Yesterdays - Five Points Columbia, SC

 

Yesterdays at Five Points, Columbia, South Carolina

Yesterdays at Five Points, Columbia, South Carolina, on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, for the now annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. This was an early one, when Duncan was Grand Marshall and the parade ended at Five Points.


From Ocean City to Five Points, Columbia, SC

Working at Mack & Mancos Pizza on the Ocean City (NJ) boardwalk was certainly a major part of the life of anyone who worked there.

Two of the people I met working there were Duncan and Scott MacRae, two of the best people you would ever get to meet. They were from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where their mother was a school teacher and there is now a school named MacRae School after her.

Duncan had worked at Mack & Mancos previously, years before I got there, and was a legend, having left to serve as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and returning a hero,he could have done anything in the world, but went back to work twerrling pizzas for the summer for Mr. Mack.

His younger brother Scotty, handsome, brash and immensely likeable, who left Mack & Mancos to be a bartender at the Anchorage, through Joe Tricheck, the brother-in-law of owner Andrew "Anchorage" Carnelgia, and a regular customer at Mack & Mancos with Andrew's sister.

When he came back, Duncan could do no wrong. They say he was let off by a Marine helicopter right out in front on the beach, and walked in with his flight suit and helmet under his arm.

He drove a fancy sports car, I think it was a Corvette Stingray, and he couldn't get arrested no matter how fast he went or what crazy assed thing he did on a binge, because he had done his time in Nam and was everyone's hero. On one rainey Sunday he took me over to Bay Shores for the Sunday afternoon matinee show to see Malcom and the Bonnievilles (or was it Hereafter?), and introduced me to Buddy Tweill, Malcolm and real rock & roll.

Besides working at Mack & Mancos, Duncan had also worked in the kitchen as a cook at the Crab Trap, the best restaurant in Somers Point for decades, and with Scott's experience as a bartender at the Anchorage, they decided to go into business for themselves, with Duncan handling the kitchen and Scotty taking care of the bar.

With a partner, they bought a small bar and restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina, near the university and not far from the State House, and called it Yesterdays, with a nostalgic twist.

When Brian and I were on the return leg of our first trip to the West Coast (circa 1977), we stopped by Columbia to say hello to Scotty and Duncan and see how they were doing.

Very well thank you.

While still small, they were making money, and expanding, eventually buying up the entire block, including the supermarket for its parking. Later they expanded and opened Yesterdays II, in a suburban neighborhood, and brought Bob Brumage, another Mack & Manco guy, in to run it.

From what I understand, Duncan is now retired and living on his saleboat somewhere where its warm, but one summer he visited his old haunts in Ocean City and Somers Point, and found me at Charlie's in Somers Point.

I had since left Mack & Mancos and was trying to make it as a part time teacher and writer, and had earlier done an interview with Ocean City native and superstar journalist Gay Talese. It was a front page cover story in the local weekly SandPaper, and was an interview with Talese conducted at his Ocean City home, sort of an "at home with" type piece.

Gay Talese's wife, Nan Talese is a publisher with a major publishing house, and one of the first things Gay said to me was that his wife was reading this wonderful manuscript that they were going to publish by a new, young writer Pat Conroy. The book, "Prince of Tides."

Of course Conroy's masterpiece matched and surpased his other workes, "The Lords of Discipline" and "The Great Santini," and established him as one of the great American writers of our time. All three books have been made into movies, with Barbara Streisand producing and acting in "The Prince of Tides."

Duncan MacRae didn't know I had interviewed Talese, who had paid tribute to Pat Conroy when he caught up with me at Charlie's Bar in Somers Point, but while rehashing old times, he thought I would appreciate the fact that the brother of a famous writer, Pat Conroy, worked as a bartender at Yesterdays, and Conroy is a frequent customer. They even have a special booth where Conroy and other local writers hang out, and had a little Algonquin circle going.

They also had a hot band that lived nearby, Hootie & the Blowfish, popular with the college kids and about to go national with a few hit singles and a some popular albums. So with Conroy as the writer in residence, and Hootie & the Blowfish neighbors and regular customers, Yesterdays had developed quite the popular flair.

Over a few beers at Charlie's, Duncan related the story told by Conroy, that he had to overcome the objections of the publisher's lawyers to include Yesterdays in the novel. They thought that since the novel was a work of fiction, and Yesterdays a real place, clearly identified in the story, would leave them open to libel or some case, should the owners object to being mentioned in an ostensibly fictional work.

Conroy persisted however, and in the end, as part of his literary masterpiece, we have Yesterdays, enshrined in all its glory.

"Prince of Tides" (Pat Conroy, p. 528-529)

....On the football field I struggled for three years with my own sense of inadequacy. I was surrounded by superb athletes who gave me daily lessons in deficiencies I brought to the game. But I lived in the weight room in the off-season and began building my body with deliberate intent. When I entered the university I weighed one hundred sixty-five pounds. When I left four years later I weighted two hundred ten pounds. As a freshman I bench-pressed one hundred twenty pounds; as a senior, I bench pressed three hundred twenty. I blocked on the kickoff team and was a third string defensive back in my sophomore and junior years until Everett Cooper, the kickoff returner, got hurt during a Clemson game my junior year.

When Clemson scored, I heard Coach Bass call my name.

And my years in college turned golden.

When I went back to receive the kick-off, no one in the stands except Sallie and Luke and my parents knew my name.

The Clemson kicker approached the all and I saw that awesome movement of orange helmets down field and the roar of sixty thousand voices as that ball lifted into pure Carolina sunshine and traveled sixty yards in the air, where I caught it in the end zone and took that son of a bitch where it was supposed to go. "The name, ladies and gentleman, is Wingo." I screamed as I tucked the ball under my arm and took off up the left hand side of the field. I was hit on the twenty-five, but spun out of the arms of the tackler, and, cutting back across the field, a Clemson player dove and missed me with an arm tackle. I put a move on a defensive back and leapt over two of my team mates who had taken down two Clemson boys. I angled across the entire field until I picked up the blocker I needed and saw the opening I had lofted a prayer to heaven for. When that opening came, I streaked for the open field and felt someone dive for me from behind; I tripped but balanced myself with my left hand, kept my feet, and saw the kicker at their thirty-yard line, the last Clemson player with a chance of keeping me out of their end zone.

But there were sixty thousand people who did not know my name and four people I loved whose voices were urging me along in the stadium called Death Valley, and I had no plans to be tackled by a kicker. I lowered my head and my helmet caught him in the numbers and he melted like snow before the goddamn glance of the Lord, flattened by the only boy on that field who knew Byron's name or a single line of his poetry. Two Clemson players caught me at the five and I gave them a free ride as we tumbled into the end zone at the end of the run that would change my life forever.

The score was thirteen-six and there was a quarter of football left to play when I heard those sweet words spoken by the announcer. "The run by number forty-three, Tom Wingo, covered one hundred and three yards and sets a new Atlantic Coast Conference record."

I returned to the sidelines and was engulfed by my teammates and coaches. I went past the bench and stood waving like a madman at the place high in the stands where I knew Sallie and Luke and my parents were on their feet cheering for me.

George Lanier kicked the extra point and we were six points behind the Clemson Tigers when we took the field in the forth quarter.

With two minutes left in the game, we stopped Clemson at their own twenty-yard line. And I heard one of the assistant coaches yell to Coach Bass, "Let Wingo take the punt."

"Wingo," Coach Bass screamed, and I ran up to him.

"Wingo," he said as I adjusted my helmet, "do it again."

I had turned golden that day and Coach Bass had uttered magical, incantatory words and I tried to remember when in my life I had heard that phrase before as I took a position on our thirty-five-yard line, shuttering out the extraordinary noise of the crowd. As I watched the center snap the ball to the punter, I remembered that distant sunset when I was three and my mother had walked us out on the dock and brought the moon spinning out from beneath the trees of our island and my sister cried out in a small ecstatic voice, "Oh, Mama, do it again!"

"Do it again," I said as I watched the spiral tower far above the field begin its long descent into the arms of a boy turned golden for a single day in his life.

As I caught the ball I looked upfield.

I took the first marvelous step of the run that would make me the most famous football player in South Carolina for a year I will cherish as long as I live. I caught the ball on our forty-yard line and raced up the right sideline, but all I could see was a moveable garden of orange heading my way. Three Clemson players were moving in for the tackle from my left side when I stopped dead and began running the other way, back toward our own goal line, trying to make it to the other side of the field. One Clemson lineman caught me at the seventeen but was cut in half by a vicious block by one of our linebackers, Jim Landon. Two of them were matching me stride for stride when I turned upfield. When I looked up the far sidelines, I saw something amazing happening in front of my eyes. Our blocking had broken down completely after the punt, but each of my teammates trailing the play had watched me reverse my field with eleven Clemson players in healthy pursuit. I was looking down a lane of blockers that stretched for fifty yards downfield. A Clemson player would be about to catch me; then I would see a South Carolina player step between me and the tackler and cut him down at the knees. It was like running inside a cannonade. It was a fine life I was leading that day and I felt like the fastest, sweetest, dandiest boy who ever breathed the clean air of Clemson. When I hit their thirty-yard line running faster than I ever thought I could run, there was not a Clemson player left standing on the field. When I crossed the goal line, I fell to my knees and thanked the God who made me swift for the privilege of feeling like a king of the world for one glorious, unrepeatable day of my young life.

After George Lanier made the extra point and we stopped Clemson's drive on our own twenty-three-yard line and the final whistle blew, I thought I would be killed by the rush of Carolina fans onto the field. I would have died in perfect rapture. A photographer caught the exact moment when Sallie found me in the crowd, leapt into my arms, and kissed me on the mouth while screaming at the same time. That picture was on the front page of every sports section in the state the following morning, evenin Pelzer.

At midnight that night, I walked outside Yesterday's restaurant in Five Points where my parents had taken us to dinner and felt diminished when that marvelous day was over.

The following week, bumper stickers appeared on automobiles the length and breadth of South Carolina saying, "Kick it to Wingo, Clemson."