Just a little history: What I remember after 50 years

The unveiling of the Northeast Story Map – published again this week – made me recall some buildings and events from the first days and the 20 years after we moved to Wake Forest. Carol Pelosi

Does anyone remember the building on North White Street about where the CVS parking lot is now, a low building or it looked that way because it was in that hollow, with a neatly lettered sign on the tin roof: JONES MIRACLE TEMPLE HOLINESS? That name had such a ring, such a commanding sound.

I always wondered who the pastor was. I think the building stood there for years after the congregation scattered until the Unity Three builders bought the properties along there and built a two-story brick building. And of course, that building gave way to CVS.

Who is there left who remembers the Bolus Department Store with its two storefronts that are now the Purple Door Day Spa and NC General Stores? It was built that way with men’s and children’s on the left and women’s on the right.

How about B & S Department Store, also with two storefronts because two buildings were combined? It had women’s and children’s on the left and men’s on the right with a thick arch connecting them. Between the two stores, most women and men could find the clothes they were looking for. The store is now Wake Forest Art & Frame and Domino’s Pizza.

Hollowell’s grocery store and Keith’s Super Market? I can remember shopping at Hollowell’s and hearing Barbara Lyon, she was owner Jesse Hollowell’s daughter, in the elevated office talking to someone who had obviously run up a large tab and needed to pay if off NOW. We came in 1970 just after Lowery’s grocery store here in Forestville had quit allowing people to run a tab and pay at the end of the month, but I think Keith’s still allowed people to run a tab and may have delivered to older folks and shut-ins, and I loved the bump between the first store and the expansion that became necessary because it was so popular.

Do you remember when John Lyon built that little strip mall that still exists behind CVS and his grocery store, Lyon’s? How about the two real lions he had at the front door for a while? How about the first time town shoppers saw the lights inside the freezer section click off when there were no shoppers and back on when someone went into the aisle?

Do you remember when Tommy Holding built the first intown strip mall that is now Renaissance Plaza? T.E. Holding Drug Store moved from South White Street into the mall as its anchor store, and Tommy sold his own concoction, SexAlert, right there by the cash registers. After several other entities occupied the space, including a dance venue, it is now the greatly renovated Wake Forest Renaissance Centre.

I remember the Winn-Dixie partly for the little piles of dirt clerks would leave if they were sweeping and were called to the front and the darkness in the bowels of the store during the great electricity outage caused by Hurricane Fran. It was the only open grocery store in town. The clerks were computing bill totals with paper and pencil.

We all remember James Keith’s restaurant on Falls Lake until the state or feds decided it was on recreation land – good food! Most Wake Foresters are hard pressed to remember all the restaurants that flowed through town – and probably still will. I do remember one in the current location of Bodega Tapas, Wine & Rum that had rough wood booths, rough enough that one’s dress caught on all the slivers. It did not last long.

How about the hospital on South Allen Road that served us for 20 years? How wonderful to have a hospital within five minutes’ drive when one of your children broke an arm, came out with leopard spots all over at 10 at night or your husband got bleach in his eye when power washing the house. And the doctors! Dr. Corpening, Dr. Mackie. Each patient had a real relationship with those doctors.

That two-room library on South White, the former offices for W.W. Holding Cotton Company, is vivid in my mind mostly because I remember Pearl Ray, Irene Holding and Mabel West. It was a great day when the library – still supported by the town government –opened in the old Carolina Trust Company building with Joyce Board as librarian and Frankie Eppes as her assistant. After Joyce retired, Dot Hinton became the librarian. Wake County Libraries finally took over paying their salaries, but the town paid for utilities and repairs until 1996 when the first county library opened.

I only have 50 years of Wake Forest memories and there are people still today who remember much farther back than me. Ask them for those memories: It is history.

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