Saratoga News

Saratoga Stereopticon

Willys Peck

Columnist realizes his late-in-life ambition

It looks like I've made it. There it is, an official City of Saratoga Proclamation, signed by the mayor and naming me the official town character.

Two factors are involved here. The first is a Stereopticon column I wrote in June 1996 about an article that had appeared in Life magazine 50 years earlier concerning the visit to Saratoga of actress Donna Reed. In the Hollywood argot of the period, she had been sent here to be "reindoctrinated" to small-town atmosphere in preparation for the filming of It's a Wonderful Life with James Stewart. One picture had her "meditatively lapping a vanilla cone--between visits to town characters."

That, I wrote in my column, rashly to be sure, was my late-in-life ambition: to be a town character.

The second factor is the publication by the California History Center at De Anza College of the first 17 months of Stereopticon columns in book form as Volume 37 of the CHC Local History Studies. (Copies available at the Saratoga Book Market and the Historical Museum-Advt.) Early in December there was a book-signing event, co-sponsored by the history center, the Friends of the Libraries and the Saratoga Historical Foundation. At that time--and it came as a surprise to me--Mayor Gillian Moran presented me with the proclamation designating me official town character.

I'm told that proclamation was Gillian's last official act as mayor, and while there may have seemed to be a causal connection, I'd like to think that her subsequent yielding of the gavel to Don Wolfe came about through the normal rotation policy of the City Council. It seems that the people at the history center conspired with the mayor to bring this about, and at the time my gratification was such that I felt there really was nothing left to strive for. Nobel laureates, eat your collective heart out; I've got mine.

Then the doubts set in. Once the mantle had been bestowed, I felt the loneliness of those who are at the top: Where could I go for guidance? Dictionaries offered only cold comfort. From the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary's "an eccentric or noticeable person" to the New Century Dictionary's "a person of marked peculiarities" to the Random House American College Dictionary's brutal "an odd person," I knew that I was carrying a heavy burden. How could I hope to maintain a shred of dignity and at the same time be recognized as Saratoga's town character, officially proclaimed as such?

That's when I sought reassurance from the past. During my childhood and youth in Saratoga, we had town characters, but we just took them for granted; they were simply part of the landscape.

The one who comes to mind most readily is Ernie Wright, gone these many years. Ernie had some family connection with people who lived on Oak Street, and that's where he stayed. However, he spent his days downtown, sitting on a bench in the plaza, or planted on the newspaper storage box in front of the drug-store, or just ambling along the sidewalk.

He was what you could call a presence, mainly because, although he was of average height, he must have weighed a good 300 pounds. His attire never varied: denim bib overalls, a shoestring watch fob sticking into the upper pocket, a battered felt or straw hat with brim turned down, and work shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

Ernie fore resembled Ernie aft; if you were approaching him from any distance, you could be mistaken as to which way he was going. He used to do small chores around town, such as picking up newspapers from the bus stop at the old Fir Tree Inn and taking them to the drugstore, and cranking up the awning and sweeping the sidewalk there. I don't know if he even got paid for his duties. He just did them.

Some people may have wondered if Ernie was playing with a full deck, if maybe he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Looking back, I tend to doubt that. I think he was just a guy who didn't have to work at a regular job and he just spent his time doing what he pleased, which mostly was nothing.

And although he was anything but loquacious, he did have a wry sense of humor. "And where," he inquired, peering through the grille at the old post office where my dad was postmaster, "is Pope Pius?" The funny thing was that my paternal parent did somewhat resemble the late pontiff, although the pope probably never wore a green eyeshade.

Another time he greeted a local lawyer by saying, "When did you get out of escrow?"

Come to think of it, maybe I can hack it after all.

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