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Begional Library
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VOLUME 10
NEW BERN, N. C., FRIDAY, JULY 7, 1967
NUMBER 16
E. H. (Pee Wee) Jackson,
demolishing the Barbour bouse
to make room lor an addition to
Holiday Inn here, got the sur
prise of his life die o&er day.
So did another man he bad
never seen before, and Isn’t
likely to ever see again.
HolsUng himself to the top of
the already stripped frame
dwelling, to attach cables for a
final yank, Fee Wee discovered
a youth In his early twenties
slewing soundly in a closet.
The place of slumber adjoined
the only bedroom remaining at
the rear of the house.
The young man told Jackson
that he had arrived in town by
plane, found the Holiday Inn
sold out, and noticed that the
house next door was open and.
in the process of being razed.
The time was 4 a. m. and the
scene dark and deserted, so he
climbed the stairs and drifted
off into the land of dreams.
At 8 a. m. Pee Weel and his
crew started to reduce the gut
ted structure to its final state
of rubble. For six hours, until
2 p. m. when the unlnvit^ oc
cupant was discovered, the
house was being ripped apart.
“I don’t know whetter he had
used up most of the oxygen in
the closet or not,” the local
landscape man told us, "but he
sure was hard to wake up when I
found him.’’ Asked if the young
man appeared excited, Pee Wee
replied, “Not until be looked
out and saw nothing but air be
tween him and the ground be
low.”
It sounds funny now, but had
Jackson not evened that closet
door, checking to see if Itledto
the attic, one of the most
unusual tragedies in the history
of this 257 year old town would
have occurred.
Althou^ the two incidents
bear little or no similarity,
the Holiday Inn story set us to
thinking of something that hap
pened during the Great New
Bern Fire on December 1,1922,
while firemen Were dynamiting
homes in ttie path of the holo
caust in an effort to slow its
swift advance.
Each dwelling was thoroughly-
searched to make sure that no
one remained inside. However,
overlooked in the excitement
was a billy goat tied to the back
porch of an uptown residence.
When a powerful blast went
off, the goat sailed hl^ into ^e
air, and with just a little more
thrust might have been the first
of earth’s creatures to go Into
orbit. When gravity brou^t him
down, he landed running and to
this day we have never been
able to establish his destina
tion.
Judging by his expression,
we would say offhand that he
didn’t stop to catch his breath
until he reached the shores of
the Pacific. Remarkably, since
the Are swept forty blocks and
left 2,000 people homeless, only
one person died in the flames.
An elderly Negro ‘ woman
perished when she went back
into the home to rescue a pot of
flowers.
This editor, a 12 year old
chaser of Are trucks at the
time, was in the vicinity of the
initial blaze, with Frank Shrln-
er, Jr., when the Arst alarm
came in. For once we arrived
ahead of Are A^Ung equipment.
Still vivid in our memory is
the sig^t of a colored man pour
ing a bucket of water on small
(Continued on Page 8)
WAY BACK WHEN—^Tom Haywood, seen here samp
ling his famous kicking machine, has been gone from
the ranks of the living quite a few years, but the
pass
coast. Havwood, who was featured on national radio
and publicized in the press throughout America and
in numerous foreign countries, used to say, “If we
kick ourselves more, we will kick others less.” A
breezy, good natured politician with little to worry
about at the polls, Tom was a sound business man
when it got down to brass tacks, and made Craven
a valuable and conscientious nublic servant. All men
who seek public office would like to have the natural
appeal that was part and parcel of the Croatan squire’s
personality, but few possess it. He had it in double
measure.