Over half a century ago, Jack Lane, Steve Wright, Norman Akel and Jim Farrior turned a former storage room on Lumina Pavilion’s second floor into the Upper Deck, a carefree establishment where revelers partied uninhibited in the shadow of the legendary dancehall. The Lumina News presents “Tales from the Upper Deck,” a series where we look back at Wrightsville Beach’s history through the stories of one of its unique establishments.
Chapter 3: Jack the bouncer and Ward’s Corner
During the 1960s, “there was a little bit of a permissive atmosphere,” former Upper Deck manager Jack Lane said.
Hundreds of people over the legal drinking age of 18 — or at least with identification claiming as much — climbed the steps to the Upper Deck every night “pretty much to get drunk,” Lane said.
Many of his patrons were staggering by the time they reached the Upper Deck, having started the night at downtown bars like the Wits End, the Palm Room or the World-Famous Spot.
“You could walk from one place to another with an open beer, it just had to be in a bag,” Lane said.
As the rowdy late-night crowds converged on the Upper Deck, the Wrightsville Beach police officers and Lane’s staff worked together to keep proceedings as safe and peaceful as possible.
Lane was the Upper Deck’s manager, but “he was also the bouncer,” former Upper Deck bartender Norman Akel said.
“Yeah, I bounced around the room and they threw me out,” Lane joked.
Keeping the peace started with regulating who came through the front doors. A few years after taking over management, Lane turned the Upper Deck into a private club so only those with a membership card could enter.
“It was not an application, it was an evaluation,” he said.
When fights started, Lane threw the troublemakers out.
“I’ll never forget,” Akel said, “one night I’m tending bar and apparently some Marine is causing problems, and the next thing I know Jack jumps across the bar and lands on this guy’s chest and throws him down the stairs, and I’m going, ‘Was that Jack?’”
“I broke a few fingers fighting,” Lane admitted, “but when you’re 4 feet tall you try to do as little of that as you can.”
More often, diffusing an argument in the Upper Deck took a combined effort from the staff.
“We designated one person to watch the cash register, and the rest of us went over that counter like we were going over Bunker Hill,” Lane said.
Sometimes when he threw patrons out they would sneak back in. One night, the offender was a 6-foot-tall United States Marine. Lane’s staff called the Wrightsville Beach police as Lane attempted to throw the man out for the third time.
“As I’m pushing him down the steps, somebody says, ‘Jack, he’s got a knife.’ So there’s this little 4-footer with a 6-foot Marine, and he’s trying to come close so he can cut me with that knife.”
Lane saw a police officer drive up and get out of his car so he yelled that the Marine was reaching in his pocket for a knife. The police officer slapped the man and knocked him off the steps.
“When he got his hand out of his pocket, it was a room key,” Lane said.
The Wrightsville Beach police might rush to break up a fight at the Upper Deck but if, from their headquarters near the south end water tower, they saw a suspect fleeing the island by car they would simply pick up the phone and dial the Heide Trask Drawbridge operator.
“All they did was put the bridge up,” Akel said, “and the cops went walking down the street right to where all the cars were waiting.”
“One way in and one way out!” Lane said.
“You’ve got to have a plan,” Akel agreed, laughing, “and it should include a boat.”
Police headquarters was also ideally situated to monitor the nightly stream of drivers weaving slowly down the road leaving the bars. When the Upper Deck staff brought big-name bands in to entertain large crowds in Lumina Pavilion’s ballroom, “you never saw so many drunk people trying to leave Wrightsville Beach at one time,” former bartender Steve Wright said.
The cops pulled the drivers over before they could reach the bridge and tossed them in the back of the police car. They drove past the police station and back to the Upper Deck. The night duty officer, John Ward, deposited the stumbling drunks in a corner of the staff-only portion of the Upper Deck — a women’s restroom converted into a private bartender hangout Lane called the Ladies’ Lounge.
“Ward brought them up by the scruff of their necks and threw them in Ward’s Corner in the Ladies’ Lounge,” Lane said. “The next morning, the police would come take you down to the station to get your keys — there would always be five or six pairs of keys there on the counter — and they’d take you back to the bridge, where there was a lineup of cars like a funeral procession.”
Upper Deck patron Jim Farrior admitted he experienced firsthand the Wrightsville Beach cops’ method of enforcement once when he was 18, and he confirmed their unconventional tactics were effective.
“The policeman took me back to the station and called my parents,” he said. “And buddy, I’d rather have gone to jail.”
email [email protected]
