Old Man Johnson
Old Man Johnson ran a Rodeo Palace in downtown Santa Cruz.
Maybe he still does.
I was broke. I needed a job because the landlady was going to be
asking for rent and for money from me for the utilities.
“Every month,” she reminded me.
The add in the paper said to call the number. I dialed the number and
listened to the machine on the phone:
“Don’t everyone crowd in at once. Form a single file line when
applying for the job,” the voice said. That got a decent smile out
of me.
The job wasn’t too far from the old hotel I was living in and I
walked to it that evening in the rain. The place was in an old
house with a front porch next to another old house on the right.
To the left was an office building.
I walked up the porch and knocked on the door. The porch was
brightly lit up and I dripped water from the rain as I waited.
A bald headed man with a burly gray mustache poked his nose
out the door. He wore wire glasses and his eyebrows were grey.
This was old man Johnson.
He looked at me. I held up a newspaper and showed
it to him. “Job,” I said.
“We are in the Rodeo business,” Old man Johnson said. “We sell
Rodeo Tickets. A computer does all the dialing and you do all the
talking. Is that something you would be interested in?”
I liked him. “Yeah.”
“Come back tomorrow and fill out an application.” He looked at
me a moment longer and then he shut the door.
I walked back home. It was still raining.
