NUMBER TWO: MPORTANT CITIZENS OF MY HOMETOWN

            When I was a young kid back around 1940 in Bellingham, Washington there were several well-known citizens of our little city that nearly everyone knew but without really knowing. One was Arthur a guy who sold newspapers at the main intersection every day. He had a kind of shack/stand where he kept the papers and himself dry as he hobbled around the corner. Arthur had some sort of palsy issue that made him almost unable to talk and limp around as he sold his papers. He hardly ever spoke to anyone but was always friendly in his way.

            Then there was Charlie, a Black man who shined shoes in the leading barbershop near the same corner. Charlie was the only Black person in our whole town of 33, 000 people. He was friendly enough, but no one ever really engaged him in conversation as he shined their shoes. No one I knew ever had any idea where Charlie lived, or even where he ate. He received his tips for shining men’s shoes while they were getting their haircut, but I never saw anyone engaged in conversation with him.

            On a completely different note, there was Joe Martin who ran a small shoe-repair store from which he also owned and managed the local semi-pro baseball team, the Bellingham Bells. His place always smelled heavily of shoe polish and his hands were always stained from it, too. Joe was a man of few words, but his teams almost always won the State Semipro Baseball Championship and his shop where he sold all sorts of sports equipment was always crowded and successful.

            Then there was Nick Nickerson who all by himself sponsored Nick Nickerson Sports Teams for young men of high school age. It seems that he would gather guys who had just barely not made the high school basketball and baseball teams, suit them up in uniforms he had paid for himself, and enter them in the appropriate city sponsored leagues. His teams almost always won their yearly championships in their green and gold uniforms. The puzzle is, none of us who were aware of Nick’s teams ever knew who he was or why he sponsored his teams. His so-called “Boys Club” never held any meetings or even had a meeting place.

            The coach of the Fairhaven Junior High located on the South Side of town, where most of the Slavic people lived, was Jim McCarten. His school was smaller and received less money for equipment and facilities, but Jim was resourceful, and they always won more games than they were supposed to against the larger Junior Highs in and around our small town. He often had to repair the team’s uniforms and equipment in his basement. Nevertheless, his teams always had to be reckoned with, and a couple of years they actually won the County Basketball Championship.

     In our small, quiet town we really only had one Police person. I am sure there were others, but we never saw any of them. The one we saw and dreaded rode around town on a three-wheeled motorcycle marking the tires on parked cars so he could later see if they had been over-parking. Our parking cop’s name was “Morse” and that is all we ever knew about him. Sometimes we would try to erase the chalk marks off our tires and thereby avoid getting a parking ticket. I once saw Morse beat up on an old fellow who was being accused of drunkenness. I never knew of anyone else getting a ticket for anything other than overparking.