Having excuses on my mind (vide the previous post) recalled Nate Zusman, whose use of an excuse earned him the nickname "the mark of Stark Street" back in the 1950s.
Mr. Zusman owned a nightclub on Stark Street. On occasion the authorities had some questions about the degree to which the club followed licensing hours, and whether it was a home for gambling and other activities not officially permitted. As a sidelight to the racketeering investigations of the 1956-57, Zusman was charged with paying money to some of Portland's finest. (He was separately called before the Senate Racketeering Committee, item 25, but that's another story.)
On the witness stand, Zusman admitted paying money to Portland policemen, but he said that the payments were loans. I won't claim to recall his exact words, but his explanation went something like this: "I like the police. They work hard at a dangerous job. Sometimes I hear that a policeman needs some money to take care of his family, or for the doctor, and I lend him some. The word has gotten around that I'm an easy mark for a hard luck story, and now they all come around and want to borrow money. 'The mark of Stark Street,' they call me."
I met him some years later, when he and his wife were living in a pleasant, well-laid-out house in Dunthorpe, built on a wooded part of the former estate of Ira Powers, of Powers Furniture Company. A builder now owns it and wants to tear down ithe house and cut down the trees to build one of those $1.5 million spec houses of no particular charm or merit. The builder's looking for a buyer, whom I'll think of as the mark of Palatine Hill.