"kELSO'S SWING" CHAPTER 34
The drive to Kelso Leather & Shoe Findings was 12 miles inland down a main artery that was not a freeway and along three surface streets that led to the main drag in Compton, a town that had turned into a bit of a black ghetto. The traffic was dense at 6:30 in the morning and Kelso felt a different kind of hangover—jittery, eyes grainy, stomach queasy and hollow, brain flummoxed—not a perfect situation to face his dad's customers, whom hardly trusted him to run a business. Ray's employees, Felix Gomez, in charge of inventory and shipping, and Ernie Rosello, a salesman, both looked upon Rick as the lazy, irresponsible son who was a fool for not pursuing a lucrative business and starting a family of his own.
Nor did they trust him, and Kelso had never trusted Rosello, a smoothie whom he felt would fuck his family as soon as Ray Kelso died.
Rick had worked for his dad as a teenager, stocking shelves, waiting on trade, making deliveries, learning prices and filling out orders. He observed his father treating every customer of his strictly wholesale business as royalty. Most of the crude, uneducated old-country Italian shoemakers worshiped Ray Kelso as a celebrity as an ex big league baseball player and grew to depend on him for help and counsel as a sort of transplanted godfather from Italy.
Ray Kelso started his business at the end of his baseball career in the early 1950s. He believed his background as a competitor growing up and fighting in the mean streets of Chicago prepared him to succeed. Unlike most retired baseball players, who were rural or ignorant and struggled after retirement, Ray had planned and felt confident that he was not “an ordinary man” but one who was shrewd and instilled with the energy and work ethic to out wit his competitors. He believed business was personal and success depended on personal relationships and that his common fairness and sense of decency along with his acumen gave him a leg up, and it did. He was a natural leader who, once he got a person one on one, owned you, like a charismatic politician.
He worked 6 days a week and two nights a week and put in 70 hours a week, hustling, building an inventory, and acquiring new accounts until he finally “got over the hump” and purchased his current warehouse, which was where Rick Kelso pulled up to, parking under an awning inside the sidewalk. He had stopped in town to purchase a dozen donuts to start the morning for his dad's shoemakers—a tradition. He had his own key now and arrived before his employees. He started up the big coffee urn at the edge of the long low counter on which stock was boxed and orders written. He turned on the lights. There were three main rows of shelves leading to the rear, all stacked almost to the ceiling of the old nondescript building. A rickety wooden stairway led up to a shabby cluttered office with a blurry window overlooking the entire expanse of the store. Kelso turned on these lights and took in the gray filing cabinets, scuffed desk, phone, adding machine, business cards, loose invoices and folders that had been neglected for weeks, the tablets on which to take orders, the twenty five year old Kelso business calendar with he as a child in the same baseball uniform as his dad, the photos on the wall of he, his sister and mother...
He walked down down to the front and opened the door at 7:25. he was proud to be early, hangover or no hangover, heavy heart or no heavy heart. His father's pet peeve was a late employee, and Kelso had never been late for any job in his life, wasn't going to be now; he was going to be behind the counter to greet the first arrivals, so they'd see he was serious and responsible, not some wayward beach bum and failed baseball player. He realized there would be suspicion among these men that Ray Kelso was dying. He would have to assure them Ray was fine and soon returning, knowing that if there was any fear of his permanent departure these men might desert Rick, to whom they felt no loyalty, and make an exodus to the other suppliers in the county whom his father had out-maneuvered and trampled and wished nothing better than to seek revenge against Ray Kelso by offering deals and discounts and promises that would sink his family business.
As Rick greeted the first trickle of older shoemakers, pets of his father, they were shocked to see him and made a big fuss over him, shaking his strong hand with gnarled, dye-stained hands, remembering him as the kid who seemed to have no interest in the business but whom Ray bragged about as possibly one of the best baseball prospects in all of the state, a kid who could hit, field, run the bases like a dynamo, and compete like a savage.
They immediately asked about his father, and he assured them he was just fine and would be back as soon as he recovered from surgery, and during this time of recuperation he, Rick, would work every day, but it was not hard to detect the doubt and sadness inn their eyes at the possibility of never seeing the man who had been a vital and in some cases indispensable part of their lives for over a quarter of a century.
Nor did they trust him, and Kelso had never trusted Rosello, a smoothie whom he felt would fuck his family as soon as Ray Kelso died.
Rick had worked for his dad as a teenager, stocking shelves, waiting on trade, making deliveries, learning prices and filling out orders. He observed his father treating every customer of his strictly wholesale business as royalty. Most of the crude, uneducated old-country Italian shoemakers worshiped Ray Kelso as a celebrity as an ex big league baseball player and grew to depend on him for help and counsel as a sort of transplanted godfather from Italy.
Ray Kelso started his business at the end of his baseball career in the early 1950s. He believed his background as a competitor growing up and fighting in the mean streets of Chicago prepared him to succeed. Unlike most retired baseball players, who were rural or ignorant and struggled after retirement, Ray had planned and felt confident that he was not “an ordinary man” but one who was shrewd and instilled with the energy and work ethic to out wit his competitors. He believed business was personal and success depended on personal relationships and that his common fairness and sense of decency along with his acumen gave him a leg up, and it did. He was a natural leader who, once he got a person one on one, owned you, like a charismatic politician.
He worked 6 days a week and two nights a week and put in 70 hours a week, hustling, building an inventory, and acquiring new accounts until he finally “got over the hump” and purchased his current warehouse, which was where Rick Kelso pulled up to, parking under an awning inside the sidewalk. He had stopped in town to purchase a dozen donuts to start the morning for his dad's shoemakers—a tradition. He had his own key now and arrived before his employees. He started up the big coffee urn at the edge of the long low counter on which stock was boxed and orders written. He turned on the lights. There were three main rows of shelves leading to the rear, all stacked almost to the ceiling of the old nondescript building. A rickety wooden stairway led up to a shabby cluttered office with a blurry window overlooking the entire expanse of the store. Kelso turned on these lights and took in the gray filing cabinets, scuffed desk, phone, adding machine, business cards, loose invoices and folders that had been neglected for weeks, the tablets on which to take orders, the twenty five year old Kelso business calendar with he as a child in the same baseball uniform as his dad, the photos on the wall of he, his sister and mother...
He walked down down to the front and opened the door at 7:25. he was proud to be early, hangover or no hangover, heavy heart or no heavy heart. His father's pet peeve was a late employee, and Kelso had never been late for any job in his life, wasn't going to be now; he was going to be behind the counter to greet the first arrivals, so they'd see he was serious and responsible, not some wayward beach bum and failed baseball player. He realized there would be suspicion among these men that Ray Kelso was dying. He would have to assure them Ray was fine and soon returning, knowing that if there was any fear of his permanent departure these men might desert Rick, to whom they felt no loyalty, and make an exodus to the other suppliers in the county whom his father had out-maneuvered and trampled and wished nothing better than to seek revenge against Ray Kelso by offering deals and discounts and promises that would sink his family business.
As Rick greeted the first trickle of older shoemakers, pets of his father, they were shocked to see him and made a big fuss over him, shaking his strong hand with gnarled, dye-stained hands, remembering him as the kid who seemed to have no interest in the business but whom Ray bragged about as possibly one of the best baseball prospects in all of the state, a kid who could hit, field, run the bases like a dynamo, and compete like a savage.
They immediately asked about his father, and he assured them he was just fine and would be back as soon as he recovered from surgery, and during this time of recuperation he, Rick, would work every day, but it was not hard to detect the doubt and sadness inn their eyes at the possibility of never seeing the man who had been a vital and in some cases indispensable part of their lives for over a quarter of a century.
