This column appears mostly in weekly publications in small towns around America and some 40 other countries. I am willing to bet that every single one of those communities had a “Hite’s Restaurant” at one time or another.

Hite’s Restaurant was one of a couple “go-to” eateries in the little hamlet of Lexington, SC where I grew up. It was owned and operated by Harry and Betty Ann Hite. It stood in the shadows of what used to be the original Lexington High School football and baseball stadium and the old Town of Lexington Water Tower. All are now long gone, succumbing to the inevitable takeover assault called progress.

Hite’s was actually two bistros. In the main restaurant, you could be seated for breakfast, dinner and supper (as we called it in the south). Or, most of us teenagers in those days ordered from the car hop and ate in the car between “necking” sessions.

Right next door was Hite’s Dairy Bar where the kids could walk right up and get a burger or a shake. Going to Hite’s was a rite of passage for all of Lexington’s youth in those days. There was no McDonald’s. Kids who wanted to congregate would start at Hite’s.

The beer drinkers in the group would gravitate to Berley’s, the local watering hole/pool hall which didn’t exactly check ID’s when you ordered up a PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon).

The hard drinkers amongst us under age 21 would venture down the street from Hite’s to get a bottle of the “dirty bird,” our nickname for Old Crow, a modestly priced Kentucky bourbon sold discretely out of the back door of another beer palace.

Hite’s was where we congregated before heading off to the events of the evening. On the weekends that usually meant going to Gibson’s Pond a local dance hall that doubled as the local swimming hole during the summer.

The entire script from Dirty Dancing could have been written around the events at Gibson’s Pond. I have lost track of the countless memories we built doing the shag (not that one… the dance) to “My Girl” or “Under the Boardwalk” and other beach music, as we defined it. The bands featured some lifelong friends Matthew Bennett, Sam Hendrix, Richard Shealy and others.

As a young ten year old, I would listen to the sounds of the night on Friday and Saturday’s that clearly traveled unencumbered across Gibson’s Pond. I would fall asleep to that music, dreaming of going there to dance one day.

No matter where we ended up in those days, Hite’s became a part of the fabric of the hamlet of Lexington. As adults we would return for many business lunches. Civic clubs held their weekly meetings there. They even did something no other restaurant I know of did… they ran a monthly tab on your food orders.

Are you kidding me? I thought only my uncle’s grocery store ran monthly tabs but Hite’s did the same. There were no credit cards in those days and many people were paid only once or twice a month.

Looking back on our lives, many memories began at Hite’s and the Lexington high school football and baseball stadium, which literally sat in its backyard. We learned about life. It was, frankly speaking, a slower more enjoyable pace that preceded the era of technology.

In those days, we wrote love letters to people we adored. Phoning long distance was more expensive than a five cents stamp. Also… everyone had “party lines.”   Anyone on your party line could listen in on your conversations. Unknowingly, letter writing honed your literary skills while keeping in touch with your friends away in college or in Viet Nam.

Some friends returned home with new “loves” in their life.   Sadly some did not return at all from Viet Nam. Others quietly disappeared into a new life. You can thank Harry and Betty Ann Hite for being the inspiration that became the springboard to many of our lives. A timeless era sadly came to an end.