I remember the '80s (Part 2)

Individual events don't always have an impact on the development of a community; but often constitute what we remember most about any particular year or era. Like the bear that wandered through town in the following decade, animal stories and near escapes were prominent in the 1980s.

The Fourth of July fireworks show was canceled in 1986, but that wasn’t as surprising as what happened a year before, when a faulty timer sent four “stars” into the stands at WF-R High, shattering the press box glass and injuring seven people.

Animals were the talk of the town several times in the ’80s. Raleigh workers spilled caustic soda into the Neuse River in July 1980, killing fish and turtles along a 20-mile stretch. Lee Leonard, Riverside Tackle Shop employee, recounted seeing brown foam three-feet high in the river at the dam. In the photo above, wildlife employees at the U.S. 1 bridge collect fish killed by the chemical spill.

Two years later, there were rats everywhere in Wake Forest, causing town officials to consider releasing owls or other rodent-killers inside town limits. “(The rats) are about the size of house cats. They killed one of my cats,” North Taylor Street resident Alan Skinner said. “I’ve thought of going down and stealing all the cats in Zebulon,” Town Administrator Jerry Walters said. And in 86, an ostrich escaped from a pen on Brick Street, leading would-be captors on a merry chase. It was later apprehended without incident.

Providence may have played a part in returning Jon Marx, 11 and Scott Kearney, 14, to their mothers with only scratches after they fell off a railroad trestle — dodging a train — and plummeted 60 feet to the ground below in 1981.

William Perry and a very pregnant wife, Catherine, barely escaped a train wreck of their own when their 1971 Fiat stalled on the tracks at the Brick Street crossing in front of a train loaded with Super Bowl fans on the way to Tampa Fla. This is how Lillian Horton, whose house was closest to the crossing, described the scene: “Stuff was flying everywhere. There was gas all over the side of the house ... and the motor is laying in the driveway.”