The spirit of cooperation and friendliness that exists among the three eastern Wake municipalities is nice, but I miss the great competition that once affected everything that took place in Wake County east of Raleigh.

Until fairly recent years, members of the Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon Chambers would smile and greet each other warmly, but Heaven forbid anyone from Zebulon even hinted that the town was hot on the trail of a new business or industry. Those sneaky people in Wendell or Knightdale might step in and steal the prospect.

Even worse would be a slip of the tongue that could enable the city folks in Raleigh to learn of the potential acquisition.

All three towns had high schools, and the three high schools had athletic teams that played their best games when playing each other. Wakelon (named by combining syllables of Wakefield and Zebulon) even had a fight song that mentioned Wendell by name:

Come on along, come on along!

Wakelon’s basketball team is grand.

Come on along, come on along!

It’s the best team in the land!

We can play basketball

As it’s never played before;

Make Wendell think they’re in a world war!

Come on – we’ve got the bestest band what am!

Oh, potato yam!!!

Wendell was especially disliked, because that team had the loud and boisterous Margaret Todd as their chief booster. It did not matter that Margaret went to church twice each Sunday morning, playing the piano for both St. Eugene’s Roman Catholic Church and the Wendell Christian Church. At Wendell basketball games, she shed her Sunday morning dignity, and her voice could be heard over 1,000 yelling students.

Back in the early 1930s, a Zebulon youth became engaged to a Wendell resident. Neighbors agreed the bride-to-be was beautiful, very nice, and probably would make a good wife. “But she’s a Wendell girl,” was the comment often heard.

Wendell, on the other hand, considered itself to be a cultured community, and looked at anyone from Zebulon as a “red neck.”

And Knightdale — well, Knightdale was nothing more than a smattering of old stores, churches, and homes that existed only because the railroad thought it was a pretty good place to place a station when its tracks were built east from Raleigh.

But Knightdale High School did have a great basketball team that often knocked Wendell and Zebulon teams off their high horses.

So now, of the three communities, Knightdale is the only one with its own high school. Former Mayor Billy Wilder and other Knightdale old-timers might say “the chickens have come home to roost.”

When Highway N.C. 90 was paved, it went through the middle of Wendell and Zebulon, but it missed the small business section of Knightdale entirely. Most eastern Wake residents thought Mr. Knight’s namesake would dry up and be blown away by Wendell and Zebulon, both of which had thriving tobacco markets and their own newspapers.

That did not happen. When N.C. 90 had its designation changed to U.S. 64, Knightdale expanded its territory to include the busy four-laned road. While Wendell and Zebulon have managed to grow a bit, Knightdale is booming. And U.S. 64 now bypasses Wendell and people whiz through Zebulon so fast they hardly know it exists.

I do miss the days when Wendell and Zebulon had Recorder’s Courts that provided entertainment when there was nothing else to do.

I was never a defendant in Judge Irby Gill’s Zebulon court, thank the Lord! “Innocent” was not in Judge Gill’s vocabulary, but he managed to make the punishment fit the crime. His sentences ranged from months of “hard time” to a few hours devoted to cleaning Zebulon streets.

And in Wendell, the respected Judge Brame had a similar reputation in his Court.

I don’t long to return to the “good old days.” I enjoy air conditioning — at home, in stores, in schools, and in my car. I like television. I like cars that travel over 30 miles on a gallon of gasoline.

Yet I do miss the competition between Knightdale, Wendell, and Zebulon that once spiced daily life.