Phone photo 2855

James Abbott's mural portrait of a very young Nick Rillakis (1893-1970), McCleary, Washington. By the time I met Nick in 1964 he was a large, stout man with no hair at all. Nick was one of the last of what was once a large Greek population in town.

A bombastic and flamboyant fellow, he ran a store in town called Rhodes Grocery, the first concrete structure in McCleary. I recall he had a huge cheese wheel as a centerpiece. Today his store serves as cram-yer-crap place and is covered with Abbott artwork.

The waferboard "canvas" gives this and the other portraits a nice texture.

Phone photo 2854

Four portraits by James Abbott at the entrance of the old Rhodes Grocery, long ago converted to a cram-yer-crap storage business. So far as I know, this little alcove is unique in the Abbott art experience in that he has an area where human faces are the main focus. This was not his strong point and the combined effect is actually sort of like eating stale bread.

I bet if we took a poll here in McCleary, Washington (pop. about 1600) on who these four portraits are supposed to represent the results would be enormously embarrassing to the town. So, at the risk of sounding like a know-it-all, stick with this blog and in the words of Sherlock Holmes, "observe and learn." I even personally met one of the subjects portrayed here.

Also, this is a spot where certain inebriated people like to hover for awhile. How one can do that while all those eyes at your back, I don't know, but they do.

Phone photo 86

This was Rhodes Grocery in McCleary, Washington when I was a kid. A big, bald Greek fellow named Nick ran the place and would talk your ear off. I remember he had one of those huge cheese wheels. I believe this was McCleary's very first concrete building when it was constructed in the 1920s.