His 43 Years of Good Cheer Earn a Salute : Amos Manuel Has Made Both Life and Shoes Look Brighter

It’s a small thing, really, an old piece of metal anchored deep in the 8th Avenue curb, a sturdy ring built to tie a horse to, though no one has done that for decades.

A rusty remnant of another day, it sits there like a worn penny amid the parked motorcycles, passing cars and passers-by, overlooked and forgotten by almost everyone except Amos Manuel.

Many years ago, when he was a boy, athletic and strong, Manuel would ride a friend’s horse down the railroad right of way from National City to downtown San Diego, where he would watch a movie in one of the many theaters then thriving. And he would tie the horse to the ring.

Today, he is bent at the back from arthritis and walks with the aid of two canes. But he is still there, 40 feet across the street, proprietor of Amos’ Shoeshine, as near as anyone can tell the oldest shoeshine emporium in town.

Since 1946, when he first leased the small, open-air, brick-walled room, about the width and length of a bus bench, Amos has dispensed a special brand of friendliness, ribald humor and human warmth right along with the polish.

In the course of those 43 years, Amos has earned a cadre of disparate admirers, from barrio kids and bankers to secretaries and judges. He has endeared himself not with wealth or position but by being who he is.

“He’s one of the best souls I’ve known,” says Alice Zukor, owner of Broadway Florists, a few doors down from Amos’. Zukor met Amos more than 40 years ago by way of her late husband, Allan, who was good buddies with him. “He’s just a genuinely kind man.”

Perhaps no more eloquent testimony exists for that than the bouquets.

Every Saturday without fail since 1944, Amos has bought his wife, Ellen--a former dancer at the old Creole Palace--a bouquet from the Zukors. If he was sick, Amos sent his only child, Dennis, down to the flower shop, and, if his son couldn’t go, then he would ask someone else. It’s a streak of such love and devotion that it touches even the most hard-nosed of his customers.

That’s one reason this shoeshine man is revered by his friends. Several years ago, he underwent a double hernia operation, paid for in full by his regular customers. And next Tuesday a group of them will honor Amos at a special luncheon at the U.S. Grant Hotel.

“We thought it was time to pay some tribute to this downtown institution,” said Superior Court Judge Ross Tharp, an Amos customer for more than 20 years who is helping organize the fete. “He’s just a charming guy who makes you feel glad. You have a smile when you

leave.”

Amos’ family lived in San Diego when his pregnant mother went to Oklahoma on an emergency trip to see her injured sister. As fate would have it, she delivered Amos there, an accident recorded on a birth certificate but which in practicality has no bearing on his claim that he was both born and raised in San Diego. He became one of 14 brothers and sisters, and the only one still alive. While he had several jobs as a youngster, he and a brother worked their way through San Diego High School shining shoes, both from a box they carried around town and from a stand at 7th and B Streets, today the site of the Imperial Bank high-rise.

“This used to be a strong Navy town then and there were lots of shoes to shine,” Amos said recently. “We used to charge the sailors 10 cents coming and 5 cents going out.”

A good athlete who played football, basketball and baseball in high school, Amos worked as a bellhop, for the gas company and for a contractor. Then the United States entered World War II. He and several of his brothers marched down and signed up, and for the next 3 1/2 years he worked as a Navy cook for an aviation squadron, stationed aboard aircraft carriers, including the ill-fated escort carrier Liscombe Bay.

It’s an episode Amos would rather forget, but military records show a Japanese submarine hit Liscombe Bay with a torpedo at 5:10 a.m. on Nov. 24, 1943, during a fierce four-day battle. Twenty minutes later it sank, about 20 miles southeast of Makin Island. The ship carried 644 men, 272 of whom survived.

When he returned to San Diego, Amos went back to the shoeshine business, and a friend scouted out a good location for him--on the east of the 8th Avenue between C Street and Broadway--in what was then nothing but a parking lot.

Even though it was a bustling time for downtown, before freeways, suburban sprawl, shopping malls and jogging shoes, Amos for a time worked a second job, usually as a night janitor.

But he always came back to the shoeshine stand. Little bigger than a walk-in closet, its walls are cluttered with yellowed newspaper clippings and photographs, some showing Amos as a much younger man standing and smiling with friends, others capturing his customers’ happy moments holding a big fish or embracing at a party. A small electric heater wards off the chill. A few tarnished plaques hang on the wall, the words lost to the weather.

Sandwiched among the knickknacks and mementos are Amos’ collection of pin-up girls, not your 1940s variety heavy on teasing the imagination but the more current crop of less-is-more ‘80s women.

During the course of a shine, Amos is likely to treat his customer to a platter of jokes and stories just short of Jay Leno-quality. Zsa Zsa is a current favorite topic. “Did you hear Zsa Zsa has a new perfume out?” Amos asks. “Yeah, you slap it on.” If that one’s too tame, you’ll have to go get a shine yourself.

“This guy has a cheerful greeting for everyone, and the women love him,” said the barber next door to Amos, Gabe Ornelas. “The women will walk by his stand, and Amos will say to them, ‘Do me a favor.’ And they’ll look and say, ‘What?’ and then he’ll smile and tell them, ‘Stay pretty.’ They love it.”

Shining shoes is a hard business, and for Amos his schedule of six-day weeks from 9:30 in the morning to 5:30 at night would be tough enough for a younger man, let alone for someone older than 70, many of whose contemporaries are retired.

Amos was hit by a car two years ago while he was crossing 8th Avenue at G Street. They never caught the driver, but Amos has had to live with a bad leg since. “That really messed me up,” he says.

He has a bad back, bad knees and a bad hip. He is so badly stooped that, when he shines shoes, he glances up from the waist to return a greeting, his eyes moving to make contact but his body bound by its pain. The $3 he collects for each shine is a must: He has his own doctors’ bills, and his wife is ill too.

“That don’t help it none,” Amos says, explaining what shining shoes does to his back. “It’s tough work. Do it eight hours a day and see how tough it is. It gets to your shoulders and arms, too. You’re on your feet a lot.” He says it matter-of-factly, without rancor, simply responding to a question.

Make no mistake, this is not a bitter man. He is proud. He speaks reverentially of his son, who works for the opera. He speaks of his customers, especially the old timers, with grace.

He places honesty on a pedestal. It has been a life with few regrets.

“I’ve tried to treat everyone the same. There was a time when I had lines of customers, and I started giving them two coats instead of three, because I wanted to get to them all. Well, I was ruining my business doing that,” he said. “Well, now I give three coats to everyone, and I don’t count them (customers) anymore.”

“You have to make sure you enjoy your work . . . and don’t cut no corners because they catch up with you.”

(The Amos tribute luncheon is being handled by the Central City Assn., 231-0331.)