Rotary Club of Santa Monica

"2001/2002 - A Rotary Odyssey"

Rota-Monica

COMING SOON

Our next four Rotary meetings will feature speakers about –

            Long Beach Aquarium – July 13

            Santa Monica City Management – July 20

            National Enquirer Magazine – July 27

            Getty Museum – August 3

OUR EXPERT ON MOTORBIKES

(One of a series on new members)  

Some might say that Michael J. Nichols is in a doomed business. He manages Carlson’s, the big retail store on Fifth Street that sells household appliances and TV sets. Such retailers used to be numerous. Three-fourths of them have closed in recent years, undersold by chains such as Circuit City, Best Buy, Home Depot, Sears and the like.  

Nevertheless, Mike has no thought of leaving Carlson’s, which hired him in 1978. “I enjoy the challenge of competing with the big guys,” he says. Carlson’s five full-time salespeople draw salaries rather than commissions, and its seven delivery trucks are busy. If pressed, Mike will allow that Carlson’s is “successful”.  

Its success has lasted despite one costly blunder by Mike, he says. “Curly Polkinghorn, the owner, let me make my own mistakes. About 1983 I thought renting TV sets was a ticket to big profits. In ten months I rented thousands of sets. Curly asked me several times, ‘Are you sure we’re on the right track?’ but he didn’t argue. I ran up about two hundred thousand dollars in accounts receivable before I realized, ‘We’re not in the TV business, we’re in the collection business.’”  

In ensuing years Mike brought in profits that covered nearly all the losses. His life has been marked by mistakes, he sometimes says, but he learned from them.  

One boyhood error was in planning to become a physician, as his father was. “I was sixteen before I realized I didn’t have enough discipline to be a good doctor. I wanted something adventurous. I thought I might become a mercenary. Another big mistake. I went in the Army at nineteen, was sent to Vietnam in the airborne infantry, and survived enough adventure for a lifetime. The day I got out was one of the happiest of days of my life.” Mike doesn’t reminisce about his 33 months in the Army.  

Returning home to Appleton, Wisconsin, he enrolled in the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. Another mistake. He got good grades but disliked hitting the books, and eventually dropped out.  

Motorcycles became a major part of his life. He bought, rode, tinkered, occasionally sold or traded. He also absorbed enough motorcycle lore to avoid one major mistake: he never raced, nor steered into busy streets. Thus he has survived intact.  

His war travels had convinced him that mild winters were better than Wisconsin’s cold ones. One fall day in 1977 he sold his house. He started for California the same afternoon.  

Here, visiting a sister, he heard of an opening at Carlson’s. “I knew enough about appliances so I could qualify,” he recalls. “Curly and I liked each other. I started what I thought would be 90 days of temporary work.”  

He courted and married a neighbor, Jinell Doucet. They now have three teen-age children, but recently divorced amicably. He and Jinell live in houses only sixty feet apart and their children have bedrooms in both houses.  

Mike owns five motorcycles. Every few weeks he and one or two sons stow cycles into a Carlson’s truck and journey north into an area called Hungry Valley, which is laced with motorcycle trails.  

During one of those expeditions Mike tried to negotiate a fifteen-foot jump on his cycle. He fell off and slid some distance in dirt. Two of his sons saw the plunge. They’ve all been somewhat more sedate riders since then. “Taking a risk on a cycle is one mistake we won’t make,” he promises.

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