I knew the guy at the hot dog stand was retiring in a few days so I went to get a Deluxe Dog and talk him into a story on how he spent 18 years standing under an umbrella in the parking lot at Mendo Mill.
The first one (the dog) was easy. Getting to talk with Jose Ramirez was a more difficult bit of business because it was noon and his stand is a popular lunch spot.
Jose hardly has time to hand out a dog, each wrapped in a bun and then a sheet of foil, next make change, point out the condiments and get to the next customer without having to pause to discuss his restaurant career.
And once I got to talk with him I still couldn’t talk with him because when he found out it was for The Ukiah Daily Journal he popped out from behind the table, hurried to his Ford pickup and pulled a slim folder from the door pocket. (Meanwhile, a guy back at the counter holding a foil-wrapped sausage in one hand and ten dollar bill in the other stood waiting.)
Jose held the packet in both hands and proudly showed it: A 2006 front page UDJ feature with a color photo and story celebrating Jose Ramirez and his new hot dog business at Mendo Mill, under a byline of some reporter named K.C. Meadows.
The fresh-looking color print was in the kind of protective shield a doctor displays his Stanford degree, or a photo of you and the family at Grand Canyon.
But it was an old newspaper clipping, and Jose cherished as if it were a proclamation honoring him for his 18 years selling dogs, telling jokes, singing songs and keeping the customers satisfied. He hasn’t an actual proclamation, but with very little encouragement he did break into song: a lusty version of “Cielito Lindo” which you and I know as “Aye-Yi-Yi-Yiii, No Time for Sorrow…” More or less.
Jose and I belted it out in “harmony” until dogs howled and customers fled Mendo Mill with their hands over their ears. Just kidding. Jose sings like the King of Karaoke; I sing like someone not allowed to sing.
Next, an elderly gent took a seat on a folding chair adjacent to Jose’s canopied shop, polished off a sausage and chips, then opened his wallet to pay. Jose waved both the fellow and his money off. A free lunch? You can do that kind of thing when tomorrow’s your last day in business.
He’s had a great run for all those years, he says, having met nice people who became regular customers, then turned into good friends.
It’s been quite a career in the restaurant business; he even got to meet a genuine movie star. While crews filmed “Sharp Objects” at a big old house in Redwood Valley, Jose had his hot dog stand ready for lunches and snacks.
During the filming he couldn’t help but be charmed by Amy Adams, the star of the show. “She was just so pretty,” he says, looking up dreamy-eyed and sighing. “I could hardly even talk to her.” Another sigh, or two.
She may also have been smitten by the young (at the time barely 75) and handsome entrepreneur, and impressed by his fabulous singing. Alas, their relationship never blossomed; dreams of the pair on the cover of People Magazine withered in the passing weeks.
But a happy ending: One hot day she called an ice cream truck and it came out to the big house on East Road and parked in the driveway. All the movie folks including Jose got in line for free treats, courtesy of Amy Adams. Ahh, fame and fortune, who needs it? The paparazzi alone would drive anyone crazy.
And Jose might have been tempted to move to LA and open his stand outside Warner Bros. studios; luckily he stayed here and remained the most popular hot dog vendor in all of northern Ukiah.
At least “Most popular” until he retires, and he has. It’s not that he’s tired of the work but more the inevitable changes in life.
“I need to help my wife because she has health problems,” he said. “I’m going to stay home to take care of her.”
First he’ll get the house they’ve owned on South Dora for 27 years ready to sell, so they can move to a smaller place in Santa Rosa. And when they settle in Jose said he will devote time to his hobbies: Singing, drawing, painting, and collecting coins, baseball cards and antiques. And watch a bit of TV, though the only programs he could name are the Olympics and the Miss America Pageant.
And maybe on weekends or for special events he’ll take his hot dog business on the road. He’s already thinking of the Redwood Valley Pumpkin Patch and various things scheduled in Santa Rosa.
He just can’t help it. “All my life I’ve been a workaholic,” he says. “I’ve had restaurants in Healdsburg, Santa Rosa and Boonville. I thought maybe I’d open one in Alaska but when I started driving it was too far north, so I stopped in Ukiah,” he jokes. His Mexican restaurant here was called Pico de Gallo.
Jose once opened a second hand shop on South State Street called 3B Thrift, where he developed a system in which the profits were basically 100 percent.
“People would give me things they didn’t want and I would take them to my shop and sell them for a few dollars. And then when I heard someone needed something, like a small refrigerator or a couch, I’d give them what I had.”
To augment his shop’s modest earnings Jose set up a hot dog stand out front, and it was an immediate hit. Problem: “I’d be busy running the hot dog stand while people were going into my thrift store and stealing things. I was the only one working and I couldn’t manage the store and the stand.
“I guess it was kind of funny, but it really wasn’t,” he said, chagrined but trying to sound amused. “I’d be fixing a hot dog and they’d be stealing my DVDs or old VHS player.”
From there it was on to 18 years in Mendo Mill’s parking lot; final day was Sept. 6.
Being a veteran journalist, I of course demanded to know exactly how many hot dogs had he sold in those 18 years.
Jose stared as if he didn’t understand the question, but his son nearby said “A quarter million!”
“OK, good,” I said. “Next question: precisely how many bags of chips did you sell in 18 years?
Son: “Two quarters of a million!”
Excellent. Readers today want complete, accurate information.
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