We, the people, are responsible for each other
by “Memphis” Harry Lee Ward, Hollywood Newsboy
Oct. 20, 1957
Nearly forty years ago Parkey Sharkey was born. At the age of eight years the boy became conscious and began reading stories. After Sharkey read the story of Captain Kidd the Pirate his imagination was set fire to and he decided to become a second Captain Kidd.
The neighborhood kids were soon enlisted under Sharkey’s pirate flag and the first evidence of the gang’s operations cropped up on the occasions of the kids raiding the town’s five and ten cent shops. Their headquarters was an old empty house considered haunted. The activities of the gang were wrecked by the local police upon the occasion of one of the kids having been forced to “walk the plank” off a high porch because of having violated one of the rules of the gang. The kid broke a leg when he hit the ground and the full report he gave to the doctor and the police caused the scattering of Parkey’s Pirate Gang.
When Parkey Sharkey had began living his teen-age life he had become accustomed to “borrowing” other peoples’ automobiles and forgetting to ask permission. He had once operated a butcher’s automobile and the states of speeding about in a delivery car has sharpened his zeal for dangerous auto driving. When he had “borrowed” the mayor’s automobile the police decided to teach him a lesson in regard to being a citizen living within the law. Eventually Parkey and his gang decided to join the CCC. - Throughout that experience Sharkey and his gags kept the CCC camp members hilarious. Practical jokes put over by Parkey and his gang included the putting in the beds of dead things found about the CCC camp.
Eventually Parkey became interested in organizing a pugilist group and his plan worked wonders raising the morale of the CCC camp for above melancholy. Parkey and his gang broke up during World War II because most of the gang became members of the United States fighting forces. Parkey could not qualify. He had been in the U.S. Navy some years previous on a short enlistment and got out because he could not get over being “sea sick.”
During World War II Parkey Sharkey operated a taxi cab in and around Palo Alto, California and near by United States Military training camps. It was practically impossible to pay a cab fare to Parkey Sharkey if you was a member of the United States fighting forces. Parkey is like that. The employment bureaus of Palo Alto, California, upon learning the man had a police record had refused him jobs. His gang of course was also “blacklisted.” If a “scarlet letter” had been burned on the forehead of Parkey and his gang members they would have had some public sympathy. However the silent “blacklisting” had been adopted as the modern day way of applying the “days of old” brand of the “scarlet letter.” The gang and Sharkey needed a way to make money. And the way was denied to them. They were scorned by the people sitting in the drivers seat of authority and official prestige.
When World War II was over Parkey Sharkey found his taxi cab business was a flop and so he engaged in a bit of show business. He was “booked” in entertainment stints throughout California as the “clown” pugilist. When Parkey Sharkey’s show biz fling ended he returned to his biz of operating a cab. He simply would not be given a permission to work for other people in his own town. He had been branded as being a “gamble.” So Parkey operated his own cab and on one mission he and one of his passengers decided to go to Mexico in quest of a gold mine. That was a “flop” too.
Now Parkey Sharkey an exile from Palo Alto, California lives on the edge of the City dumps in a shack in East Palo Alto and he still operates his taxi.
- THE END -
This little book is an amazing piece of California history. Buy yourself a copy.
These excerpts from the book Whiskey Road by Parkey Sharkey are published by Powerless Press™ and Chapin & Wardwell Book Publishers.
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