In the 1950’s in Wenatchee, there were very few minorities. So few in fact, you could count them on both hands. There was the Montoya family (who are still here), an older black woman that was both deaf and a mute and worked as a housekeeper and Fred Collins who was also black. That was it. Pretty sheltered life for a young man! There had also been Ted and Alice. Ted who was white and resembled Jack Sprat and Alice who was also black and was anything but lean, ran a speakeasy / dance hall, by the tracks. Ted served the drinks and Alice cooked fried chicken. But by the 1950’s they were long gone.
A rite of passage for a young man back then was to be able to go to the barber shop and sit in the chair, without the booster seat or even worse the board that spanned the arms on the barber chair, boosting the young man to the level of the barber’s shears. This first real venture into the world of men was usually on your own which made it even more important. Ranking, right up there, with turning sixteen and getting your drivers license.
As a little nipper I can remember my mom taking me to the Mecca Barber Shop. It was located in the Savings and Loan Building right past the elevator. Later I went on my own and still later, when my dad had an office in the building, I would spend time waiting for him in the Mecca because it had lots of magazines to read. But more than that, I could listen in on adult conversation; learn about politics and the news of the day. I might even get to hear a titillating joke or two. Though, I can remember the barbers, if a joke was too off color, raising their eyebrows and nodding in my direction so the story would end up in the expurgated version. In a way it was the substute for the cable news networks, only with social interaction. And like the cable news if you went away and came back a week later the topics would often be the same. Plus, for a young man, it gave you the feel of being in on the real deal. Or so it seemed. In fact a real highlight was to be sitting and listening (seen and not heard) and have a barber ask for your opinion…wow!
Anyway, the staff at the Mecca consisted of Pete Petersen, who was dark haired and slight. Virgil Whitbeck, silver haired, balding and more to the stout side, was the second barber and there was a shoe shine guy. This last was Fred Collins. He was balding, shuffled a bit, was bent over and had “the rhumatiz”, for which he wore a copper bracelet. He always called me sir, had a joke or two and usually some very sound advice. His advice ranged from how to treat a woman on a date, to how to solve problems, and how not to take the barbers too serious. He also, often reminded the barbers or the patrons to watch their language “around this young gentleman.”
Fred had a couple sons, I believe. Working as a Bootblack he put them both through the University of Washington. One, according to Fred, went on to become a doctor and the other a musician; according to my dad he was very well known and played with some of the bigger bands. When I knew Fred, he had to be in his late 70’s and boy could he shine shoes. A stop to see Fred was a necessity before any school dances. He was proud to tell you he had written a book that was about the care and treatment of leather. I knew a couple people that had read his book and said it was quite good. Before the Civil Rights era Fred was, in many ways, a caricature of the black man. But to me he was not a black man but rather I knew him as a man that happened to be black.
Growing up, my dad lived in a house on Cashmere Street, along with his best friend Elwood Lease. They had another friend Johnny Andersen whose home was on Walker Street. Fred Collins and his family was their next door neighbors. Dad liked to tell of how he and Fred’s older son would be one side and Johnny and Elwood would take the other side in a dispute. They would then crawl up on the roof of houses on opposite sides of the street and throw rocks at each other until someone got hit or they ran out of rocks. If they ran out of rocks they would settle the dispute by wrestling and everybody wanted Fred’s son on their side as he was the only one that never lost a match. When dad went home after a bout, his Grandmother Thomas would tell him “you be nice to that boy Bud, he may be black on the outside but inside his heart is the same as yours”.
Perhaps it wasn’t Jesse Jackson, but in his own way Fred contributed to race relations in the community of Wenatchee and even better no one realized it. We just lived it.
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On Wednesday the 4th Canada’s own “hellbilly” band “The Creepshow” will end their U.S. portion of the “Run For Your Life” tour in Seattle at 
