Me: Yeah. Now, what about the place – my daddy used to talk about a place called The Cave. Was that on –

Samuel C. Lathan: Yeah, man. That’s where I met my wife.

LYH: Really?

SCL: Yeah. I didn’t meet her there, but that’s where she and I would hang out. Now, The Cave was opened by Robert Vick.

LYH: Okay.

SCL: Robert Vick was a educator, and he was the principal of several schools, wonderful schools here. But when he came here, he brought a little New York down here.

LYH: Okay.

SCL: Because we didn’t have nothing. We had the Stop Light Grill.

LYH: Right.

SCL: But we didn’t have nothing like The Cave because The Cave had the sundaes. It had the milkshakes, it had the ice cream fancies. You know, it had all the little bar things that you would have, you know. Had good fried chicken in there and good sandwiches, you know, and brought the hoagie in, you know. Yeah, yeah, now. And Tom Woodard’s, and they had an excursion that Saturday — on that Friday night, there was a big excursion. A hayride. And the truck — was going to be two trucks would be at The Cave. Now, Robert Vick would put the things on like that. But I was sitting on my front porch because I could see – I was right across from The Cave.

Hill’s 1947 Wilson, N.C., city directory.

The Cave occupied a storefront in the two-story brick building Camillus Darden built at 561 East Nash Street.

Copy of tax return courtesy of Vicki Cowan; interview with Samuel C. Lathan copyrighted, all rights reserved.