From the Chapel Hill News:By Patrick Winn, Staff Writer
CHAPEL HILL -- Billy Ray Penny talked greasy as a chicken-and-cheese biscuit.
He was the third-shift king of Time Out Restaurant, a Franklin Street institution synonymous with long lines, late nights and drunken appetites.
For more than 10 years starting in the mid-1980s, Penny held down Time Out with an attitude. Customers not only expected Penny's custom insults. They loved them.
For a certain generation, buying biscuits from Billy was like watching a live UNC-Duke match-up or drinking from the Old Well. It was a rite of passage.
Penny, raised in Pittsboro, died Jan. 20 after a brief illness involving his heart. He was 49.
This is how his former boss, his sister and a few of his customers remember him:
"He was like the Don Rickles of Chapel Hill. He abused people in a loving way. These kids would come in all hours and he'd say, 'Your daddy's wasting his money on you.' They thought it was hysterical."He loved getting a rise out of people. The night we won the championship in '93, Billy put on a Duke shirt and wore it all night long.
I feel honored to have been put down by Billy several times.