4) A Dedication: In Memory of R.N.
Now buried in Los Angeles Cemetery
This taxi customer of mine drank too many pints of gin for breakfast. I once drove her to a hospital in Oakland, California for the cure. On the way she said, Parkey Sharkey, can’t I have one drink before I take the cure? I said, Yeah, but just one. I’ll have one with you.
First thing I knew she got me drunk in this bar and I never got her to the hospital for the cure; she had to drive me home. Well, she’s resting in peace now anyway.
Also another taxi customer of mine died in a little San Francisco Peninsula town. He was in jail on a traffic ticket. I often wonder if they called him a doctor, poor guy, hell of a place to die. I was in Napa County Jail, California in 1953. I done forty-five days for drunk driving there. The jailer there was a good guy, he said, “Sharkey, if you are a guest of ours, we will make a trustee out of you.” I said, “I don’t want to stay here that long,” and after I was there forty-five days I got an attorney of mine, Joe, and got out.
I don’t want no more part of jails; they give me the creeps. Winos sick, prisoners fighting each other, nothing else to do. I was in another jail in San Jose around 1947 for being drunk. They put me in a dungeon like in the dark ages. I hollered for water, there was a small hole rotted in the cement wall big enough for a rat to get in. Somebody slipped me a can of water and saved me from dying of thirst.
I could not have been too bad after I volunteered for the U.S. Navy in 1942 and I was rejected, I became a civilian recruiter for the navy. After I helped the recruiting department for six months, I got a letter from the navy saying I had done outstanding work for them. I had been in the Navy in earlier years, 1929.
In 1943 at Dibble Army Hospital, Menlo Park, California, I got to know the blind soldiers real well. I would drive them free in my taxi any place, maybe charge them a beer for a ride. One day I got a letter from one of the head officers at this army hospital, thanking me for the free rides I give to the blind soldiers and also boosting their morale.
My gas board on the Peninsula, World War II would never give me any extra gas, sometimes I think they were foreign agents. I beat them anyway, I took a part time job delivering gasoline, and when I got out in the country on this gas truck, I would hide five gallon cans of gas, and pick them up at night in my taxi. Also, I got gas other ways as you will read later on in my book about gas.
I can remember in 1925 when I was a kid in old Palo Alto, California. I remember when I was one of the first messengers of Western Union in Palo Alto. I would deliver telegrams to peoples’ houses, once in a while nobody home. I would sneak in their back door and rob their piggy bank of a couple of bucks to go to the show and buy milk shakes. Also as a kid in Palo Alto in 1925, I remember the blacksmiths, the old street cars that used to run out to Stanford University. Some nights I would hop a free ride on top of a street car, and the conductor would stop and make me get off.
I also remember the first riding stable in Palo Alto, 1925. I hired a horse one day. My first time on a horse, I got a half mile from the stable and the horse went berserk and went full speed back to the stable knocking me off when I got there. He must have been bitten by a horsefly.
Years later as I grew up, I caddy for all the famous football players of Stanford. This was in my early thirties. The new Stanford golf course was just finished. I was one of the first caddies with Frenche, Mullar, Red Quinn, etc.
Well, let’s go on with WHISKEY ROAD.
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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