Bob Nicholson:
CLASS OF 1971
West Seattle High SchoolClass of 1971
Seattle, WA
Bob's Story
Well well,
Hello to you all. It's only been 42 years since I have seen most of you and now we're all turning 60!
I live in E. Wa near Oroville which is north of Wenatchee and on the Canadian border. It's called the Okanogan Highlands where I'm at and my home is at 3,000' el. so I get a lot of snow in the winter.
Anyway, I have been here for 34 years now and my brother Bill and our mom live here also, in Oroville. I did 3 years college in the early 70s and majored in economics and am happily retired now from a life in the forestry and construction trades. My hobbies are flying my RC planes, riding my motorcycle in the local area and restoring old stuff. I'm restoring a 1957 D7 bulldozer right now. Love it here in the Okanogan Highlands. No neighbors!
Our dad, (class of 46) who had the 76 gas station at Lincoln Park, died in 2002 and was 74. He had also moved to Oroville in 1990 and managed the Oroville airport for ten years, doing the fueling for planes as they were heading to Alaska or Canada. Oroville is a port of entry, so planes have to land there coming into the states. Those were happy years for Dad and he lived right on the taxiway so he was able to watch everybody take off and land from his front porch. He'd always have some Okanogan Valley apples and a wave for them as they flew over.
His dad, Bert Nicholson and our grandfather, was very active in West Seattle also and had 3 gas stations himself before the depression. One was in the middle of the junction as a sort of quick stop, another was on 35th a few miles north of Roxbury St. and I believe the other was on Ambaum near Spokane St. He moved to West Seattle from Leeds, England in 1910 and managed or coached eleven soccer teams in West Seattle and seven of them won championships. This would have been from 1910 to 1930, before Dad was even born in 1929 when gramps was 43.
In 1921, all the various sports enterprises on the West Side were banded together as the West Seattle Athletics Club and he was placed at the helm. He was also active trying to introduce cricket here. The West Seattle Herald has articles about it and that is how I came across the info myself. Gramps was born in 1885 and would have been almost 50 before Dad even turned 5 yrs old, so Dad didn't know much about it to tell us. I found the article in Dads papers after he died.
On Mom's side, her mother owned the Lincoln Park Grocery just north of Dad's gas station. Mom used to work there when we were kids and we'd all go ride our bikes in the park in the meantime. Of course we'd get back to the store and shake down Grandma for an ice cream bar. Mom and Dad met when they both worked at the Granada Theater in their teens. Tim Johnson's parents worked there also and met the same way. Grandma's family were pioneers of Port Angeles going back to the 1880's before they moved to West Seattle in 1945.
Bob
PS A new version of 'Google earth' has been updated as recent as a few months ago and it will amaze you how good the resolution is now. They even have a simulator that you can click on in tools and fly the earth like a plane. It's a free download and it'll blow your mind. It's as close to virtual reality as we'll ever see. Just type Oroville in the search and it will take you right here and you could even see my vehicle in the driveway if you knew where to look.
(All photos in my album, including Mom and Bill, were taken in 2010 and we still look pretty much the same, just stay away from that zoom button, haha)
The hot rods and the parking lot. Even though many of you who knew us in this phase might have thought we were pretty wild, we were having a great time though, and just kind of going with the flow. And in retrospection on my part, this was a truly amazing period of time. When you consider the technology involved to make those things work and the knowledge to make metal, rubber, glass, wires, electricity, fuel, gears and on and on and have it all work correctly is phenomenal. Wow! Ever since then I still love the smell of burnt rubber after smok'n the tires. What do you expect from a kid raised around a gas station, eh? The used tires w...Expand for more
ere free for burn'n up. Drove Ed Scott up the wall though. He probably just shook his head, but I would have loved to know what he was thinking, haha. He was a great guy though, really. Another great guy was Paul Stolnovitch and putting up with us all who were in 'zoo class.' That was definitely another wow phase. The 'Welcome back Cotter' show with John Travolta seemed tame compared to that ... and zoo gym. I even roll my eyes about all that.
The following was a letter to the editor in our local Oroville paper that I wrote, just for yuks.
Well well, baby boomers, the 60s have a different meaning now and the ride's getting a little rougher. But it's been an interesting ride, both technically and culturally. Slide rulers were still being used when I started college and calculators were just barely affordable. Our poor parents didn't know what the hey to think. Going from Lawrence Welk to the Rolling Stones. From beer to LSD. The generation gap was immense. "Our" kids are still listening to our music. Don't know too many of us still listening to Lawrence Welk.
The one thing that fascinates me about us babyboomers is the names we have chosen for our kids. For a few thousand years people used traditional christian names: John, Paul, Mary, Ann, Virginia, Dave, Doug, Jim, etc., even Bob. Then all of a sudden here "we" come, naming our kids with names that none of us can remember. After us babyboomers came generation X and now, the one I like, is the boomerangers. They're the ones moving back home with their parents after college, unable to find work or a job loss. We've had it pretty darn good though and have been fortunate to live during one of the most prosperous, freest times in history. Sure, most of us never made millionaire status, but as long as I'm not living under a bridge or in prison for something I "didn't" do, I'm pretty happy with my lot in life.
Sadly, most of us have now experienced the passing of friends, enough to awaken the reality of aging and death. I know of approximately 20 friends or acquaintances who have died over the last ten years, still in their 50s or 60s. Once past 50 definite signs of aging start appearing and looking at pictures we might wonder, "who is that." At least it's easy to delete pictures these days. Mirrors are becoming less friendly too, especially in the morning and getting our beauty sleep has greater meaning. Just glad all of us in the same age group are going through this together. Nobody escapes. I figure that, when seeing someone I haven't seen in 10 or 20 years and they still recognize me, well I must not be doin too bad, yet. Growth industries that could be a good investment might be in the face lift business, denture business or hair dyes. Nevertheless, I think we all are beginning to realize that we could be the next one on the obit page. Not sure what is worse, dying at an early age or watching our body shrivel away. Whoever coined the phrase "golden years" should be charged with fraud. As long as my health is good, I wouldn't mind at least another 20 years this side of the grass, though.
Well, at least we've got the murder channels to watch now to occupy our time or we can just sit around exercising the age old tradition of gossip. The murder channels are the most popular shows on the tube these days. They are fascinating, but man, the poor parents who have to deal with a child going missing and is either never found or turns up in a field somewhere. I say, turn these people over to the families. I do get a chuckle though when a commercial comes on advertising $500,000 life insurance policies. Better be careful if your spouse has you signed up for a large sum. They say the prisons are full of people who "thought" they could get away with it. Hopefully we don't all end up hiding in our houses, peeking through the shades thinking a stalker is hiding behind every bush. We do need to be careful though, while keeping it in perspective. These shows are taken from a pool of 300 million people over about a 50 year period. Aren't we something, 3/4 of novels are murder mysteries and now the most popular TV shows are about real life murders.
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