PIGEON SHOOTERS – I first met Russ Barton Sr. (1927-1987) when he was the mechanic at the GMC Truck dealership at 203 Harrison Street, which was owned by Myra and Bill Godley. It was right next door to the Delaware Valley News office, where I worked. One zero-degree morning during the winter of 1977-78 my car wouldn't start. I didn't have a regular mechanic yet, so I walked from Twelfth Street down to the dealership, and Myra introduced me to Barton.
He was about 50, which is old to a 26-year-old, and he looked kind of rough. He had about three days' worth of gray stubble, and the fading dealership still had enough of a repair business to get his clothes greasy. I told him, “I've got a '53 Ford, and when I turn the key, it just clicks.”
He said, “OK,” walked to a workbench, picked up a 2-pound sledgehammer, and threw it into the bed of his pickup truck. Bang! It was too cold for talking. He drove us to my house, got the sledge hammer, reached under the car, and struck the starter a brisk whack. “Try it now,” he said.
It started right up. Barton seemed to me like he solved all his mechanical problems by hitting them with a sledgehammer, but he explained, “Water condenses in the starter, and it freezes. I just had to bust up the ice.”
Barton and his wife, Irene (1933-1981), had just moved into a former slaughterhouse that was right behind what is now the hardware store. The little house was made of concrete, shaped like a shoebox, and divided into two rooms. I had been interested in buying it, but my dad had said, “Someday you'd want to sell it, but the only person who'd live in house like that is you.” Dad hadn't known the Bartons.
There was a doghouse in front of the Bartons' house whose occupants for at least a year were a red hen and a small, disheveled yellow dog named Shag. They seemed to get along well, and I took a picture of them for the News in 1979. Besides barking, Shag would also honk and moan.
One September afternoon in 1978, Barton came into the News office and said, “C'mon out to the bridge. It's time to shoot the pigeons.”
Yes, he and Glynn Hummer were official municipal pigeon shooters. But they weren't the first ones:
In 1971 Borough Council authorized Dick Vanselous to shoot the pigeons downtown.
Then in February of 1977, the borough Board of Health, chaired by the ever-provocative J.J. McCoy, focused on the pigeon problem. It was determined that an estimated 200 pigeons, living under the eaves of the Warford House and other Bridge Street buildings, were endangering the public health with their droppings. After considering poisoning or trapping them, the board reactivated Vanselous for a one-time pigeon hunt. On April 8 and 9, he shot more than 100 pigeons. He declined another gig because of “the funny looks he got from residents,” according to Councilman Tom Sherman. That December Erich Zeh Jr. was named official pigeon shooter.
But in 1978 Barton and Hummer had the job. They hunted the birds for $50 each, plus ammunition. They blasted away at pigeons roosting beneath the bridge, and got up onto the roof of the Gem Building, which was another roosting place. The gunshots didn't frighten away any shoppers; downtown was comatose in those days.
The front page of the Sept. 21 edition of the News displays a picture of stubble-faced Russ Barton in a white T-shirt sitting on the roof of the Gem Building, his shotgun pointed skyward, waiting for a target. But somehow I didn't think it was worth more than a photo.
Hummer liked to keep a low profile, but not Barton. So when Associated Press statehouse reporter Jim Manion wanted to write a local-color story about Frenchtown, Barton gave him a demonstration and an interview.
Manion did a nice job with his article all about Frenchtown's official pigeon shooter. It hit the news wires on the slowest news day of the year, going out to 1,300 AP-member newspapers. That meant it was published all over the country. For example, the Cincinnati Enquirer ran it under the headline “Hunter Makes Pigeons Rare Birds In N.J. Borough.” It was front-page news in the Easton (Pa.) Express and the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was also in the Washington Post, the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate, the Home News in New Brunswick, the Courier-News in Somerset County and the Doylestown (Pa.) Daily Intelligencer. A friend from California phoned me to ask, “What kind of hick town are you living in?”
Barton was interviewed on CBS radio, where he revealed that pigeon tastes “like chicken, more or less.” Has the pigeon problem abated? Yes, but “I seen three go through town, but I gave 'em a break.”
Barton also received an urgent letter from Mrs. Bob Wallace in Connecticut full of urgent appeals and exclamation points. Pigeons, starlings and other birds were ruining the appearance of her Victorian home “besides being noisy and a big nuisance.” She pleaded, “I hope you can help us!” Barton replied that shooting them is the only remedy, and if Mrs. Wallace would pay his expenses, he'd make the birds sorry they had ever soiled her eaves. I don't think he ever went; he'd have told me.
Not knowing himself to be a colorful character, Barton was surprised by his fame, but delighted by the attention. Yet he managed some sympathy for me. “Rick, it's too bad that the AP got the big story instead of you.” My thought had been that there was no story here; it was just an overactive reporter making a spectacle of a colorful old man. What a dunce I was!
From "Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia"