ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608090092
SECTION: DISCOVER ROANOKE VALLEY PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
James Nichols zips around Roanoke's City Market Building with a speed and intensity usually found only in other species.
Like squirrels, for instance, especially when crossing a frayed power line.
For 11 years now, since the Market Building opened its food court, Nichols has whizzed, whirled, scooted and generally flown through the dining room.
During the two-or three-hour lunch rush each day, he is a custodial blur.
He'll clear your tray and wipe your table quicker than you can drop your plastic fork.
"I just do it," the 43-year-old from Callaway says. "I just like working hard."
"He goes 100 mph all the time," says David Zane "Chico" Estrada, of the market building's Chico and Billy's Prestigious Pizza Palace. "He should be drawing two salaries, the way he works."
Estrada figures Nichols single-handedly increases the revenues of every Market Building restaurateur. If you can always get a clean table, you're more likely to eat there.
Estrada is also a fan of Nichols' ability to waft an almost weightless aluminum ashtray dead center and right-side-up onto a table from 10 feet away. It's one of those odd talents that comes from repeating something 50 times a day for 11 years.
Nichols used to be distinguished by a mane of long, blonde hair that whipped in the wind he kicked up, but about four months ago he cut it off.
"It slowed me down," he says with a quick laugh.
Nichols does everything in a hurry. Even if you can get him to stop and talk to you for a minute, you might feel uneasy because his engine seems to be revving the entire time. There's always something he could go do.
But if you can get Nichols to tell it to you, you'll hear a story worth repeating.
Nichols shows up at the market building at 6 a.m. and usually leaves about 6:30 p.m., he says. He works about 60 hours every week, cleaning the bathrooms, floors and every other relatively immobile object in the building.
"I don't think I'm doing that great of a job," he says. "The thing I'm most proud of is I've been here so many years and never missed one sick day and never been late."
He's built up 12 weeks of unused sick pay, and "I don't plan on using any of it."
It doesn't leave him much of a life, he admits, but he seems to make the most of it anyway.
"When I'm here, I do my job; but when I'm gone, I think about something else," he says.
Ask him exactly how he spends his time off and he'll say he plays tennis with his wife.
Unless you know to ask, he may never tell you that he met his 24-year-old Romanian bride through "Penmates" magazine five years ago. He swapped letters with Carmen for about six months before he took his entire year's vacation, a month, and went to Romania to meet her. A few months later, he went back and married her.
"We had a bridal shower for her right out there in the food court," says Linda Nelson, owner of Tangles hair salon in the building. "She was so shy."
Nelson says she couldn't get along without Nichols, but she may one day have to learn to.
Nichols says he won't be around the Market Building forever.
But what could life after the lunch rush hold for the ultimate custodian? Nichols himself isn't entirely sure.
"I think I might like to live in Romania," he says.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN STAFF James Nichols darts betweenby CNBcustomers, picking up trays, wiping down tables and pushing in
chairs at the food court in Roanoke's City Market Building.