The Carrboro aldermen, at a meeting Monday night, declined to enact an ordinance to prevent people from patronizing the swimming pool, the soda fountain, and the garages on Sunday.
They did, however, tighten up to some extent on Sampy Meritt’s soda fountain and the garages by limiting the open hours to two in the morning and two in the afternoon—the garages from 7 to 9 and from 3 to 5, and the drugstore from 7 to 9 and from 4 to 6. Garages may sell gas and only—they are forbidden to do repair work on Sunday.
The swimming pool was left just where it was. The wording of the measure adopted by the aldermen sounds restrictive, since the use of the pool Sunday morning and Sunday night is prohibited. But this is without any practical meaning, because Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Sparrow, proprietors of the pool, have not kept it open except in the afternoon anyway, and have had no intention of doing so.
The action of the board is really a victory for the liberal element that opposed the wholesale closing, for a few days ago it was thought that the extreme restriction would probably go through.
One hundred and four citizens of Carrboro signed a petition against the proposed closing, and Dr. B.B. Lloyd presented the document at Monday night’s meeting. This number, 104, is considerably more than half of the voting population, and so the petition was taken to reflect the majority sentiment.
The leader of the movement to have a closing ordinance adopted has been the Baptist minister, Rev. J.B. Davis.
Some of the most loyal church people of Carrboro do not agree with his views. The sentiment against allowing places of amusement and business to be open during church services is general, but it appears that most of the citizens see no harm in people’s swimming, and buying ice cream and coca colas, before and after church hours.
“To try to seal up the place tight all day Sunday,” said one prominent business man of Carrboro yesterday, “is against commonsense and modern ideas. Even if it could be enforced, it would do more harm than good. It would just mean that the young people would go off and seek pleasure in other places, many of them places not respectable and well-conducted like those in Carrboro. Particularly would it be unfair to the cotton mill workers. About the only time these workers have a chance to get out and have a little enjoyment is Saturday afternoon and Sunday, and, as I see it, they ought not to be deprived of that chance.”
After the meeting of the board of aldermen, Mayor Mann said: “As we see it, the duty of the Mayor and the aldermen is to legislate according to the sentiment of the majority of the people, and that is what we tried to do, and think we did, in this case.”
As far as the people in Carrboro are concerned, there are not man of them who use the swimming pool. They are interested in being able to patronize the Merritt drugstore, and their desire to be free to do that worked to the benefit of the Chapel Hill patrons of the pool, since the pool and drugstore were necessarily considered together.
From the front page of the Chapel Hill Weekly, Thursday, May 22, 1924
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