Poopdeck: Nearly a century of adventure — Part 2

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The story of Poopdeck Platt, who lived in Homer for nearly half a century, began in the American Northwest.

Although Clarence H. Platt was known as “Poopdeck” for most of his life, he was called by another nickname during his elementary-school days in Como, Montana.

“I was the fattest kid in school,” he told his good friend Bob Kanegis, “so they called me ‘Fatty.’ … All of the kids that went to school with me in Como knew me as Fatty. But by the time my folks took me to [Hamilton, Montana] to go to high school, I wasn’t fat anymore. And somebody asked me what the ‘H’ in my name stood for…. I told them ‘Hiram,’ and so they called me nothing but Hiram. All the kids that I went to high school with knew me as Hiram. That was the only name I had down there.”

He was Clarence at home and Hiram at school. After he graduated, he was just Clarence — through his first marriage and his divorce, through the Depression and numerous low-paying jobs, until the late 1930s when he was in his mid-30s. He then received the nickname he would have for the rest of his life.

He was working with Charles “Chap” Thomas, brother of his ex-wife, on a truck farm, an agricultural system of raising crops on a large scale and then distributing them to distant markets via trucking. In this case, they shipped produce, including apples, to Anaconda, Butte, Phillipsburg and Great Falls, among other locales (all in Montana).

On the farm were five men named Clarence. According to Clarence Platt, the farm’s cook quickly wearied of the confusion: “‘You holler “Clarence”,’ she said, ‘and either everybody answers or nobody answers, one or the other…. I’ll fix that. I’ll give everybody a nickname.’ Well, my son (Clarence Vernon Platt), his great ambition was to be a sailor, so (the cook) called him Popeye…. That made me Poopdeck Pappy.”

In the funny papers of the day, Poopdeck Pappy was Popeye’s father. Clarence Hiram Platt was fine with being called Poopdeck, but he did not like being called Pappy. In fact, he offered to kick anyone who dared to apply that appellation to him. A few dared — at first.

“They immediately started calling me Pappy,” the elder Clarence recalled, “(but) I only had to kick one or two of them before they stopped. They wouldn’t call me Pappy unless they had a hundred-yard head-start.”

Clarence Vernon Platt eventually changed his nickname, for unknown reasons, to Mickey, but Clarence Hiram Platt hung onto “Poopdeck” for the next six decades. He told others that he actually preferred his nickname over his given name. When he introduced himself as Clarence, he said, no one ever remembered him, but when he introduced himself as Poopdeck, no one ever forgot him.

Many years later, he was listed in the Homer phone book as “Poopdeck Platt.”

Before Poopdeck

The eldest of three brothers, Clarence Hiram Platt was born May 17, 1904, in Missoula, Montana, to Percival (“P.T.” or “Percy”) and Susan Elizabeth (nee Benson) Platt. Clarence’s parents had married two years earlier, when P.T. was 36 and Susan was just 19.

Clarence’s brother Donald was born in 1907, and the youngest Platt brother, Errol, was born in 1910. All three boys were raised on the family ranch near Darby, in Ravalli County, where the family lived until 1924 when they packed up and moved to Corvallis, Oregon.

Early on, it became clear that Clarence was going to be an impulsive, reckless boy. His earliest memory of trouble came from a time when he was about three: “I picked up a paring knife off the table and was going to do something with it,” he said. “My mother told me to give her that knife, that it was dangerous or I wasn’t supposed to do it, or something…. I turned and run and fell and stabbed that knife through my face there,” he said pointing to an old scar, “and into my jaw.”

“And I can remember her telling me that that’s what I got for not minding my mama,” he continued. “And I never did mind my mama after that, either, so I got hurt several times.”

When he started elementary school, the easily distractable Clarence was usually required to walk the two and a half miles each way, and he just couldn’t seem to arrive on time for the start of classes. He’d pick berries or watch wildlife or go exploring, losing track of time in the process. His teacher, displeased, informed Clarence’s parents of the problem.

Even after Donald was old enough to accompany Clarence to school, the tardiness continued. Once, he poked his head through a fence, got squirted in the face by a skunk and had to miss school entirely that day.

He learned many lessons the hard way.

Clarence’s parents were strict and very religious, he said. They didn’t smoke or drink or swear, and they had no intention of allowing their boys to be sinful, either. Once, when his father caught him sneaking a smoke, he gave Clarence a licking — but it didn’t have quite the effect that P.T. had probably hoped for.

“Just as quick as I got big enough that he couldn’t lick me,” Clarence said, “I was going to smoke, shoot, drink, swear and everything else.” He said he was 40 years old before he ever heard his father say a word that he had forbidden Clarence to use.

As an adult, Clarence used that word often, and plenty more.

“I use cuss words in my ordinary conversation that actually have no place in an ordinary conversation at all,” he said. “I can keep from it if I make up my mind to…. If I’m talking to a bunch of religious people or something like that, I’ll leave out a lot of the words that just normally come out of me. I had to do it for my mother when she’d come around, and I can do it for anybody else if I have to — that is, if I want to.”

Despite being kicked by a horse and probably cussing under his breath while suffering a variety of other aches and pains, Clarence did manage to complete his public schooling.

In his late teens, then, he found himself working for a strawberry farmer and dating a religious girl who didn’t seem to appreciate it when he decided that there were better things than church to fill his Sundays with. Enter: Ethel Brown.

TO BE CONTINUED….