Once upon a time, a man named Joseph W. Charles stepped outside his house on the corner of Berkeley’s Oregon Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way and began waving to the passing motorists on their way to work.
“Keep smiling!” he called to them. “Have a GOOD day!”
And they did smile, and they started waving back.
A few neighbors thought he was nuts and called the police. But when the cops arrived, they quickly sized up what was happening and said, “Never mind, Mr. Charles. You just keep on waving for as long as you like.”
So he did — every day for exactly 30 years, day-in and day-out, rain or shine, from Oct. 6, 1962 to Oct. 6, 1992. And in the process, he became beloved. It wasn’t long before people started driving miles out of their way so they could start their day by waving to The Waving Man. The city issued proclamations in his honor and named the tennis courts across the street after him (not because he was a tennis buff but so that he could read the sign with his name on it from his house).
He was also a surrogate grandfather to the neighborhood kids, who used his front yard as their playground — much to the relief of their parents, who knew they could always count on Mr. Charles to watch over them. Mr. Charles was born March 22, 1910, in Lake Charles, Louisiana. As a young man he played in the Negro Leagues for the Lake Charles Black Yankees. He even batted once against Satchel Paige when the great pitcher came through town on a barnstorming tour. He struck out on three straight pitches.
“But at least I got a foul tip,” he told me proudly, “which was better than anyone else did that day.”
During World War II he joined the great African American exodus out of the Deep South to points north and west, including the Richmond shipyards, where he helped build the ships that won the war. After the war he worked as a stevedore at the old Oakland Naval Supply Center until he retired on Oct. 5, 1962.
The next day he embarked on his true calling. That morning he donned his yellow construction worker’s gloves (which are now the property of the Berkeley Historical Society), stood on the corner in front of his home and started waving. And a real-life legend began — and endures to this day.
The first Christmas after he retired from waving, people spontaneously gathered on his front lawn and serenaded him with Christmas carols as he watched from his living room window. And they kept it up every year until he died on March 15, 2002 at age 91. And even that wasn’t the end of the story.
Remember that I said he was a surrogate grandfather to the neighborhood kids? They’re all grown up now, but they’ve never forgotten him. This coming Oct. 6, some of his admirers, many of whom have moved far away from Berkeley, will come back, stand in front of his old house and wave to the morning traffic to celebrate the anniversary of the day he began waving. And you’re invited to join in. I plan to get there about 9 a.m., which is a lot later than Mr. Charles started his day, but please feel free to come whenever you like.
Whenever I think of Mr. Charles, I’m always reminded of that lovely old Louis Armstrong song. Remember it?
“I see friends shaking hands saying, ‘How do you do?’ They’re really saying, ‘I love you.’ … And I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.’ ”
Keep smiling. And have a GOOD day.
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.