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We are missing two bridges, and as time
goes on we are going to miss them more
and more. I am referring to the
bridge/interchanges at South Main
Street-Capital Boulevard-New Falls of
the Neuse Road and where the new N.C. 98
bypass crosses South Main.
Both bridges were proposed
or at least considered before the road
construction, but both were rejected as
too costly.
Now we have the cost – in
terms of air pollution, gasoline usage
and tempers – of idling cars waiting for
the traffic signals.
* * * *
Wake County’s Human Services
Department is having a bit of a problem
with the word “public” in public
meeting.
The department is supposed
to arrange public forums, assemble focus
groups and otherwise try to ask people
about the needs in the Wake Forest area
in order to apportion the space to
different county and state agencies in
the new regional center.
They made a stab at it last
week, arranging a meeting at the Wake
Forest Library for Thursday night, and,
as one librarian said, they even brought
food.
It was a party, but nobody
came.
The only notice for all of
us public was a plain flyer on the
circulation desk at the library. The
department did get word to town
government the day of the meeting. No
one told the newspapers.
We will see if there really
are public meetings, but there is one
very large need in this community and we
do not need a meeting to articulate it:
transportation to jobs, school and
health care.
* * * *
By my count, we have less
than three years left before Wake Forest
turns 100 years of age, and there are
still no plans for any kind of
celebration.
The town, of course,
actually began in 1839 when Wake Forest
College platted 80 residential lots
around the campus and began to sell
them. There were still only 15 homes,
one hotel and one store in 1866, but
there were 456 residents in 1880 when
the town was first chartered as the Town
of Wake Forest College.
Maybe we should have done
this back in 1980. There might have been
more enthusiasm.
Anyway, the college’s desire
for electric lights spurred the
re-chartering as the Town of Wake Forest
in the spring of 1909, and within a
little more than a year the
commissioners purchased a generator with
a boiler that was, at least at first,
fueled by sawdust, and built the
electric light plant on Elm Avenue. The
lights came on sometime in 1910. The
minimum rate was $1.25 a month if you
had two lights and did not use more than
754 kilowatts.
Another thought would be to
celebrate the first lights in 1910. |
