A group of Carolina Meadows residents who were students at Chapel Hill High in the 1930s and '40s gathered together recently to reminisce about those differences and their secondary school experience: Joe Mengel, class of '38; Carolyn Buice Taylor, '42; Jane Rogers, '44; and Betty Heath Danziger '49. The gathering sparked vivid memories of this special time in their lives.

Their Chapel Hill High School contained only grades eight through 11. In North Carolina, public schools did not extend to 12 grades until 1943.

And when the population of Chapel Hill was less than 10,000, there was only one high school for whites (blacks attended Lincoln High School in a building that is currently the location of the district's school administrative offices). Now, with the population more than 70,000, there are three secondary schools. Before the 1930s, all grades were located together on West Franklin Street, on the land that is now University Square. In 1936 grades eight through 11 moved to a new colonial structure on South Columbia Street at the present site of the UNC School of Pharmacy.

Mengel and Taylor graduated from that new high school. Taylor's class of '42 held the record for decades of graduating 100 students as compared with Mengel's class of just 34 and Danziger's of less than 50. Last year Chapel Hill high schools graduated 728 students.

On a fateful morning in August 1942, the town horn blared to awaken the local volunteer firefighters. In spite of their heroic efforts, that new school burned to the ground. It was quite a spectacle. Some students added to the blaze by tossing in their textbooks.

For the next five years, high school classes were held in the basement of the University Baptist Church and at the Cone House on West Franklin Street. Rogers spent her first high school academic year at the new high school, but her parents felt the facilities at the church to be inadequate.

"It changed our lives," Rogers said. She, like many in Chapel Hill who applied to out-of-town private schools, switched in her third year to Peace College in Raleigh.

Danziger said that "everyone who could do so left town for high school. Many in my class went to St. Mary's and Salem."

In 1947 a high school wing was added west of the elementary school on Franklin Street, which Danziger attended. In 1966 the present CHHS was erected off Homestead Road; then East CHHS and, last year, Carrboro.

"One thing that was so wonderful about our high school was that we had college teachers," Taylor said. During the 1930s Depression, many UNC faculty members supplemented their income by teaching at the high school -- especially math and science courses. Mengel mentioned in particular professor Howard Munch, who taught algebra and trigonometry. Taylor found Munch intimidating, "but he was so sweet. He took pity on me. Although I'd made a F in the course, he passed me anyway!"

None of the current advanced topics -- calculus, statistics -- was available at that time.

When the high school was in temporary quarters from 1942 to 1946, there was no space for science laboratories. Betty Danziger's husband, Erwin Danziger, class of '46, wanted to major in chemistry like his brother, but turned to business instead. Mengel's experience was different: Although he disliked his CHHS chemistry course, at UNC -- after taking chemistry as an elective -- he changed his major from commerce to chemistry "to make up for the grief I'd caused my CHHS chemistry teacher."

For Mengel, sports was an essential part of the high school experience, especially basketball and football, which was played on an open field where Granville Towers now rises. CHHS played Durham, Efland, Henderson and Oxford Orphanage.

"The Orphanage had a reputation for playing 'dirty'," Mengel said.

There was basketball and tennis, but there was no swimming, soccer, golf, rugby or ultimate Frisbee, and no baseball until 1938. After the fire, there was almost no athletics program except for football.

For women, the only organized sport was basketball, but Danziger added, "We did play kickball at recess."

Franklin Street provided the social scene for the high schoolers: the shops, movie theaters and soda fountains. "With the Franklin Street high school location, we just stayed on that street," Taylor said.

"And we went to a lot of movies, at the Carolina and the Pickwick," Rogers added. "In order to have the movie admission price of nine cents, I would go next door to Fowlers grocery store, where I'd charge 10 cents on my parents' account."

Drugs and alcohol seemed not to be problems then, and only a few students smoked, according to Mengel.

Boys wore conventional shirts and slacks; girls, skirts and blouses -- no blue jeans, no shorts. Rogers related how a woman "with high morals" who lived on Franklin Street would chastise the girls going to play tennis for wearing shorts in public. "We slipped into rain coats when we walked by her house!" she said.

At home, radio was the entertainment -- "The Lone Ranger," "Jack Benny," "Little Orphan Annie." "And reading movie magazines," added Danziger. No television, no computer games, no cell phones, no iPods, blackberries or skate boards.

School dances were at the old country club or the American Legion hut on Rosemary Street. Music was provided by someone who brought records of the era's big bands. Mengel listed the popular tunes: "Music Goes Round and Round," "Red Sails in Sunset," "Star Dust" and "Night and Day."

Today social cliques tend to be interest-activity related -- drama, band, sports. Groups often are racially based or by ethnicity. According to the Carolina Meadows group, their cliques were "town, Carrboro and country."