Bill Carter:  

High School I loved going to MPHS! I was not a particularly good student academically, as I had ADD and "Nobody" knew anything about it or how to even teach someone to live with it or for that matter, treat it! I could function fairly normal, but concentration was difficult unless it was in a subject I really enjoyed. It was either A's or D's & F's. Nothing in between! Today, I have learned to live with it. I carried The Charlotte Observer from the 9th grade thru the 11th grade. I worked at Harris-Teeter on S. Blvd across from the Pepsi plant as a bag boy my Senior year. I used to take flying lessons too out at the old "Capenter's Airport." It was out in the Southwestern part of Mecklenburg County somewhere near South Meck and the river. I learned to fly in a 1953 Piper Tri-Pacer 4 seater with side curtians and an old 1945 Army Piper "Cub." I learned to take off and land in a grass field. We would take the airplane out, give it the gas, let it go down the field with the big rubber balloon tires bouncing until we had enough speed to get airborne. Now that was flying! My parents thought I was just going out to watch the planes take off and land; but I had better ideas. I would ride with other people taking lessons too. We would fly just over to Douglas and do "touch and go." If there was room, I would fly on trips with aspiring pilots trying to log time in the air. I remember once flying with a friend of mine from South Mecklenburg High School who had just gotten his license to North Georgia and back in a plane rented from Mr. Smith who owned the airport doing what is called a "Cross Country flight." I had an old Esso road map out my Mom's 1963 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon. I would just look down at the roads from about 5,000 ft. up and tell him to go this way or that way. We landed at a little airfield near Valdosta Georgia he had flown to, bought some fuel, a couple of cokes and packs of "Tom's" potato chips and cheese crackers and back in the air to Charlotte. Years later I told my Mom and Dad about what I had been doing out at the old Carpenter's Airport when I was in high school. I will never forget the look on my father's face! He looked like a deer that had been "spotlighted" with his eyes real wide, just starring at me in disbeief and my Mother having to sit down to keep from fainting from what she preceived as my "near death" flying experiences. It was great being 17 and not having a clue as to how dangerous some of one's antics were. Life was just getting to be fun and I was "chomping at the bit" to see it all and see it now! College College was uneventful for me. I was to attend The Citadel in the Fall of '65 but after summer school there, The school felt I was not prepared for life there and that I needed to attend Georgia Military for 1 yr to mature and learn how to be a better prepared student. They arrange my acceptance, I was set to leave when my grandmother who had reared me suddenly died. I missed the beginning of my 1st year at GMA. I had to enroll somewhere because of the war not wanting to be classifed 1-A so I enrolled at CPCC. The Army gets me anyway in the draft, but I am discharged because of an old childhood injury. From there I went back to Charleston to The Citadel as a summer school student and night school student; not as a cadet. I left there in summer of '68, worked for the City of Charlotte for a couple of years in the Engineering Dept.at the old City Hall up on the 3rd floor. I used to love to go in early on Mondays where I would look across the back ally to the Charlotte Police Department Jail where the jailers would bring out all the "drunks" from the weekend and line them up along the ally, talk to them a little and let them go. I used to wonder why the same ones were back every Monday morning listing to that lecture. I remember one on the regular guests in particular, a little black guy who used to shine shoes over at the Court House, "Pigmeat." Our classmate Chase Saunders painted a big water color of him when Chase was an Assistant District Attorney. My claim to fame was in an unusual project. I was to help an old city employee named "Mr. Torrence." Way back when, he had helped or knew about a lot of the sewer lines in some of the downtown areas. The City sewer maps in that area needed to be verifed and updated for accuracy. It became my job to check out a city car, take this old gentleman who I think he told me he had been born in the 1880s and along with maps, verify and update the sewer lines. I remember our parking the car and walking all around behind buildings and parts of the Old Brooklyn section, it was all North of McDowell St. He would tell me where he thought there was a manhole and sure enough we'd find one, take off the lid or dig it up and shine a flashlight in to see if it was still functional and which way it was flowing. I wonder today if those same maps exsist. We were working around North McDowell St. and he told me he could remember a saying from years ago that "a Saturday night never passed without a man dying on McDowell St. I think it was a real ruff area when the old Brooklyn Nieghborhood was along there before the redevelopment under Mayor Brookshire. I also remember working around the property of old Doc Moore who had a stone dental office built into the bank beside a boarding house and apartments just east of McDowell along East Trade Street he owned. It was for the most part a "walk in" dentist office and he would work on anyone who walked in and needed dental work. Mrs. Moore kept the books and would carry the accounts for as little as a nickel a week, just as long they were paying, it didn't matter she told me once. She told me she remembered a sign up at the corner of E.Trade St. & N. McDowell that said,"No Cows Across McDowell St." Oh well, back to my story. I left The Citadel to go to The University of South Carolina to finish my degree. That is a story within itself! Hard as I may or may not have tried, that elusive degree never comes my way. So, off to New York City to seek my fortune & fame in the "City that never sleeps." College certianly tea...Expand for more