Tag: Jack Hyland

You Want Ugly?

My father-in-law, Jack Hyland, was a regular at auctions and junk yards around Charlotte and he would buy almost anything if the price was right.

One time he bought a box of second hand pantyhose and took them home to his wife and two daughters, thinking they would be pleased.  He was wrong about that.  Another time he bought a size two wedding dress.

And who would bid on a box of stuff not knowing what was inside? Jack Hyland.

Jack Hyland
Jack Hyland

Junk he bought was crammed into a plumbing shop he owned on Charles Avenue and several thousand square feet of a warehouse he rented in North Charlotte.

And it’s good thing, too.

When I resigned from The Charlotte News in 1971 and we moved to Knightdale, N.C., we kept our house in Charlotte, on Uppergate Lane, for years and rented it.   We only had one one bad tenant but she was a doozy.  After her husband moved out, or got thrown out, I had to keep after her to pay the rent but I didn’t force her to move until her kids started tearing shingles off the roof. When I finally got them out of there I began cleaning up the mess she left behind, including a dead chicken.  Have you ever smelled a chicken that’s been dead for a week? 

There were a lot of things that had to be fixed before I could rent the house again, including damage to some awful looking paneling in the family room.

I had paid for that paneling but I hadn’t picked it out. I had let her and her husband get what they wanted and what they wanted was some green and white streaked stuff that looked a lot like splattered puke.  I had to replaced two of those panels and I had no idea how I was going to find an identical match. And if I couldn’t I’d have to repanel the whole room.  Who in the world would have a supply of such awful looking paneling?

Jack Hyland, of course, at his shop on Charles Street.  It was brand new, too.  

Coming Monday: The Racist

You Parked Where?!

My wife, Donna Joy Hyland, and I began dating in 1959, when we were seniors at Garinger High School in Charlotte.  Sometimes –OK, pretty often– we parked on some quiet residential street after the movie, held hands, and counted stars.

Our senior year, 1960.
Our senior year, 1960.

Sometimes we dated in a 1951 Plymouth named “Suzie” that Dad drove back and forth to work. Sometimes we went out in her car, a heavier than lead ’49 Chevrolet she called the “Gray Ghost.”

One evening, after we had finished counting, her car wouldn’t start.

This was a problem, not because we were so far from her house —  we were only a mile, mile and a half away. It was a problem because of where we were parked. How was I going to explain that to her father, who had greeted me after one date holding a shotgun — Donna said he was just teasing.

The "Grey Ghost" looked like this '49 Chevy, but not nearly so shiny.
The “Grey Ghost” looked like this ’49 Chevy, but not nearly so shiny.

What I had to do, I decided, was push the “Gray Ghost” to a commercial area.

So I started pushing. Donna steered.

When we finally got to The Plaza, I thought, heck fire, why not push it on across Independence Boulevard?

And I did. And, by then, we were only two blocks from her street, Chesterfield Avenue.  And from there it was downhill most of the way. So I pushed her car all the way back home.

No explanation required.

Coming Monday: Jail Party