Remember That Old ... Humboldt County Memories

Crocker Anglo Bank.

That was a going concern in Humboldt County in the 1960s when I was little and thought it would be noteworthy and of great import if I could ever land a job at a bank. I subsequently had no interest in working at a bank, but I found out it wasn't that noteworthy or important.

Humboldt National Bank was run by O.H. "Bud" Marcellus and my then father-in-law E.K. "Wally" Waldsmith. They had nice offices upstairs in the building on the corner of 5th and ... kitty-corner (catty-corner?) from Firestone. Knowing Mr. Waldsmith and having my girlfriend, later my wife, working at Humboldt National took the luster off the banking industry. Now my first ex-wife, I realized almost immediately and believe to this day that Amy could've run a bank simply based on what she learned starting as a vault teller afternoons after school in 1973. She was that bright and banking, it turned out, wasn't rocket science like I figured it was when I used to drive by Crocker Anglo in my mom's 1964 Nash Rambler.

The things we remember when, really, we often can't remember anything important.

We bought the boxy, brown Nash at McCrea Nash Rambler ... across the street from the Eureka Inn ... where the parking lot for the Eureka Theater was when I was a teen ... when the Eureka Theater was one of two theaters in town. I don't know why my mom bought a Nash, nor why she later popped what little she could afford for a 1965 Dodge Lancer mini-station wagon.

I do remember when what seemed like every high school and junior high kid in town went to the Eureka or State theaters. If there was a big Hollywood blockbuster showing on the one screen at what was the original, stunning Eureka Theater -- there would be a line stretching from the box office out front -- surrounded by posters for coming attractions -- all the way around the right hand side of the theater, past the library building and down 8th (7th?) Street to old Bill Beasley's Toys and Hobbies.

No...I mean really old Bill Beasley's Toys and Hobbies -- before it really took off as a sporting goods store and the Beasleys moved it up E Street to a bigger storefront.

I didn't really have access to the cash to shop for toys at Beasley's, but I was fascinated by the KIEM TV/KRED AM radio studio on the corner of ... 6th and E ... I never really had to learn street names or numbers in Eureka because I learned how to get around town paying attention while I sat in the passenger seat and my mom drove.

If we drove by at night, we could see the KRED disc jockey talking ... live ... on the air. And, it was a cool thing and I guess remains a reason my friends and I all later agreed Eureka was boring.

Ted Note: You know, I don't really care all that much about sports...youth sports...and sports that are going on up there -- or down here, unless my kids are involved. It just happens that I got paid to know as much as I could about North Coast sports. Then, after I played (and coached) myself and had kids who played, I just became a "sports guy" to people up there. The point of this blog was to write about stuff ... like Crocker Anglo Bank or watching the disc jockey at KRED. The fact I got into writing about news and topical sports events surprises me. Getting criticized for writing about them doesn't.

Before Hartman Field, across from Sequoia Park, became Kennedy Field No. 2 -- back when that old green painted redwood fence was wildly cool -- it was called Parkside Field. I lived on a dead end street in Cutten, across the canyon from the park. When I was in my backyard throwing a rubber ball against the wall on summer nights I could hear the lion at the park roar and I could hear the Parkside p.a. announcer:

"Now batting, No. 7 Jim Smith ... Mike Edwards on deck ... Joe Jones in the hole."

The slow pitch softball was the size of a basketball, well it was really big, back in the 1960s. So, my pals and I thought slow pitch was for really old men and girls. We loved the fast-pitch softball at Parkside, though, gosh ... it was like having a minor league baseball team in the area to me. Rockin' R had kick-ass teams and I could play a Eureka Midget League game at Kennedy Field (which was a site for a go-kart track in the early 1960s, then became a Little League field with unreachable fences in about 1965) and then go watch those fastpitch guys play.

I grew up hearing fastpitch players tell baseball players that they couldn't possibly hit fastpitch. Then, my baseball-playing friends and I played fastpitch and found out ... like any pitching ... a pretty good hitter can hit it, but if you run into really good pitching (like Bob Cinkel) it's a big, big, big problem.

Later, slowpitch softball guys (who had moved on when fastpitch disappeared) argued that slowpitch was hard to hit and that a bunch of young guys couldn't just form a team and win games. Art Johnson's Sox was the big team in Eureka and they were really good. I wasn't the type to get into a boasting match. But, in about 1984 ... a team I was on finally played Art Johnson's Sox and we won a close game -- and I remember the day I sat in the bleachers at the green Kennedy, er, Hartman...Parkside...whatever...hearing a couple Sox guys bragging.

Art Johnson's Sox had really good players -- my point is that only in a really small town could winning a slowpitch softball game in 1984 reminded a 27-year-old shortstop of something he heard years and years before. I was sure the Sox would've beaten us like a drum 9 times out of 10, but we won the one time...so, technically, they bragged and shouldn't have.

Growing up in Eureka was complicated sometimes, especially if you stayed into adulthood.

I'll bet one of the dads of one of the Art Johnson's Sox guys worked at Crocker Anglo.