chattanooga a couple of years after leaving Chapel Hill, it was a career step-up to be sure. But it was a hell of a depressing career stop. I was only there for one year. And except for a couple of dear friends I met there, it was a totally wasted year.

I hated being there. But I would have stayed. Some hard-headed principles caused me to me to leave that place. I was given a promotion – with no increase in pay. But I was regularly promised more money in “a couple of weeks.” When the weeks became months, I returned to Jacksonville to rip plaster off the walls of the den in my parents' home. And to paint some walls. Around the time I discovered that the small loops on white painter pants are not there to hold paint brushes or other tools - they are there to hold pint-sized vodka bottles – my two good friends from Nooga were being hired at a television station in Durham, North Carolina. They convinced the management at WTVD to hire their Chattanooga vodka-drinking painter friend.

My stint in Chattanooga paid off. My two friends made sure of that. Back then, I often wondered why God chose to place me in Chattanooga for that one seemingly empty year. Back then, I often considered that year a wasted one. I hated that year. And nothing happened. And I left. I felt that God just decided to remove me from the real world for 12 months. And I questioned that. Often.

But it was my two friends. They are what God gave me. Because of them, I returned to the town I love so very much. Because of them, I met my wife who I loved dearly and still do. Because of them, I have a son who I love even more dearly, and a daughter-in-law and four of the most wonderful grandchildren, all of whom have taught me the real meaning of love.

And because of my Chattanooga visit, I was finally able to return to a town where discarded candy wrappers and stolen barbecue sauce are typical crimes of the day. And, again, it was so fitting that, as I was leaving the town I love so much, I saw the civil disobedience of the seven hand-ballers as they protested on the sidewalk of the YMCA on the MLK. They began their protest in mid-February. But it was March the first when I saw them civilly disobeying.

It was the same day that I was meeting my other family for drinks downtown. I was on my way to meet Shelley. And her two adult children for drinks and dinner. They are three treasures my Chattanooga friends gave to me as well. We had our few goodbye drinks, and discussed where we would go for dinner. The vote was unanimous.

Breadman's. For my last meal out in Chapel Hill.

Just as my Chattanooga friends helped me to get where I needed to be so many years ago, so too did Shelley, Zach and Sammie help me to just be where I needed to be.

I was by myself 33 years ago at Breadman's when I decided to move to Chapel Hill. I was with those three at Breadman's just two days before I left that town. And both times, I was so comfortable. Chapel Hill, Breadman's, Shelley, Zach, Sammie, recollections of local police chiefs and other old friends and familiar faces and smiles around town that night seemed to reassure me that my Chattanooga friends' efforts to bring me home, so many years ago, were not in vain.

I will miss the comfort there. Forever I will. I will miss the easy access to my family that remains there. I will miss the smiles from the folks at the Food Lion and the Crown gas station. I will miss running into life-long friends in the parking lots of such places.

I will especially miss the crime there.  And the civil unrest.

For more, click HERE for "Adventure Of Resepct" on this week's LUNACY!

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