Reports that have kept Main Street gossip busy for the past week, to the effect that Mayor Aubrey McCabe had demanded of Chief of Police Holmes five gallons of contraband liquor under threat of dismissing the chief if he didn’t give him the liquor, are not heartily confirmed by the Chief of Police himself.
“I believe I did ask the Chief if he could’ let me have five gallons out of a lot of 55 gallons confiscated by the police some tie ago,” says Mayor McCabe, “but I was only joking and I didn’t expect to get any of the liquor, and I certainly did not threaten the Chief. That yarn must have been invented by some of my enemies.”
Chief of Police Holmes says: “The Mayor did say something to me about getting five gallons of liquor. It was on the morning after we had captured 55 gallons in the Twifford and Bateman case. I was on my way to Melick’s to get some sealing wax to seal the jugs with and passed the Mayor on Main Street in front of McCabe & Grice. I told him that I had 55 gallons of liquor in my office and I was going to put it under seal. He asked me if I couldn’t hold out five gallons for him? I told him there wasn’t a chance. If he made any threats I never heard them.”
Chief of Police Holmes says it is nothing unusual for the best citizens of the town to see him with contraband liquor, give him a sly nudge and a knowing wink and ask him if they can’t get some of it. He says he always takes these requests good naturedly. “I never pass by the side door of the First & Citizens National Bank with a jug of seized liquor that someone in the bank doesn’t yell at me or whisper to me, asking if I won’t turn it over to them,” says the Chief. “it is just a way of joking that folks have.”
The talk about Mayor McCabe seems to have originated with Trial Judge P. G.
Sawyer. It has also been given currency by Dr. A. L. Pendleton, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission. Neither Judge Sawyer nor Dr. Pendleton are friendly toward young McCabe.
The story involving Mayor McCabe has brought a lot of criticism upon the young man’s head, it being the opinion of good citizens generally that the executive head of the city should find some other way of joking with the police department.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Aug. 6, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-08-06/ed-1/seq-1/
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