I noticed how many gun shops have popped up between Raleigh and Morehead City, between July 4 and Labor Day. So sad how easy it is to get armed.
Wish you would post a more hopeful photo like the historic chancellor’s house at 1903 Hillsborough Street for one of your early morning shots. The new Gregg Museum of Art & Design will be a place of ideas, hope, vision, expression and free for all. To stake a claim in this yard, we are having a huge free party this Sunday with artists, musicians and food.
Art Outside the Box 12-4

I believe this is Hill’s Sporting Goods, a long standing Raleigh business, where I bought a 10 speed bicycle in 1971. Not specifically a “gun shop”, and not recently “popped up”.

Legal firearms are used in the legitimate hunting sport. Can’t we agree that freedom and liberty also belong to those who aren’t exactly like us? :-)

Hill’s is a great Raleigh establishment. Too bad the photo focuses on “Glock”.

Bob, mine was a good ‘ol American made Schwinn !!!

You guys waxing poetic about your first bikes is great, very touching. My first “big girl bike” was nothing so romantic, a 3-speed from Sears, candy apple red. My father put playing cards on the wheel spokes to make that cool “rickety-rackety” sound. He loved that bike, it was the bike he never had as a kid.

It got stolen, my fault. I was supposed to store it in the back of the house. I forgot and left it in the carport. Dad was distraught. I had to come up with matching funds for a replacement bike. Took a while. Fortunately, by 9 I was babysitting.

Not the forum for this discussion, which goes around in circles and nowhere fast. All I can tell you is this…someone very close to me was blown away by a Glock in the hand of someone who could care less about his own and anyone else’s free speech. Enough said from me about this. As I said, this goes in neverending circles.

Since we seem to be going down this path, maybe this is the forum for me to do a remembrance of my friend Tricia Grimes, Patricia Grimes, women’s editor of the Raleigh Times who was murdered alongside her friend, Peter Williams, 40 years ago this autumn by a man with a rifle who thought they looked like good target practice. They had gone bike riding one Saturday out Raleigh Beach by the dam. And that was where these two beautiful, talented people were cut down.

Tricia was the beloved daughter of an established Raleigh attorney, had been a debutante (told me she hated that whole procedure), had lived what should have been a charmed life. Peter was the beloved heir to the Williams realty business. They were considering a life together.

That autumn day I had gone back to school, was sitting telling my roommate about my summer, and Tricia. Our 13″ b&w tv was on. Suddenly, as I was speaking Tricia’s name, her name was on the tv news. Murdered. Shot down. Unspeakable.

She was a few years older than me when she was murdered, not by a Glock, by a borrowed rifle. Her loss of a future has influenced my life. Every autumn I think of Tricia and Peter. This anniversary was particularly rough. They should have been grandparents by now.

Looks like pink stucco in the photo to me, Devro. Which makes it look like gun shops in Florida, out of place in Raleigh. I remember Hills as it always was, whitewash and natural brick. I didn’t recognize it. Why pink stucco would bother you is a mystery.

Of course you have a right as a responsible gun owner to have your Glock. Just please don’t let it get into the wrong hands.

Sorry pink stucco insulted you. Maybe “blush stucco”???

I’ve piped down, for crissake. I had one more thing to say, a part of Raleigh history. Done.

It’s that time of year again for remembrances of Tricia’s and Peter’s murders, as irritating as that may be, for some, and for the wrong reasons. There’s been renewed interest in the story, of late, by N&O staffer Josh Shaffer, I’m happy to say. And the sad nat’l events of the past few years contribute to the relentless discussion. Don’t get riled up, I’m not interested in gun lobbies, either way, and don’t want to bring the genuinely wonderful Hill’s into the, uh, sights. Just thinking about my murdered Raleigh friend, her friend, and the memorial out North Raleigh way that his father arranged. No discussion, or argument, invited. Just remembering my Raleigh friends, murdered in 1972, at Raleigh Beach.

By the way, RB, Raleigh Beach itself would make an interesting article. I’m sure the newbies in town have no idea such a place ever existed. I know I’ve seen photos published in the N&O, should be available to you. And the Milburnie Dam. Good memories for many native Raleigh citizens.

Dear hollywoodgirl,

The pile of trash that murdered your friend and her friend, was my mother’s brother. I found myself down a rabbit hole seeking the truth behind the deeds of literally every single one of her brothers, (each as vile as the next) and I came across your heartbreaking words. I hope you find some comfort in the fact that Ms. Grimes’ father made it so that Michael NEVER saw the light of day. When he came up for parole due to his age and medical decline, he was denied, no matter his tales of found religion, bible studies he held, or “good behavior.” He rotted and finally died in prison in 2016. I know his death doesn’t change anything for the people who loved her or her friend, but to know there’s one less wicked soul, that he no longer breathes while she cannot, I hope will bring you some peace. I’m so sorry for your loss and the continued pain you feel as each year passes.

Hills along with Thornes downtown were the best places back in the day for hunting and fishing related. Johnson Lamb and Lewis Sporting Goods too but more athletic oriented. I still have a Browning over and under shotgun my dad bought me from Hills and some fishing tackle I picked up from there.
Shifting to Trish Grimes, she was a year behind me at Broughton. Trish definitely caught my eye but I was too shy to pursue any encounters. I later saw some of her articles in the Times, including one wall mounted at Darrell’s on Hillsborough Street she had written about their establishment shortly after they opened. In 1972 I was working in Greenville when the news broke that spring about the North Hills shooting by the janitor at Broughton. That type of thing just didn’t happen, in Raleigh at least. I think I was still trying to process that when that fall I learned Trish and her boyfriend Peter were gunned down at Raleigh Beach. Even now all these decades later I still run across her images in my Ladipac Broughton yearbook. Still to me incomprehensible their lives were senselessly cut short but perhaps their spirits were needed elsewhere more. I believe her father passed on in his late 60’s within a couple of years of Trish and wonder if this didn’t contribute to. RIP to them and to those North Hills victims.