San Francisco Hotel Sweeper
Those mornings I’d walk the streets of San Francisco, somewhat unsure of what I’d find, looking for work, and then as the morning progressed into day, and near noon, it would turn about with producing a cool warm summer air, a fresh breeze. I’d walk by this certain hotel, it looked to be at one time, a grand hotel of sorts, now a bit warn, and more on the dim side of its life, up and own, and around its frame you could see its age, its name was evidently well known, still at a certain highbrow level, it was a landmark, of sorts and sweeping the sidewalk each morning, appeared a certain bum like character, in shabby overalls, unshaven, thin looking, not too tall, half his teeth in his head were missing, his fingers a slight bent, a kind natured person, just sweeping away, as if he had no cares in the world, as jolly as could be, as if he had a secret and only he knew it, as if the Golden Fleece itself, I stopped and talked to him a number of times, he said he had been doing that job, sweeping, and cleaning out the furnace, and putting in light fixtures in the basement, and so forth, going on fourteen-years. I couldn’t believe it. And he said, and said it humble, and gratefully, and with pride,
“I get to sleep down by the furnace, it’s warm there, I like it there, and it’s private.”
And he smiled with a funny kind of grin, as if he had swallowed a gold fish, I mean, he was happy with his simple life, and simple it was, and I thought at the time, how kind it was for the hotel to put this poor soul in a bed and give him a roof over his head and a warm spot to warm his feet, and not charge him a dime, and as a result, only expect him to do an hours worth of work, if that.
I saw him off and on, as I previously mentioned, nodded my head off and on when I saw him, and passed him by. He’d step clear of me, and face the street, like an old soldier, standing at attention, as if I was an officer, a General. Always smiling, never displeased, a merry old soul I always figured. Matter of fact, I enjoyed walking down the street, and a few times, if it was morning, and I was down in that area, I’d purposely walk by the hotel, hoping he’d be out, and I could say hello, and more often than not he was. A few times he was going in, or just coming out of the side door of the hotel, but no matter what, if he got a glimpse of me, he’d smile, wave.
‘What makes a man like that,’ I thought at the time. Most people don’t smile, and surely not to strangers. But he wasn’t like most people, he was different. A bum I used to say to myself, he’s just an old bum, no more, and I thought I was being kind to even talk to him, and I was perhaps more bum than he, I had no job, I was twenty-years old, a Midwestern boy, far from home. Yet I told myself, don’t make any judgments, he perhaps had a hard life. He was, or so it appeared that he was in his late sixties, or early seventies, if I remember right, that’s what I thought, didn’t know at that particular moment, told myself he was, back in 1968.
As I was about to say, I walked by him, and he would be waiting, standing aside as if he was my chauffeur. I liked him. Anyhow I’d kept walking looking for work, knocking on doors, listening to the sounds of the street; the tires going by, I like such sounds, the sounds of birds, the horns of cars, and so forth. Then one day, a few months down the road, I picked up a newspaper, and found out he had died. Just up and died, he was sixty-six years old that was a ripe old age I guess, back then. But what startled me, what really fascinated me above all was not that, although it was sad he had died, and perhaps not of a real old, old age—I even took a closer look at the paper, saw his face, affirmed it was the same person—it read and reread it, it said,
“(so and so)…leaves $250,000-dollars to the hotel in his will.”
‘If that don’t beat all,’ I told myself.
I tell you, you just do not know a thing about other people. Perhaps my first lesson in absolute misjudging, and I never called a bum a bum again: don’t judge the person because he looks the way he looks.
I was now proud to have known him, I wonder way, perchance could it be the money he left to the hotel. The hotel was most gratified, and seemed sincere that the old fellow passed on. And by the looks of the hotel, it needs every penny of it to update it. As I write this out, forty years have passed, and $250,000-dollars then, would possibly be equal to four times that amount, figuring it doubles every ten years. Something like that, thus, it would be like receiving a million dollars today, for renovation purposes, if not more.
Originally written in the summer months of 2008, and reedited and modified, in the winter months, of 2009.
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