The true story of Nome, Alaska's only parking meter
 
    There were many varied opinions around town concerning Nome Nugget publisher editor Albro Gregory.  For one thing, he would never publish a letter to the editor that had been submitted by someone with whom he disagreed.  His editorials were often peppered with PG-13 phraseology. 
    One March, I think it was 1978, a sidebar on page one announced that Albro's close friend Jack Fuller was planning to run for District 22 State Representative, and promised to be the best legislator Nome had ever produced.  From that day until the November election, Jack's name appeared on every Nugget front page.  Albro refused to print even the name of Jack's opponent.  In fact, after Jack won the election, the Nugget reported only that Jack had defeated "his opponent."  (For the record, he was late St. Michael, Alaska resident Al Nakak.)
    He may have slanted his news a little.  Well, a lot.  But Albro sure knew how to write.  If you needed to know whether a sentence should include a semicolon or an em dash, he was your man.  I wrote several articles for him, but quit after he refused to give me a byline.  "I like your style," he told me.  "I want people to think I wrote your pieces."  I took that as a high compliment.
    There are so many stories about Albro Gregory that it's easy to get sidetracked.
    Here, however, is the true story of Nome's only parking meter, which I wrote for Nugget publisher Nancy McGuire for her centennial edition.  On one of my trips to Nome last year, the Nugget staff photocopied it for me, and I thank them for allowing me to reproduce it here.  There are so many oral variants on the parking meter story that I am extremely happy to relate the facts, as they happened.
    You'll find the modern Nome Nugget at www.nomenugget.net.  Better yet, subscribe.
   
     Tom



Nome's only parking meter was a Nugget exclusive
Nome Nugget, Saturday, January 1, 2000
By Tom Busch
Copyright © 2000 Nome Nugget

    In 1969, Nome Nugget editor Albro Gregory suffered defeat in his war against concrete sidewalks.  He'd fought zealously in favor of the old wooden boardwalks.
    In 1971, he lost again in a fiercely-pitched campaign against the paving of Front Street, and in June 1975, Gregory took it on the chin once more, this time in a struggle that never existed.
    Like the fables that surround the Three Lucky Swedes, there are variations on the story of Nome's only parking meter.  Five years after the meter's installation on the curb in front of the Nugget building, Joe McGinniss' misbegotten Going to Extremes mentions the infernal device as Gregory's nemesis.  "He cursed wearily at the parking meter, as was his habit," McGinniss wrote.  McGinniss referred to Gregory using the psudonym Arthur McIntosh, who, he claimed, hung an "out of order" sign on the parking meter, having smashed it with a hammer and shot the box full of holes.  Like most of what McGinniss wrote, this was baloney, and among thousands of Alaskans angry with McGinniss for his many gross misstatements, none was angrier than Gregory.
     In later years, Gregory would tell visitors that the parking meter was a memorial, a personal tribute for rescuing the city of Nome from the foolishness of its leaders.  Gregory's version was as bogus as McGinniss'. 
    The real story of Nome's only parking meter began in late spring 1975, when Nome City Manager Herv Hensley was chatting with George Sullivan, then the mayor of Anchorage.  Sullivan happened to mention that Anchorage had just surplused a couple thousand old parking meters, and joked that Nome might want them.
    With a smile, Hensley asked for just one.  The meter was an old Rockwell A-2816, manufactured in Oklahoma.  It offered 20 minutes of parking for a nickel and 40 minutes for a dime, and brand new, had probably cost the city of Anchorage about $50.
    In 1975, handlebar-mustached Nome Mayor Robert Renshaw often visited Gregory for a sneak preview of the news before Gregory shipped the paper to Anchorage to be offset printed.  Bob Renshaw, like Hensley, was known for a hearty sense of humor.
    According to Hensley, over a period of time, Renshaw persuaded Gregory that powerful forces within the city were mustering to install parking meters on Front Street.  To Gregory, that would be as repulsive as the introduction of traffic lights.
    Hensley said that in the third week of June, Renshaw convinced Gregory that parking meters would be proposed at the very next council meeting, and that Renshaw felt powerless to stop them.  Of course, nobody had been discussing parking meters, except a small group of conspirators.  In front of the Nugget building, a crew drilled a hole in the sidewalk.  When Gregory asked them why they were breaking into the only pristine stretch of concrete on Front Street, they replied that they were installing instruments of some kind.
    The evening of Wednesday, June 18, Renshaw came by the Nugget office to read the June 20th edition, and saw that it included one of Gregory's classic editorials.  "Parking Meters?  Bah!" Gregory had written.  Renshaw waited until the Nugget's paste-ups were safely on the evening jet to Anchorage and the edition was out of Gregory's hands.  At that point, Renshaw invited Gregory to dinner at the Fort Davis Roadhouse.
    Later that night, when they returned to the Nugget building, the parking meter stood firmly planted in the sidewalk, directly in line with the entrance of the newspaper.  Parked in front of the newspaper office, Gregory's blue Ford Bronco sported a parking ticket underneath one of the windshield wipers.  It was Nome's most famous practical joke. 
    Today, the parking meter perches against a set of shelves inside the Nome Nugget office.  After the concrete Front Street sidewalks were redone in the 1980s, crews could never set it tight enough into the ground, and publisher Nancy McGuire took it into the building for protection. 
    To Albro Gregory's credit, he admitted to being the butt of the prank in his next edition, published on Tuesday, June 24, 1975.
    On the front page, the Nugget printed a staged photograph, with Gregory leaning on the parking meter alongside Nome Police Chief Roger Kennedy, and patrolman Joe Lyons looking on.  A police van idled in the street behind them.
    "When Gregory threatened a citizen's arrest for the police car being parked double," the caption read, "Kennedy backed off and tore up the ticket."
    In his account, Gregory tried to recover some dignity by claiming that "some people are plunking for parking meters as the crush of new cars becomes worse by the day," and he spun the story in his direction, vowing to continue the good fight.
    "Yep, gents," he wrote, "I think it's a good joke, no foolin', and I'm going to leave the damn thing right there as a reminder to the breth (sic) of what could happen, even in Nome."
    Finally, he wrote, "a monument to that feisty old Gregory. . .Expired, it says."


Parking Meters?  Bah!
Nome Nugget, Friday, June 20, 1975
Copyright © 1975 Nome Nugget

    There are some rumblings that some people would tie up Nome in a maze of parking meters now that this old gold mining city appears to be in for rejuvenation.
    We point to all the new cars that are coming in (some 60 in the last week aboard the first barges of the season).
    We are unalterably opposed to this 20th Century innovation and we will fight it just as we did the paving of streets and sidewalks five years ago--hopefully with more success than we had at that time.  Parking meters?  Bah!
    Instead of parking meters, we need off-street parking, a much less costly approach to the problem of where to park our vehicles.
    With parking meters there are other expenses incurred.  We would have to have a meter maid to collect the loot.  Not that it wouldn't be nice to put another person to work.  The expense wouldn't justify the end.
    Then we would have to hire a mechanic to maintain the equipment.  We doubt that the take from the meters would pay all the additional costs.
    Another way that we could pick up some parking spaces would be to go back to angle parking, at least on the north side of Front Street.
    Granted, with all the new vehicles coming in we are going to feel a parking crunch.  The best way to solve the problem is as set forth above--off street and angle parking.
    As for angle parking, the federal powers that be will not stand for that again, we are told.  You see, when the money was made available to pave streets and sidewalks five or more years ago it was understood that we would give up angle parking.  The alternative was no money for paving.  So the city fathers came to heel and we now have this very unpleasant situation with which to put up.
    Not only that, but the main drags are in worse shape than they were in the days of gravel and boards.
    We heard it said that paving of the streets and sidewalks would end the dust problem.  We have just as much dust as ever and worse street surfaces than ever.  how does that add up for the people who promoted the paving?
                                             -ABG

back to Tom's Nome Photo Gallery's image of the parking meter  Click on the thumbnail for a full-size image
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updated January 7, 2006