Just down Hillsboro Street from the former N.C. Equipment Co. and its famous bulldozer sign is a nondescript little concrete block building where a succession of dive bars have occupied the space for decades. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s it was home to Mr. Ribs restaurant. They served ribs and steaks, baked potatoes and lettuce salads, and that was about it. In those days if you wanted a meat and potato meal you went to Mr. Ribs. At least that’s where my dad always took our family.

Back then several gas stations, garages, automotive supply stores, barbershops, laundries and like businesses occupied those two or three blocks of Hillsboro St. between the N.C. Equipment Co. and Fergussen’s Hardware.

Mr. Ribs was an unassuming place and was decked out in typical 1960s steakhouse décor: open kitchen with a blazing grill in the front window, red checkered vinyl table cloths and those ubiquitous netted red candle lamps. There was even a large fake stone gas log fireplace along one wall. As such, Mr. Ribs was an unpretentious, homey joint.

I guess my familiarity with the place was probably why I took a job in the kitchen there the last semester of my sophomore year at N.C. State. I was the dishwasher, and although that is a thankless job if there ever was one, for the most part I enjoyed my stint there. Most of the employees were fellow State students.

At that time I was a vegetarian, and the irony of working around all that meat was not lost on me. We employees were allowed one meal during our shift so I ended up eating a lot of baked potatoes, which I slathered with butter and sour cream. I even took home the unserved baked potatoes and made potato salad.

Every few weeks or so, a local state politico made an appearance with his entourage in tow. The only reason I remember this is because upon his departure he would always tip the kitchen staff. The tip was only a few bucks, but I did think that was a pretty classy gesture.
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The “Adventures of Superman” television program was a favorite of mine when it was released in syndication in the early 1960s. Who could forget that stirring opening narration: “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound! …Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” Well, it left an indelible impression on me, anyway.

For the show’s first season or two, the landmark Art Deco E.M. Wilson Building (1930) in Los Angeles was used to represent the Daily Planet Building.

The E.M. Wilson Building in Los Angeles — aka The Daily Planet

Young as I was, the image of The Daily Planet on our black and white TV reminded me of the Durham Life Insurance Building in downtown Raleigh. As a kid, I nicknamed a number of downtown landmarks which I imagined a certain kinship with. Thus, the (now gone) Meredith/Mansion Park building on Blount St. became “The Castle,” the former BB&T Bank on the corner of Fayetteville and Davie Streets became “The Little Seagram Building,” and across the street the Art Deco Durham Life Building became the “Superman Building.”

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Not long ago I wrote about the Boylan wye, and described what remains of that former downtown train switchyard and industrial district. Today the most prominent relic there can be easily seen from the Boylan Ave bridge — a rusted cement plant gravel hopper towering over the site. But virtually invisible to most observers today is the weed-choked and debris-strewn sunken area that is the footprint of the former Smith Coal and Oil Co. coal yard.

This is a view of a portion of the Boylan wye from the bridge in 1970. The concrete plant is on the left and the coal yard is just right of center, below the two box cars. The present-day photo at the top shows the tracks the boxcars were parked on in 1970. The remnants of the coal yard are just to the right of these tracks.

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