Zebulon — Town staffers didn’t find a pot of gold in any of the buildings they cleared out for the move to the Zebulon Municipal Complex, but the move has turned up some old items and old memories.

When Captain Dennis Brannan began working for the police department, its offices were located downstairs. There were DMV and parks and recreation offices upstairs in the same building, and he said prior to that Zebulon had a court room in the upstairs area.

“I’ve been told there was a bank here before, and the front office used to be fire department, so the building’s got its use out,” Brannan said. “Most everything was run from here — public works, everything.”

As far as findings go, Brannan said there were no major discoveries, but they are taking the old water level meter mounted on back wall in the police department that was used to monitor the old water tower up the street. There had been talk about the old vault door and jail cell doors which are now being used secure storage rooms, but he said that’s not as likely to happen. “We have found old radios from back from the sixties, I’d say, like base-station radios from when there were dispatchers,” Brannan said.

Lt. Mike McGlothlin said after his eight or nine years at the department, what’s really been going on is a bunch of packing. McGlothlin said the move hasn’t had too great an affect on the department’s operations, noting there are those on regular patrol and the rest are helping with the move. As for keeping up with recent paperwork, he noted the beauty of the modern era. “So much of the filing goes into the computers these days. Since technology has taken over, we file papers that are really for storage only. They’ll have to be moved, so it’s really like moving from one house to another, just one that you’ve been in for 50 years,” McGlothlin said of the soon-to-be former police station that was originally erected as the Zebulon Municipal Building in 1951.

“Really all you have to do is get your personal desk files and computers boxed up, with exception of personnel records, and you really wouldn’t need them on-call like you might a police report,” Brannan said last Thursday. “Friday is really our last day here since Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is Monday and we start the actual move on Tuesday.”

McGlothlin said the move should be completed no later then Friday of this week.

Planning Director Mark Hetrick said findings in Town Hall weren’t too extraordinary, either.

“Lisa (Markland) found a copy of a 1928 map of the downtown grid area that’s in pretty bad shape, and we found some old locks and stuff from when the building was a bank,” Hetrick said.

Markland, the town clerk, said the town plans to have the map refurbished by a company in Greensboro.

Hetrick said the move to the new office at the old Wakelon School will be very helpful for planning since the department will have much more space to store maps and documents and spread everything out.

“Finding them and helping customers will be a lot easier. Now things are stored in the basement, attic and back storage room, which isn’t really user-friendly,” Hetrick said. “But it needed to be done. Now it will.”

In boxing up items that may be needed during the transition to the new complex, Hetrick said it can get a little difficult — that sometimes you box something up and then you need it and is hard to get to, but beyond that “everyone is looking forward to moving into the new building with its historical meaning to the town.”

McGlothlin said everyone at the police department is on the same page — with all the growth in the last decade or so it will be exciting to get out and move into a new building that is capable of handling the department’s growth needs. Although Brannan may be as excited as anyone at the prospect of waking up in the morning and heading to his new office in the former Zebulon Elementary School, he likely wasn’t as excited about the trip 38 years ago. Brannan’s new office is his former first-grade classroom.

“It brings back a lot of old memories,” Brannan said. “Walking through the locker room (in the new police department) makes me feel like I’m getting in the lunch line all over again.”