I picked a street I hadn’t been to before to scout for sidewalk stamps today. The lucky street was Call Street, on the old north side, chosen for being somewhat near an errand I was on. The next few days of blogging will be stamps and curiosities from the 800 block of Call.

Pardon the poor legibility; it was underwater thanks to snow melt.

This is a C. Wilkinson stamp in front of a house on the north side of Call, at the northwest corner of Call and Eighth Avenue. Yes, Lansing has an Eighth Avenue, a much smaller street than the better-known Eighth Street. There is also a longer Seventh Avenue one block west, but no other numbered avenues I know of. Eighth Street is sensibly named: it is (more or less) the eighth street from the dividing line downtown. I have no idea how Seventh and Eighth Avenues come by their names.

The stamp is located in the puddle seen in this photo. The cross street ahead is Eighth Avenue.

I have found a few C. Wilkinson stamps before, all from the 1960s. I still haven’t been successful finding anything out about C. Wilkinson. I wonder if it might be the Charles H. Wilkinson (1907-1981) who is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, but I have no basis for connecting them other than the name and date, so it’s a long shot.