(Yes, this is another recycled article.)
I chanced on a 1974 issue of The Wake Weekly the other day which included an article reporting that Wake Forest Police Chief Harvey Newsom, some of his officers and Wake ABC Agent W.H. “Buzzy” Anthony raided a local property where they found a still and about 30 gallons of fermenting mash. If you want to see a still these days you have to go to the Wake Forest Historical Museum. There are a few in use in the area, but they are a closer held secret than the arming instructions for atomic weapons.
I cannot find the issue about the same time which recounted Chief Newsom’s encounter with what he described as a “big boar hog.” On a hot summer day the chief was down in the gulley between Woodland Avenue and Durham Road, looking for evidence of some sort. At that time the gulley was heavily overgrown. The little stream in the gulley is fed by the spring in the middle of Holding Park, and by happenstance or design it was crossed by a big log that had conveniently fallen across the stream.
The chief was about to step onto the log when the aforesaid big boar hog decided to do the same at the opposite end. The two stared at each other for what seemed to the chief as a long time though was probably no more than a half-minute. Then, acknowledging he was out-weighed and out-weaponed (even though he had a gun, he didn’t have the tusks a feral hog does nor the agility), he stepped back, stepped aside and watched the hog cross the stream and disappear into the undergrowth.
Speaking of Chief Newsom reminds me of the time back in the 1970s when Barry Green was about to open the first downtown restaurant – apart from Shorty’s, which never closed – since the college left. It was the Pizza Barn and was in the building in the southwest corner formed by South White Street and Roosevelt Avenue. It was called the Barbee Building in earlier years, the Great American Mercantile Building in the 1970s and 1980s and now appears to be named Victorian Square. The Pizza Barn was the first in a long, long line of restaurants which have occupied that space.
Barry wanted the 11 p.m. curfew in the town parking lot extended to 12:15 a.m. because his business would close at midnight. Most of the problems at the parking lot arose from the fact there was only one officer on duty at night to patrol the whole town, Newsom told the town board.
Mayor Tommy Byrne said he had heard reports there were young people in cars “stark naked in that parking lot. Do you apprehend anybody under those circumstances?” he asked Newsom. “Only if they are outside,” Newsom said.
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