Most people grow up thinking the restaurant business is straightforward enough, a manageable enterprise for just about anybody. After all, everybody grows up eating three meals a day, and after so many years, well, an expert emerges. Right?

Wrong.

Darrell Hanshaw is in the restaurant business, and he has seen plenty come and go, but he's a success, a rare breed.

Hanshaw was born in Knoxville, Tenn., almost next door to the football stadium at the University of Tennessee. While still a toddler, he moved with his parents to Columbia, where his father became the S. C. district manager for Kmart. His mother, before the move to Columbia, had begun her career in accounting, and she still helps with the books at her son's restaurant business.

His father has since retired. He lives in Tennessee near the Gatlinburg Country Club.

Hanshaw's stepfather is Columbia's Carol Lucas, the commercial builder of the same name.

After six years at Irmo Elementary, a short distance from his house in Friarsgate, Hanshaw attended Wardlaw Middle School for two years. He transferred to Irmo Middle School and moved up to Irmo High School.

He played varsity football as a cornerback for Irmo until he lost his knees in his junior year.

While in high school, Hanshaw began to learn the restaurant business as a dishwasher at Great China in the Boozer Shopping Center. Driving his own car, a 924 Porsche, and washing dishes portrayed a confusing picture, but Hanshaw pulled it off.

After two years at Anderson College, Hanshaw transferred to USC's Columbia campus as a business major.

While in school, Hanshaw met his wife Kramer, a student at Columbia College, and they married seven years later. Her father is Tom Jones, a Methodist minister who was at Washington Street and other regional churches.

The Hanshaws have three children: Parker (15), headed for varsity football this fall at Hammond; Copeland (13), a standout on the girls' cross- country team at Hammond; and Amelia (7), soon to enter the second grade at Hammond.

All three children are serious fishers, and they help their father load up and tow the boat for striper trips at Lake Murray.

Kramer Hanshaw is a one- woman cheesecake factory. She produces custom- ordered cheesecakes, sometimes in high volume, to contribute to the family coffers.

Her cheesecake kitchen is Hanshaw's commercial kitchen at his D's Wings on Beltline Blvd., next to the former Richland Mall.

Hanshaw began his D's Wings business in 1987 at Parkland in Cayce, which he sold to Billy Rentz. Starting in 1994, there was another D's Wings on the Congaree River, and Hanshaw sold that to Landry Sea Food of Houston. Two years later, Landry sold the 5- acre site as house lots.

Hanshaw has sold four other D's Wings locations: Sparkleberry Lane, Blythewood, Harbison, and St. Andrews.

Living in Heathwood and working next to Richland Mall, Hanshaw can manage both home and business and still work reasonable hours. To the uninitiated in the restaurant business, to say reasonable hours means getting up early for directing the staff and checking the deliveries and getting home by 10 pm.