At this writing I am living in a little shack by San Francisco Bay, but hope to move to the hills soon. You might say I exiled myself from Palo Alto, my old home town. New timers have taken over the town, and they can have it.
I helped put the town on the map, and then no thanks for it, my old home town gives me nightmares. It’s the hills for me now. Find a little shack, a few chickens and a dog, and forget about my past, which has been good, and a little bad at times.
Why was it bad? Well, a few people on the peninsula stopped me from making a living a few times, and I got in a few minor “jams” as you will read in my book.
I am Parkey Sharkey, and in 1952 lost a seven year contract to Warner Brothers Studios because I could not remember my lines.
When I am in the right mood and look back over my experiences in the life I have lived up to 1958, I usually reach for a cold bottle of beer, and sometimes I have a short whiskey previous to the cold beer. Generally, I feel better after such cool and relaxing “boiler-maker” drinking.
I cannot forget the miserable souls who “bounced” me and my wife out of lobby chairs in which we were sleeping in the second rate hotels in Palo Alto, California. Even whiskey followed by cold beer doesn’t blur the memory of the way we were callously “rousted out” because it was known we were “broke.” Being forced to seek a place to sleep at 2:00 am isn’t being civilized
toward two souls. We have had it and if the law of recompense works, and I think it does, that soul is going to know how it felt.
I also remember the occasion of the police authorities stopping my working in Palo Alto alley as an automobile washer because I did not have a city license allowing me to do that type of work.
I had appeared on TV with Groucho Marx and on the program had spoken about Palo Alto’s attractions, but I suppose neither the police authorities nor the Chamber of Commerce in Palo Alto appreciated my having, so to phrase the matter, “bent over backwards” and verbally putting Palo Alto in the public consciousness and calling attention where the place is on the map.
Rough handling by prejudice-minded people in authority sometimes provokes equally radical return attacks from oppressed and harried souls. I am a peaceful soul. “Hit me again,” I always tell them, and I come up from the floor
being hit again and again by people that are slaves to money.
I wonder and marvel about my really having been the greatest clown pugilist in the history of amateur pugilism. My career as a prize fighter, clowning as a boxer in the fight ring, was from 1933 to 1937. I remember one spectator at one of my clowning fights yelling to me that I would be her guest on a free trip to Cinema Hollywood if I won the fight. I won it, but that woman disappeared. I won one of my many fights in the ring because my manager asked me to win for him. I won a gold belt, and a damsel asked me to win for her. I won a gold belt, and a damsel asked me to lend it to her. I never saw that gold belt again, nor the damsel who borrowed it from me.
During my taxi cab work, I was often fooled by fellows wearing the United States Military uniform. One fellow pretended he was blind, and took me for a twenty-dollar ride. I lost once in helping fellows I thought were good soldiers. They ganged up on me and one fellow banged me on the head with a flashlight and took my money. For a moment I lost consciousness, but when I came to, I managed to whip the gang of thugs, and after having them arrested got my money back.
Once I owned an amphibious jeep, and got along fine for a month, using it as a taxi cab. But one day, a lady fell out of the thing, so I got rid of such a “hazard” taxi cab.
I remember the night my clown boxing helped me to defeat a fellow who challenged me to fight him in the rain. He did not manage to hit me once, and in the end I dunked him in a pool of water and yelled, “OK, you win, man!”
In 1949 I gave over 500 U.S. Military fellows free rides in my taxi cab, and if you are wondering how I managed to do that, I am going to be honest and admit that I overcharged other wealthy workers riding in my cab. Somehow I broke even on expenses. I also received congratulatory letters from U.S. Military officers because of the occasions of my aiding blind soldiers having been brought to their official attention.
I have a few personal friends I can depend on for being regular cash paying customers. One day I found one of my good customers in the street with his leg broken. I got him to his residence and telephoned a doctor. His broken leg prevented his resuming his weekly taxi cab trips to the place where he usually ended up plenty drunk, and becoming a “problem” cab customer for me in the event my cab business was really buzzing.
I’ll never forget the occasion when a passenger got out of my cab and asked me to wait until he returned. I waited until thirst for a beer caused me to go into the liquor bar for a “quick one.” In the meantime, my passenger returned to my cab and waited for me. Eventually becoming tired of waiting, he used my cab to get to his home, and I had to use a bus to get to my home, and there I found my cab parked in front of my house.
Sometimes I have missed out in catching cab customers. Once when Herbert Hoover was president of the United States, I nearly had him as a passenger. I was a bit disappointed that the man passed by my cab and chose another, but I hasten to reassure you, at least I did not have a nervous breakdown because of the embarrassment.
Another time, years ago in my old home town I had no taxi stand yet. I would follow the bus route and tell people the bus is broken down, and they would have to ride with me. The guy who owned the bus company fired me once, until I got my own cab. I sneaked a few customers away from them.
One of my remembered frustrations as a fellow desiring to do a good deed was plenty involved in unexpected developments. A rich man who had a summer resort residence north of San Francisco hired me to chauffeur for him, and I soon discovered that his housekeeper disliked me. I never learned why she felt so ill willed toward me. I had met two ladies while having a couple of beers in a nearby liquor bar, and decided to borrow my employer’s automobile to help them get home.
While I was going through the motions of getting the two ladies to their home in my employer’s automobile, I was unaware of the mentioned housekeeper having telephoned the police that I had stolen the automobile from my employer’s garage. While driving along with the ladies, they announced they were hungry, and so we stopped near an eating place and they gave me five dollars and told me to purchase two orders of fried chicken. It was here the police picked me up, and subsequently, I was lodged in jail on the charge of automobile theft. The following day I was able to prove I had simply borrowed my employer’s automobile. The judge had been advised that I was slightly inebriated at the time of being arrested as a suspected automobile thief. I wanted no more of the cold jail cell.
So, I got ninety days in jail for trying to do a good deed for the ladies. Not one individual tried to get me released on probation. I wrote letters to everybody I knew, asking that they aid me in being “sprung out” of jail and made a free man again. Nothing happened - no one helped me. I had learned the dangers connected with “borrowing” my employer’s automobile.
I have learned plenty. I hope I shall never stop learning. I mean well, but I may be mistaken in my choices and acts, and may get hit by others. But hit me again! In the long run, you will know I am OK and appreciate all those friends I may not have mentioned in this booklet. Those individuals who have hit me again and again, I forgive. I do have friends, lots of them.
Yes, I was in jail once before back in 1929 for stealing the mayor’s car of Palo Alto. Later years, when I made good, I made a return trip to that jail which was the state reform school Preston, in Ione, California.
This was in 1948 that I made a return trip there in a taxi of my own. I bought everybody beers in the little town outside the reform school, and had quite a time on my return trip there.
Parkey, when he was down and out walking the streets in South Palo Alto in 1951, asked the city of Palo Alto to rent him a vacant lot so he could wash and park cars on it to make a living. The city turned him down cold, then to top it he was sitting in a restaurant one day and a policeman came in and tried to get Parkey to admit he was the one who robbed a drug store the night before. Parkey proved he was not even in town that night and the policeman left the restaurant, and Parkey was all burned up about it just because he was down and out. I felt like telling this policeman to go to work. On second thought I did not. He might have thrown me in a bucket for insulting him.
I have met a few nice policemen - also a few very nasty ones. People won’t live and let live. That’s why I want to get to the mountains some day.
This little book is an amazing piece of Californian 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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