Doyel: Sign holder puts his heart into job

GREENWOOD — Best part of this story? He's a secret. My secret. He's a guy I've been watching for months — saw him the first day I moved to the Southside — strutting on the street, dancing and spinning for pay bordering on minimum wage.

His name is Joshua Jones, and he's a sign holder. One of those guys you see outside a pawn shop, wearing a sandwich board by the side of the road. Most of them look bored. Any idea how good you have to be as a sign holder, how decisively not bored, to get your name in the paper?

Be as good as Joshua Jones.

I was hit by the idea a few weeks ago, driving past Indiana Gold Refinery on U.S. 31, where he was dancing on the curb, making magic with his sandwich board: This guy's a story. Whoever he is, he shouldn't be my secret. People should know.

So I started watching him. Parked in the Eyeglass World next door, sat in the shade. Watching him. And it didn't take long to realize something.

He's not my secret. He's not a secret at all.

That makes the story even better.

****

His mom needs him.

We could stop right there, and that would be all you need to know about Joshua Jones and the pride he takes as he straps on that sandwich board — "Cash for Gold," it says on the front and the back — and heads for the curb on U.S. 31 near County Line Road.

Her name is Mary, Mary Jones, and for 30 years she worked at Community South Hospital, about a half-mile from the spot where her son wears the sandwich board. She started as a certified nursing assistant, helping patients eat and get to the restroom, and she was like Joshua. She took pride in her work.

"My mom was a CNA," he tells me. "But she got promoted to clinical technician. She got a raise."

She did missionary work in Puerto Rico, too. Went to bible school in Ozark, Mo. She's worked hard her whole life, is my point, but she's 66 and retired, and now her body is rebelling. High blood pressure. Trouble walking. Trouble breathing. She sleeps sitting up, and even though Mary tells him not to worry, Joshua can't help but check on her through the night.

He lives with his mom in an apartment on the Southside.

"I finally got her to start going to the doctor last year," Joshua says. "She got medications to help with her blood pressure and breathing. I help her. Well, we help each other."

Joshua was a senior at Greenwood High in 2001 when he dropped out. Had a girlfriend, but they broke up. Crushed him. So he stopped going.

"I wasn't thinking how it would mess me up to drop out," he says. "I was just thinking: It hurts too much to see you every day."

He's worked odd jobs ever since. Name a fast-food place in Greenwood, and Joshua has probably worked there. Washed dishes at O'Charley's. Ran the buffet at Pizza Hut. Opened the restaurant in the morning. Had his own key to the store.

Jobs like that, they come and go. He needed work last June when he saw the sign in front of Indiana Gold Refinery. Help wanted. Sign holder.

"Well," Joshua Jones thought to himself, "I can do that."

Better than anybody you've ever seen.

****

The first time a car stops, I'm caught off-guard. What's this? Why is that man getting out of a Chevy Silverado and walking up to Joshua Jones? In the parking lot of Eyeglass World, I perk up.

To now, Jones has been doing his thing. He wears the same outfit most days: Faded green Seahawks cap, white earphones, dark sunglasses. T-shirt, baggy shorts, tennis shoes. Black gloves, the better to grip the sandwich board. He's walking about 75 feet north, shaking the "Cash for Gold" sign in time to whatever music is in those earphones — we'll go there in a minute — and then turning the other way.

But he doesn't just turn. He kicks his feet out like he's doing the jig, and his gloved hands swoop the sign low and into a circle. It's charismatic, devoting this much passion and effort to your job, and apparently the guy in the Silverado agrees.

Because he's handing Joshua Jones a bottle of water.

The guy's gone in moments, but it happens again a few days later. This was a gold sedan, a Buick I'm thinking, and the woman gives Josh a drink and leaves. She's gone before I can get there, so I head for the Indiana Gold Refinery shop.

It's time to meet Joshua Jones' boss. Understand, I don't even know Joshua's name yet. Haven't talked to him, just watched him on U.S. 31. But I've been listening to people honk, watching them wave as they drive past, and now people are stopping to give him water? What's happening here? I go inside and meet one of the chain's co-owners, Steve Pierle. Give him my name. Tell him my story idea.

These are the first words out of Steve Pierle's mouth:

"He's almost inhuman," Pierle says. "That little motion he does is nonstop. It wears me out sometimes just sitting here, watching him. I have to get on him to take a break."

The cash-for-gold business is like so many others. It's taken a hit, and Pierle's advertising budget is down to one line item: Whatever he's paying Joshua Jones. I ask Pierle: What he's doing out there, is it working?

"You saw him, didn't you?" Pierle tells me. "Nobody misses him."

Pierle says there was interest in the job when it came open 14 months ago, but the competition was over after Joshua applied.

"He wanted it so badly," Pierle says. "He told me he'd do a good job, and I believed him."

When it's raining, Pierle has to chase Jones inside. When it was too cold in January, he told him not to report to work. When Jones showed up anyway, Pierle bought him lined coveralls.

Pierle is telling me solid-gold stuff, but I need him to stop talking. Because I need to get onto that curb and meet Joshua Jones.

****

He sees me coming, and he's smiling at me. Figures I'm another nice Southsider. Joshua Jones has seen so much out here on U.S. 31, so much that would restore your faith in humanity. People bringing him cold water in the summer, hot chocolate in the winter. A woman who spotted him on her trip to Baskin-Robbins brought him a chocolate shake.

Another woman gave him a $20 bill.

Joshua Jones tells me this after I tell him who I am, what I want, what his boss is saying about him.

"Thank you," he says, earnest and guileless, this 33-year-old man almost childlike. "You guys make me feel so good."

He tells me he walks to work, walks to the store, walks anywhere his mom needs him to go. After 14 months on the job he has his methods, like stopping at the Speedway across the street for a cup of ice and mustard packets for the salami-and-cheese sandwich his mom makes him every day. He buys a bag of honey-roasted peanuts and puts it in his pocket, something to dig into throughout the day.

The headphones are attached to a knockoff Walkman radio he tunes to what he calls "happy hip-hop," any station that will play A Tribe Called Quest or Kendrick Lamar.

"And the Beastie Boys," he says. "They get me going."

Joshua Jones tells me there is a difference between good batteries and cheap ones; he can get four days out of a couple Duracell AAA's. He tells me that other shops, the kind that sell jewelry from strip malls, have tried to hire him away from Indiana Gold Refinery. One man pulled into the parking lot and offered him a job selling garage doors. Jones has never been tempted to say yes.

"I really like my job a lot," he tells me, and on cue a car drives past and honks, and Joshua waves. He starts shaking his sign again — he's not being paid to talk to the newspaper guy — and thanks me before heading 75 feet north on U.S. 31.

"This makes me feel really great about myself," he says. "It makes me happy that people appreciate what I do, because I try so hard."

We see that, Joshua. Believe me. It's no secret.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.