Odd Jobs

Written by Bakersfield Magazine

Lost in all of the concern over regular jobs is the fact that many labor, often obscurely, at jobs most of us don’t know about. Kern County has its share of those jobs, a sampling of which appears here. Unheralded, thankless, sometimes dangerous, sometimes spooky; don’t bother scanning the Bureau of Labor Statistics for information on these jobs.

Parapsychologist

Why, we ask Alejandro Nunez, would anyone with an emotional problem consult a parapsychologist?

“That’s easy,” he says. “Let’s say you are a psychologist or psychiatrist and I come to you with a problem. I say, ‘There’s a ghost in my house.’ What are you going to do? Are you even going to take me seriously?”

For Nunez, 28, such a “problem” is not only serious; it’s how he makes his living. Nunez is a fifth-generation parapsychologist who, when we caught up with him in his downtown Bakersfield business office (“Angelorum”), had just returned from a trip to New York City. His client, fearing the demonic possession of an elderly relative, summoned him, all expenses paid. According to Nunez, the problem was nutritional, not devilish. Nunez referred the client to a Manhattan doctor.

“That’s a significant role that a parapsychologist plays,” he said. “Referrals to competent professionals.” At times, however, Nunez has to deliver the goods himself, as in the cases of:

• A family who was awoken nightly by an army of their three-year-old son’s mechanized toys, apparently switched on of their own accord. Nunez determined a non-ghostly origin: the home carried “an excessive electrical charge.”

• One Bakersfield family suffered from an authentic case of poltergeist activity. After investigation (which he describes as “putting science first, leaving skepticism at home, and asking question after question…”) Nunez determined that spiritual presences were “stuck” at the home and conducted an exorcism.

Nunez claims that 65 percent of so-called “possessions” represent, in fact, “mental issues, disorders of the mind.” For the remaining 35 percent, he performs investigations and, if necessary, exorcisms. His clients have come from as nearby as downtown Bakersfield, from as far away as Tennessee, Washington State, Utah, and Mexico.

“I love my job,” said Nunez. “Seeing people smile is a reward. They want answers. That’s the business I’m in.”

Ostrich Ranch Hands

No need to worry, Cam Weathers tells himself, because strong rubber slats make up the eight-foot fence standing between him and the 10-foot, 600-pound creatures racing toward him. No worry at all.

Cam and sister Kaylie Weathers work at Indian Point Ranch, in Cummings Valley, home to more than 150 ostriches, the largest birds on earth. An increasingly popular protein source, the average ostrich yields 75 pounds of low-fat red meat (high in omega fatty acids), 14-square-feet of ostrich hide, a rich harvest of fashionable feathers, and eggs so large you could scramble just one and feed a family of twelve.

The 20-acre ranch, open every day from May through November, features three types of ostriches: the African Black, friendliest of the three, standing six feet and weighing around 250 pounds; the Blue Ostrich, weighing in at 350 pounds or so, and standing up to eight feet; and the most aggressive, the 10-foot-tall Redneck, which can run 40 m.p.h. for up to 20 minutes. But for all their speed and brawn, according to Kaylie Weathers (who served as tour guide at the ranch), intelligence is not the ostrich’s strong suit.

“They had to put rubber slats on the fence,” she said, “because they would run up against the old wooden fences and knock themselves out. I don’t really call them by name because even if one responds and walks towards you, five minutes later they’ve already forgotten their name.”

Master of Diversions

“You want to know if the economy is good or bad?” asks Bill Sasnett. “Just go to the dump. When the economy is bad people don’t throw things away. That’s what’s happening now. They’re holding on to things.”

Sasnett ought to know. As Director of Benz Sanitation’s Tehachapi recycling operations, he shoulders the responsibility of “diverting” recyclable, salable materials from the tons of trash arriving by truck daily from Rosamond, Ridgecrest, Mojave, California City, and Tehachapi. According to Sasnett, the pick-up phase of the operation is not the dirty job some might imagine.

Not so, he cautions, for those who work in the recycling facility.

More than 30 workers, housed in a massive auditorium-sized building and dressed in safety clothing, negotiate a busy maze of conveyors, roll-off bins, and shoots. They separate, by hand, virtually everything that comes in. As bottles, glass, wood, papers, metal, and other items move along the sorting conveyor, each worker snatches the items and drops each down individual shoots to bins below. The full bins are moved to individual compactors which turn the trash into massive squares that are set out in the back of the property for later re-sale and transport. Not everything gets compacted, though.

“My people have found some pretty weird things,” Sasnett said, “like a 60-pound boa constrictor that was frozen and tossed out.”

Another “save” brought cheers from one local man. Headed off for vacation, the man hid several irreplaceable pistols in the kitchen trash container, assuming that no thief would look there. Upon his return, he forgot to retrieve them or empty the trash. His wife, knowing nothing about the stash, carried out the garbage bag and it was soon on its way to Sasnett.

“He called up in a panic,” Sasnett said, “but in two hours we found them. This is a thankless job sometimes. People just dismiss you and say things like, ‘Oh, you just work with garbage.’ Guys like him, though, they give you thanks to make up for it.”

Worm Farmer

Twelve years ago, Richard Beckey was looking for work, not for himself but for his two teenage sons. “I was really searching for a way they could make a little money and not keep hitting me up for $20 bills,” Beckey said. He scoured newspapers, the Internet, bulletin boards, and local businesses, finally settling upon a small ad promising big profits in worm castings. Translation: “worm poop,” which has an enormously high amount of beneficial microbes. Manure worms (Helodrilus foetidus), he learned, were little “humus” factories, rapidly producing full-spectrum nutrition for plants.

The initial venture began with two wooden fruit boxes in the backyard of his Shafter home. “Yup, there was a ‘yuck factor,’ ” he said, “because everything we did, we did by hand.” While the original business association did not work out, Beckey, a cotton-picker mechanic with nearly a half-century of experience in the Central Valley agricultural industry, used his knowledge and contacts to grow the hobby into a thriving venture. That venture has become one of Kern County’s business success stories. He estimates a ten-fold growth from earlier years. Customers

now include private and commercial clients worldwide. So rapidly has his business, Wormsworth, Inc., grown, in fact, that the company is currently in the process of moving to a new, larger location.

One reason for its growth, according to Beckey, has been the development of new products and production processes. One product, he explained, is a concentrated liquid made from worm castings, much more efficient and inexpensive than delivering tons of humus by truck.

Beckey calls his worms “domesticated,” by which he means “they don’t migrate. That’s why they’re a lot easier to deal with than cattle,” he observes. “And you don’t have to brand them.”

Purveyor of Pawn Shop Dreams

The man browsed without apparent purpose, surveying the rich bounty of guitars, power tools, DVDs, televisions, and other electronics, all arrayed in somber compactness at W.A. Griffin & Sons Pawn Shop.

It was when he scanned the jewelry section, however, that his eyes widened, he gasped, and shouted, “That’s my mother’s ring!”

According to General Manager Chris Espejo, the man had misplaced the diamond ring years earlier and abandoned all hope of its return.

“Finding that ring,” Espejo said, “made his whole year. Something like that really makes it worthwhile.”

Like all pawn shops, W.A. Griffin serves as the lender of last resort for many people, especially during difficult times.

As Espejo puts it, people can’t simply walk into a local bank, antique clock in hand, and expect to walk away with cash.

The pawn shop stands

Kern County Animal Control Officer

Don’t even think of calling him a “dogcatcher.” Kern County Animal Control Officer Steve Eirich manages 15 field officers who respond to animal control issues in a jurisdiction covering more than 8,000 square miles. “This job takes a toll on you,” said Eirich at the Mojave shelter. “How many other jobs put you constantly on an emotional level where you’re dealing, almost daily, with negative situations?”

How negative can it get? Eirich has been directly involved in several high-profile control incidents including: A case involving the abandonment, by a Caliente-area “breeding operation,” of more than 100 horses that took months of investigation; the 2005 chimpanzee attack at Havilah’s Animal Haven Ranch, which horrifically injured a visitor; several instances of animal “hoarding,” including the case of Cynthia Bemis who received a year in prison for keeping 250 dogs at her Mojave compound.

“Unfortunately, a lot of our time is wasted on neighbor to neighbor issues,” Eirich said, describing his department’s calls for service. “We are commonly used as tools of vindictiveness. During the last 15 years,” he said, “the incidences of animal hoarding have risen dramatically. We’re dealing with no fewer than fifty of these cases right now in Kern County. The people who hoard animals think, in their own minds, that they’re saving them. It’s an emotional release for them.”

Portable Comfort Providers

When someone calls Knight’s and asks for “lost and found,” someone is bound to get, um, soiled.

Knight’s Pumping and Portable Services, Inc. delivers portable toilets, more than 3,000 of them, to commercial sites, private residences, and special events throughout Kern County. And we are not talking old-fashioned, broken down johns. These are, according to owner/managers Mark Napier and Tracey Lince (brother and sister), state-of-the-art, clean, sparkling, high-tech portable potties. But when someone “loses” something in a unit, there’s only one place to look.

“There’s no way to avoid it,” said Napier. “Don’t know why you need your cell phone in the toilet but they sure need it after.” One woman, he recalls, asked that her son’s sim card be returned. And there have been other “lost” items. Credit cards, wallets, purses.

Lince, a registered nurse, took over the business with her brother after the death of their father, James Napier, eight years ago. “I think you can imagine,” she said, “that this was not my dream job, but Mark and I became involved out of loyalty to our dad. This was his legacy.”

Knight’s portable toilets are not your grandfather’s privies. Elegant, clean, sometimes air-conditioned, with piped-in music, stainless steel “no-touch” sinks...users often become so relaxed that they drop their cell phones. But what is “no-touch” for the customers is not so for Knight’s employees. Technological progress has not eliminated the need for old-fashioned cleaning.

“Yes,” said Napier, “we scrub clean them by hand. Some things just never really change.”

Article appeared in our 27-3 Issue - August 2010