Pat The Rat

If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out, I guess that’s the lesson.

In 1970’s I wrote  stories critical of Soul City, a federally funded “new town” in Warren County, about 50, 55 miles northeast of Raleigh.

The March 1975 stories led to an audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The GAO said “the physical development of Soul City was essentially on target” but it raised “serious questions” about federal expenditures and recommended that various federal agencies recover “all unallowable expenditures” and institute tighter controls over future expenditures.

In May 1979, I reported that Soul City was years behind schedule  –it had achieved less than 10 percent of it’s housing, employment and population goals — and was drowning in red ink.  Six weeks later an agency of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development  announced that it had decided to pull the plug — no more federal aid.

I don’t remember if it was after the first bunch of stories or the second that  WTVD in Durham televised a skit featuring a rat that was trying to tear down Soul City.

The villain’s name? “Rat Slith.”

NOTE: A WTVD news reporter was, indirectly, on the Soul City payroll.  He had been hired by a Soul City contractor to make a movie about the new town.  I never learned what, if anything, he had to do with the skit.

Coming Friday: Proof That We Had Escaped