Notes on a Sage of Montebello

In a town loaded with characters, Joe Lido stands alone.

It is not because he has ever hired a press agent, worn a gorilla suit to church or balanced naked atop a power pole shouting, “Look at me!”

Joe’s quiet nature forbids that kind of grandstanding.

It is not even because he had a vision once where God appeared in a pink cloud. In L.A., that’s no big deal.

To see him walking down Whittier Boulevard you would not guess that he has a quirky urge to be noticed. Gray-bearded, balding and not too tall, Joe bears a faint resemblance to the gnome in “Rumpelstiltskin.”

He would not be out of place in the Enchanted Woods, peeking out from behind a tree, bearing secrets that only a magic word will reveal.

I found him not in the woods but at a takeout pastry shop called Miss Donut, where he sometimes plays chess with other old guys at a table in the corner. Joe is 77.

He was holding two cloth shopping bags loaded with books, newspapers, religious tracts, clippings, posters, letters . . . and answers.

That is Joe’s current preoccupation. It’s how he came to my attention, through an ad in the New York Review of Books that said: “Any questions on any subject answered by the sage of Montebello. Send no money or any amount you wish. Joe Lido.” Then he gave a P.O. Box number in L.A.

It is the third ad he has placed. The first offered “the diary of the least interesting man ever,” the second, “political opinions.”

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What Joe would like is for people to send him money. So far, he has earned only $6 from all three ads, which have cost him a total of $318.

He is not a rich man, surviving on Social Security and a small pension he receives from a company where he worked for eight years as a shipping clerk. He lives in a rooming house not far from Miss Donut.

Why the sage of Montebello? “I’m self-titled,” he says with a disarming shrug, smiling through the beard that seems to cover most of his face. “No one has contested the title, but if they do, I’ll cede it.”

He began buying ads after seeing a television show in which a piece of “art” consisting of three urinals sold for thousands of dollars.

If there was that much stupid money kicking around, Joe decided, he ought to have some of it.

The $6 came from that first ad offering copies of pages from his diary, “the least interesting man ever.” He sent 18 pages to a person who sent $5 and five pages to a person who sent $1.

A sample paragraph from the diary, hand-printed on white paper: “Up at 8 a.m. Erotic fantasy. Lotion on feet. Out to laundromat. Back to h.q. To Sec. Pac. Bank. To Fotomat at Savon to leave two discs. To h.q.”

It is not all dry. His diary also describes a visit to a topless bar.

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The Sage of Montebello realizes he doesn’t have all the answers to everything, but he has some. Questions he can’t answer he’ll refer to experts.

Responses to all three ads have come from as far away as Ireland. A man in Southbridge, Mass., wrote, “I often perceive of my own life as sublimely mundane but I am always looking for new points of reference.”

In serious moments, Joe doubts that he will become rich through the ads, but they’re a good pastime. He has a master’s degree in history from Brooklyn College and a restless imagination.

“It’s just a way of tooting my own horn,” he says.

He went to college in the 1930s and hung out with Stalinists and Norman Thomas socialists. He never became a Communist but wanted to know about them. Later he wrote a biography of Leon Trotsky. It never sold.

Joe wanted to make his living as a writer once, but the only writing he does now is the diary. He explains that it helps make clear in his own mind who he is and what he believes in.

The reason he wanted to write was to find God, Joe says. Then one day when he was 30 God appeared to him in a pink cloud. “Why me?” the least interesting man in the world asked. “I’m God,” the vision said, “and I can appear wherever I want.”

After that, Joe stopped trying to write and took ordinary jobs. Now he spends his days wandering from Montebello to downtown L.A. to the beach, where he plays chess on weekends. And he keeps his diary: “Arrived home about 5:30. TV news. At 7, ’60 Minutes.’ Miscellaneous reading and TV. To bed at 9.” The End.

Al Martinez can be reached through Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com