What I do is sell golf balls, but the job is 50% P.R.; . . . they want a little conversation with it.

Hugo Nelson retired to play golf nine years ago after a career as an insurance agent. He still plays golf, but most of his time at the course is spent working. Nelson, 75, and his wife, Lucille, live in Newbury Park.

I started as a caddy on a golf course when I was 11 years old. The custom was that when the member bought a new golf club, he’d give his old one to his caddy. There were no sets at that time.

The caddies could play every Monday morning from dawn until 11 a.m. So that’s how I started to play. On Saturday mornings, the pro at the golf course gave a lesson in how to caddy, and besides that he taught us fundamentals of swinging. So it was a good deal. That’s 64 years ago, 1925.

My father bought me a saxophone. I’ll never forget; the sax cost $100, and I paid him back the hundred dollars from my earnings caddying in the summertime. I played the saxophone in the school band. From that I became a professional musician. In Chicago they had a bunch of bands that played various dances in the hotels, and that’s how I started. I played all those hotels, Palmer House, Sherman Hotel and the Edgewater Beach.

I was 15 or 16 years old, and my father thought he had to go with me because I was so young. We used to go on the streetcar, and he’d wait till I was done playing these jobs, and then we’d go home. I’d keep him out till 1 o’clock in the morning, and he probably had to get up about 6 in the morning to go to work. He did a lot for me.

I went into the Navy as a musician in 1942. I got married while I was in the Navy. I decided, “When I get out, I’m going to look for a day job.” I took a job with the Veterans Administration. We used to handle some insurance and veterans benefits.

I had a friend at the VA who was a musician too. His name was Buzzy Knudsen. He had a Ph.D from Northwestern University, psychology. So I told Buzzy, I says, “I don’t know what I want to do.” He said, “Put in a request for psychological testing, and I’ll give you a whole battery of tests, and it’ll all be free.” So I took the psychological testing for three days. He came up with the conclusion that I should be a real estate agent or an insurance agent. I decided I’ll take the insurance agent, so that’s how come I started in that business.

I applied to Allstate Insurance for a job; they didn’t call me. So I thought, to hell with you guys. So I saw a job with State Farm Insurance. I didn’t know State Farm from a load of coal. I answered this ad and went to work as an agent.

One day I’m having coffee with a friend of mine that’s an agent for Allstate and along comes his district sales manager, Barney Jenkins, and he says, “How would you like to go to work for Allstate?” I said, “Why should I go work for Allstate? I’m successful with State Farm.”

Every week from then on for about six weeks, old Barney would call up the house. He said, “You want to work for me yet?” “No.” Finally I went out there and I told Barney, “OK, I’ll give my boss two weeks notice and I’ll start with you.”

That was 1954. I kept in touch with a lot of the agents that I knew at State Farm when I was there, and we all ended up with about the same dollar amount of money.

When I first retired in 1980, I came up here to Los Robles Golf Course, and I played golf maybe three days a week. After a month or so, it got boring. So I asked Angelo, the pro here at the time, for a job. It wasn’t a case of needing income. It was a case of making you get out of your pajamas in the morning and get moving. Otherwise, you’d die in those pajamas.

In the mornings, on Monday and Tuesday, I got to be here at the driving range to open at 8 o’clock. What I do is sell golf balls, but the job is 50% P.R. because people don’t like to just come up and buy balls from some grouchy old man. They want a little conversation with it, so that’s what I give them.

I don’t look forward to retiring from here. It’s a wonderful place and a lot of nice people.