My job at Knott’s Berry Farm decades ago was the best I ever had

I’ve been blessed with countless pinch-me opportunities and experiences throughout my career as a journalist and public relations professional. Crossing paths with some of the world’s most fascinating people while traveling the globe, forever learning and being challenged … if and when I retire, I’ll look back, then look up and give thanks to all the winds beneath my wings before applying for Social Security.

But in all my years of employment, from age 16 when I was paid in record albums as a high school sports correspondent for KEZY-AM (RIP), to today as a 62-year-old Intel retiree with an S-corp and portfolio career, the workplace I hold most dear is one I never even put on my résumé.

Knott’s Berry Farm was and is that special to me decades later. Perhaps many of us of a certain age have a soft spot for our first real jobs between the end of adolescence and the beginning of adulthood. As for feeling sentimental over perhaps Buena Park’s longest-operating active company, clearly I’m not alone; more than 750 past and present KBF employees belong to a private Facebook group where every discussion oozes boysenberry preserves sprinkled with warm fuzzies.

The longest part-time gig I had during my wonder years had me literally down in the dumps, and it was awesome. My three years at Knott’s began as a sweeper — not my first choice, but it was the only job available when I applied late in my senior year at Los Alamitos High School. Dealing with discarded food, soiled diapers and vomit from queasy guests with lousy aim was nasty. But patrolling an assigned parcel of theme park each shift enabled me to get in my steps long before that became a thing. Besides lots of exercise, I found lots of misplaced money, and this was back when cash and — not Apple Pay — was king.

A bigger reward would come nearly 45 years later. The other week, this big kid returned to my all-time favorite workplace with my two sons who are nearly 10 years beyond the age I quit Knott’s to focus on my journalism studies at Cal State Long Beach. With my wife remaining in suburban Sacramento to ride her own version of a roller-coaster (she’s a public school teacher), my fully grown boys, both back living in SoCal, met me outside the Knott’s gates at the very spot where I picked up a very different type of trash on one hot summer night in ’79. This one had me running from one end of the park to the other.

SEE ALSO: 10 former Knott’s rides and attractions we miss the most

After witnessing a purse snatching next to Montezuma’s Revenge, I chased the perp twerp through Fiesta Village, past the long-gone Our Little Chapel by the Lake with the “transforming Jesus,” through Ghost Town and ended when the thug ran out of steam between Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant and Virginia’s Gift Shop. My boys humored me by listening to that story for the nth time, but, oh, how much more riveting to hear it at the tale’s origin.

Exciting as the life of a sweeper was, weeks later I turned in the broom and pan for the greener, cleaner pasture of Admissions, where tickets were sold and taken long before advance online sales and barcode scanners existed. Our department’s uniforms came with two happy western shirts in bright orange and green, plus a 10-gallon hat that had me strutting like John Travolta when his movie, “Urban Cowboy,” was the rage in 1980. Five years later, serendipity allowed me to share that memory with Mr. Travolta when I covered the 57th Academy Awards.

While I’m namedropping, I met the one and only Barbra Streisand thanks to this job and the lovely, late Marion Knott. The youngest daughter of Knott’s Berry Farm founders Walter and Cordelia was giving the A-list celebrity a private tour of the park. Fortuitously, I was the attendant that night at a re-entry gate that once closed off Ghost Town from guests who didn’t pay for park admission. When the living legend approached my gate, Ms. Knott asked me to brand her guest with the now-obsolete re-entry handstamp. I believe “REIN” was the word of the day, and the green ink would show up under black light. Everyone planning to return to the park would stick out their hand to get stamped. Everyone but Babs, that is. Seizing on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I went rogue by taking her soft, perfectly manicured hand for the most excellent stamp ever. While gazing at my tattoo skills, she asked, “So, this will get me back in?” To which I responded, “I don’t think you’ll have a problem, Miss Streisand.”

Borrowing a lyric from the Association’s first No. 1 hit — I stamped that entire band as well — cherish is the word I use to describe my most bittersweet gate-based memory. I’m believed to be the last gate attendant to welcome Mr. Knott into his own park. On what wound up being my final morning shift at Knott’s, the man who helped bring joy to Southern California and boysenberries to the world came through the main re-entry gate an hour or so before opening, part of his routine as he lived right there on the grounds. Due to advancing Parkinson’s disease, which ultimately was his cause of his death, the Orange County legend appeared lifeless as a young nurse pushed his wheelchair. “Good morning, Mr. Knott,” I said with deep respect while opening what we called back then as the “handicap re-entry gate.” The San Bernardino-born farmer and inspiration to Walt Disney would die a few days later, on Dec. 3, 1981, just shy of his 92nd birthday.

Twenty years earlier to the week of Knott’s passing was my first visit to Knott’s Berry Farm at only 8 months old. Thanks to my father’s love for making 8mm home movies, there’s a 15-second-long, now-digitized visual memory of my mother pushing me in a stroller at the entrance of a year-old Calico Mine Ride. I can’t confirm this without a Ouija board, but chances are my parents took me on it, too. That would explain an urge to always be among the first to experience the new rides at Knott’s, be it Corkscrew, Parachute Sky Jump, Gasoline Alley, Knott’s Bear-y Tales (the OG version) or GhostRider, a world-class wooden coaster I took both boys on as soon as they met the 48-inch height requirement.

Now 29 and 27, my sons who have caught up to my current mental age when it comes to theme parks, said they enjoyed walking down memory lane with their old man on our guys’ day at Knott’s. They graced me by going on the Calico Railroad with a half-hour wait, shamed my putrid score on the reimagined 4-D version of Knott’s Bear-y Tales, and loved HangTime with its 90-degree ascent and ridiculously steep drop. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to getting misty-eyed over the three of us experiencing GhostRider together for the first time.

SEE ALSO: Knott’s Berry Farm hopes to reopen Xcelerator coaster this summer

Adult commitments prevented us from taking in Knott’s Scary Farm that evening, but we did get a fun-sized taste of an early Halloween thanks to the park’s daytime family-friendly version. I don’t recall whether I worked two or three Halloween Haunts, the original name of Knott’s frightening fall classic, but back in my day professional make-up artists and costume designers worked their macabre magic on us in Admissions. Since the event was always sold out, once ticket holders went through the gate we were allowed to go on “scare patrol.”

Few things in life are as much fun as sneaking up on unsuspecting souls as a bloody vampire in the dark shadows of Boot Hill Cemetery. On the flipside, nothing is more humiliating than slipping on a spilled Coke while chasing cuties in the middle of Ghost Town. Dracula down! Face-planted with a couple of scraped kneecaps, I lay on the road for several minutes like an undead nocturnal slug. Having my cape clumsily draped over my head was the cherry on top. Instead of a wooden stake, I was thrown a life preserver when a girl poked the small of my back to check if I were still alive, and that was my cue to jump up and scream like Frankenstein passing a stone. The hilarity of it all eclipsed the pain.

As my bestie Barbra would sing, these are the misty water-colored memories of the way we were. It’s kinda strange when you think about it — recollections of a part-time job dating back some 45 years that are so fond and vivid they feel like yesterday. Could Knott’s be my personal Rosebud from “Citizen Kane?” Time will tell. All I know is how wonderful it was to give my blood, sweat and tears of laughter to Knott’s Berry Farm.

Best job ever.