Making molasses

Known for the ingredient in an old-fashioned Blue Ridge mountains taffy, a deadly disaster in Boston circa 1919 and a gang of comic robbers who used it in 1871 to blind shop owners, molasses was once made by the tubful in the backyard of one Wake Forest resident's East Nelson Avenue home.

In a November 1964 article of The Wake Weekly, Oscar L. Merritt showed reporters how he made cane molasses by the batch, keeping alive what he said then was almost a passing scene. According to the article, "Merritt, who was reluctant to reveal his age, has been making molasses for about 40 years and has had his present equipment since 1934. He said when he began making it people laughed at him, until he turned it into a profitable venture.

"The process is slow and tiresome beginning with a primitive cane mill powered by a mule pulling a long pole in a circle. The pole is attached to gears which turn two rollers that flatten cane stalks being fed into it by hand ... The juice is drained into a bucket. When full, the juice is strained into a keg several yards away where it runs into the cooking pan.

"Starting at one end, the cane juice runs alternately through ends of seven copper trays about four feet long and about eight inches wide. The wood fire is hottest about midway, where the juice boils and changes into molasses. Merritt maintained almost a continuous skimming with a copper scoop with holes in it to take off the waste. The thick molasses then drains out from the last tray when a wooden plug is pulled."

Each batch fills 22 half gallon jars, Merritt said, which he turned around and sold for $2 apiece.

"It's a lot of trouble and I wouldn't fool with it if folks here at home didn't like it," Merritt said.

Mmmm. You can almost taste it.

The homemaker of today

In April 1964, Rebecca Lynn Green, daughter of a school piano teacher and professor of old testament interpretation at the seminary, won the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow scholarship and a trip to New York with her home economics teacher, Mrs. R.H. Forrest. Becky intended to use the $1,500 prize toward attending Westhampton College at the University of Richmond. Central to her taking top honors was the essay Becky wrote about her ideal household.

The home, she wrote, would be one of "love, well-distributed responsibility, sound moral and religious convictions, freedom of thought and speech, and opportunity for the development of individual interests, ambitions and talents."

Talk about a prediction!

A passing fad

In 1957, a nonreligious group of humanists won tax exemption for their organization, putting them on par with churches. Following another court case four years later, the term "secular humanism" was coined as way of defining the beliefs of those who derive morality without spiritual guidance. The concept has disturbed the Christian church at all levels since, and led to a March, 1966 seminar on the seminary campus about it, featuring John E. Steely, professor of historical theology and Dr. John Eddins, professor of systematic theology, among others. The men (and the journalist covering the event) did not use the term "humanist," or the phrase "secular humanism," in any place but one, instead preferring the substitute label "the death of God movement," and pinning on it the rise of Marxism and Nazism.

Eddins offered a harsh prediction for the movement: "It's a fad ... the theologians, and those possessed of real piety, will not succumb."

He also took umbrage at the movement's criticism of lack of proofs in God's existence, saying, "the best representatives of Christian thought have never said God could be scientifically demonstrated or proved. He is known by faith and worship."

Steely took a more pragmatic tack: "I can't see that they offer any more effective ways of coming to grips with the social issues of today than the church has, despite the church's slowness," he said.

Slowness to respond to modern conditions was also of concern to Eddins, who issued this warning to his own brethren: "Their answers may be out in left field, but the church must find better ones if it is to win a secular world."

No death of God representative was invited for rebuttal.

(Photo above is of the new faculty building, Patterson Hall, enshrouded in fog)

Industrial giant

That humongous warehouse building over at The Factory entertainment complex houses a heckuva lot of children's activities. But it wasn't built for kids. It was erected in 1966, less than two years after Athey moved to Wake Forest, to store on-site the kind of vehicles that require an equally humongous amount of space. In April '66, Athey began building 25-ton bottom dump truck trailers, which were 33 feet long and could carry 50,000 pounds. The following March, Athey began shipping those trucks to New Delhi, India on a $1 million contract. By 1972, the company had moved up to even larger, 100-ton carryalls like the one pictured above, which was used by a Florida contractor for hauling sand and gravel. In the photo are, from left, Buck Marshburn, Thomas E. Perry, Louis Hodge, Lanny Mitchell, Luther Harper, James Rogerson, Hoyt Brown, Nelson Ray, Jimmy Trent, Terry Kearney, Steve Bridges and Ray Beaman.

The one that got away

The picture above was my first choice for the lead photo to go with our August Centennial section, featuring 1969-78. But when we got out the boxes containing the old negatives, it turned out that the strip with that frame was absent. That's happened several times as we've gone through the newspaper's archives looking for "the shot" that I'd chosen in advance. It would be easy to criticize the storage methods, except to be honest, it's pretty impressive they were kept at all for so long. Probably, someone wanted a copy of this photo and the negative was pulled out, either never to return, or was possibly filed back in a different place.

The picture is of the 1978 Fourth of July children's parade winners. They are, front row: Kevin Medlin, Holly Hendricks, Christie Perry; second row: Ellen Arthur, Bruce Lowery, John Barlow, Tom Warren; third row: John Cooke and his "lion" dog, Thor Foster, Jim Cooke, Lisl Gerstacker, Gena Arthur, Cassandra Walker, Amie Potts, Wendy Mason, Hyon Chu, Christy Medlin and Amy Perry in the stroller.

I remember the '80s (Part 3)

There are stories of heroism all the time; firefighters and rescue personnel place their lives in risk on a regular basis. But everyday folks aren't expected to be heroic, so when they are, it's all the more amazing and impressive. Here are three that graced the pages of The Wake Weekly in the 1980s.

In February 1981 Bessie Holden rescued three small children from their beds in a Sunday night fire in Forestville. Louise Ferrell was burned over 35 percent of her body later that year after running back into a burning Massey apartment at least twice to look for her 4-year-old grandson (who was safely elsewhere).

And in September 1988 23-year-old Wake Forest resident and former school bus driver Richard Stallings (pictured above, with nephew Dion) safely saved fellow passengers guiding a Greyhound bus he was riding away from a tree after the bus driver suffered a fatal heart attack. The bus had been traveling 60 mph on Interstate 85 in Virginia when Stallings noticed the driver's arm fall to the side as if he were asleep. A wreck at those speeds could have injured or killed all of the 25 passengers aboard the bus. "I think he did a brave thing," his sister Valerie said at the time. "I'm proud of him for what he did."

It's a good story to recall in the midst of a divisive presidential race, don't you think?

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.”