news-record.com

GREENSBORO — History remembers Prince.

From 1885 to 1908, the stately white horse pulled the Eagle Hose Co. fire wagon. Legend says firefighters rewarded him with whiskey after each fire run.

Prince, a fire department history book says, was “the most photographed and talked-about horse of the times.”

Few people have ever heard of another four-legged public servant of that era, Old Juke, official horse of the Greensboro Police Department.

Old Juke’s name implies he was a police veteran. Yet, a police department history published in 1989 doesn’t mention him. What did he do, carry an officer or perform ceremonial duties?

A rare reference to Old Juke, one paragraph, appeared in the early 1900s in the local press. It announced the city had built a stable for Old Juke on a field behind City Hall. At the time, City Hall stood at the northwest corner of North Elm Street and what’s now West Friendly Avenue.

It’s not know where Old Juke stayed before the stable was built. Prince enjoyed quarters inside Eagle Hose Co., on South Davie Street, where he lived with a lesser-known horse he teamed with on fire calls.

Prince retired in 1908 after 23 years of smoke chasing. The city needed to buy two horses to replace him, he was so strong and sure-footed.

Some people assume Prince pulled the General Greene, the beautifully preserved steam fire wagon that has been displayed at the Greensboro Historical Museum since the museum opened in 1924.

Old photos, however, show two dark horses hitched to the General Greene, which didn’t belong to Eagle Hose Co. It was owned by a separate volunteer fire company on North Elm.

Other than Prince, the only other fire horses whose names are well-known are Ned and Booker. There were other fire horses — Bess, Nell and Jake, to name three — but Ned and Booker are remembered, probably because their former station is a historic structure still standing on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The building and those associated with it get written about occasionally.

Greensboro residents in that era had a paradoxical relationship with their horses, just as people today do with their cars. The city loved its horses even though the animals could kill and maim.

Runaways were common downtown. James B. Dudley, the esteemed president of N.C. A&T, was near the depot on South Elm Street when something spooked his horse. The animal galloped full speed up Elm Street, with Dudley in the wagon trying to rein him in.

A wheel flew off the wagon and smashed through a store window. Parts of the wagon continued to fall off until the horse finally stopped near Elm and Church streets. About all that was left of the wagon was the seat with Dudley on it. He was not hurt.

Horses didn’t vanish from the streets immediately after 1905 when the first cars bounced along the city’s cobblestones. The fire department waited until 1912 to buy its first truck. Even then, the department continued to use horses at some stations.

The police department bought its first car in 1915. As for Old Juke, it’s not known whether he was still on the force then or had become, perhaps, the contents of a glue pot.

There’s talk from time to time of mounted patrols downtown. Wilmington and a few other North Carolina cities have returned to policing on horseback. The animals draw admirers and add a new dimension to downtowns.

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or at beale1@clearwire.net