Oldtimers who lived in the South Park area (Wabash and Broadway) from 1906 to 1912 will remember Frank Winters, known around town as “The Pickle Man.”

His place of business was across Broadway from the old South Park Hotel. There were several stables there and he rented two of them. One was for his living quarters and the other for his kitchen, for his assorted creations from pickles such as relishes, chow-chow, sweet pickles, sour pickles, catsup and hominy.

He had a brother in Oregon who shipped him the pickles by the barrel and he made the above-mentioned products, in the place I just mentioned, from them. Most people agree that his products were much better than the 57 varieties at that time.

He would never allow anyone around when he was cooking up his secret formulas. I know because I was one of his neighborhood door-to-door salesmen when I was eight or nine years old.

Mr. Winters paid real well — 20 cents on the dollar, which was good for those days, but his merchandise was also high for those days so I didn’t sell too much, but to make 40 to 60 cents for a few hours’ work, I thought, was real good.

He had a lot of customers up town and during school vacation he hired me to go along and hold his horse while he was selling his wares in various hotels and saloons.

His horse, Tommy, was an ex-fire horse, having pulled the Eureka steam pumper at one time. One day, I was with Mr. Winters and he was in a sloon selling pickles when the fire whistle blew.

Tommy struck out for the fire house. He was too much for me to hold, but I did guide him lickety-split to the fire barn, without mishap!

Besides being an excellent pickle man, Mr. Winters was also quite a showman. On Sunday afternoons he often put on a free show with his horse Tommy doing many tricks. Mr. Winters had a trick of making a $20 gold piece disappear. He would palm it somehow and tell me that if I could find it, it was mine. I never did find it! I was told that at one time he was in vaudeville and came from a show family.

Around 1912 Mr. Winters disappeared from Eureka. Nobody ever knew what became of him. He walked away leaving everything behind, including his horse. The newspaper thought it might have been foul play. If any old-timer has the answer, I would like to hear from him.

###

The story above was originally printed in the January-February 1977 issue of The Humboldt Historian, a journal of the Humboldt County Historical Society, and is reprinted here with permission. The Humboldt County Historical Society is a nonprofit organization devoted to archiving, preserving and sharing Humboldt County’s rich history. You can become a member and receive a year’s worth of new issues of The Humboldt Historian at this link.