1955-1979

There was no clowning around when it came to getting people to drink Dr Pepper. The soft drink's slogan for many years was "Drink a Bite to Eat at 10-2-4," and that's what the announcer may have said during the taping of this commercial at Fayetteville's WFLB-TV.

The soft drink company came up with the slogan after research showed people lost energy at 10:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Most television sets in the 1950s didn't have a tuner capable of receiving WFLB's ultra-high frequency signal. The station debuted Aug. 29, 1955, with a show that featured the 82nd Airborne Division Band. The station went off the air in June 1958.

Danny Boone reacts as Dr. M.T. Foster, not pictured, the Cumberland County health director, administers a Salk polio shot on April 18, 1955.

That day, first- and second-graders at Seventy-First School were given the vaccine as part of "Operation Sure Shot."

The vaccine for polio has greatly reduced the number of cases of polio in the United States, from about 20,000 a year in the early 1950s to 10 in 1979.

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The Starlite Theatre occupies the V-shaped parcel where the Lillington Highway, right, and Bragg Boulevard intersect in this 1950s aerial photo of Spring Lake.

By January 1962, the Starlite had closed. Its final showing was "The Unforgiven" starring Audrey Hepburn as an Indian girl.

The drive-in theater lot was soon replaced by Skyland Shopping Center, built by retired Army master sergeants Peter Srebro and Roney Bailey and businessman Robert Rutan.

The new shopping center was the first big commercial expansion for Spring Lake. When the town was incorporated in 1951, it was little more than a crossroads and a convenient home for those stationed at, or retired from, Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base. Skyland Shopping Center featured a grocery, a drugstore and 16 other businesses.

Donald Sutherland sprawls on the stage at the Haymarket Square coffee house while Gary Goodlaw and Jane Fonda recite lines.

The actors originally wanted to put on the March 13, 1971, show, billed as an alternative to Bob Hope's USO show, at Fort Bragg. The Army refused, saying the script was "detrimental to the discipline and morale of military at Fort Bragg."

They were denied use of the Cumberland County Memorial Auditorium. They went to court, and a judge ruled the auditorium could not bar them.

The show was presented at a coffee house at the corner of Hay Street and Bragg Boulevard.

Two of the three shows were for soldiers who, according to newspaper accounts, were "undeterred by telephoned bomb threats and the presence of military intelligence agents poorly disguised in hippie garb." Admission was $2.50.

A review of the show said the satire was "biting" but tame in comparison to a 1970 anti-war rally at Rowan Park attended by Fonda.