Painless Parker and the showmanship of dentistry
If you were on Pacific Avenue during World War I, you’d notice a rope stretched across the street to the second-story windows of the Neary Building’s dental clinic. A tightrope-walker would traverse the line, with a sign saying “I’m Going to Painless Parker!,” or “I’m Coming from Painless Parker!” As a tourist town, the Santa Cruz office of Painless Parker was a popular draw, run by a flamboyant dentist whose antics made him internationally famous. Some called him a huckster, while others said he made dentistry fun. His life story is as much a thing of legend as fact.
Edgar R.R. Parker was born 1872 into a prominent family in the small town of Tynemouth Creek, on the shores of New Brunswick, Canada. His father had a shipyard, building wooden vessels in a trade quickly becoming obsolete. As a boy, Parker ran away to sea, but his family felt with his gift for gab and a fog-horn voice, he should be a preacher. So he entered the Baptist Seminary at St. Martins, only to be kicked out for the unChristian-like behavior he’d learned as a sailor. Afraid to go home, Parker became a door-to-door peddler for a St. Martins merchant, who said, “Stick your foot in the door, and don’t take it out until you have an order.” When his father found him in 1889, dad was not impressed at his success as a street hustler, dragging him home, and spanking the 17-year-old.
Parker again ran away to sea, but caught dengue fever, and was dropped-off in Barbedos. Impressed by the doctors attending him, he returned home to ask his parents if he could attend medical school. They felt it was too expensive, so he settled on a dental career. He enrolled in the New York College of Dentistry, having only enough money for classes but not food. So he adapted his salesman’s spiel for a doorto-door dentist, carrying his tools with him, and charming his way in the door. If they needed a procedure he didn’t know, he promised to come back later, meaning when he’d reached that chapter in the textbook! In less than a year, to substitute for lacking credentials, he opened an office at 17th and Broadway.