This guy's not your average doughnut man...
spartan daily feature
september 29, 1982
He’s more than a doughnut man. “I’m a painter, an artist, and a happy man,” says Giovanni Clifton Panciera, who is easily recognizable as the long haired, beret-capped character who sells Cokes and cookies in front of Clark Library.
“Hey! How’s it goin’?” he asks a student who wanders by his food stand with a dollar.
“Okay.”
“Got some real good stuff today – I know I’m sellin’ it!” he said with a laugh.
Making people laugh and smile is more than just a habit with Panciera. “I look at it this way,” he said. “If I can make someone smile and have a good day, I’ve done my job. And I’m good at my job.”
Panciera sat perched upon an old milk carton with a yellow pillow for a cushion. As he talked, his hands moved constantly, as if trying to make a point by themselves.
People walk up to his stand and talk to him, long hair and short hair alike, and ask for opinions on subjects as diverse as politics, life, and SJSU.
“I feel like a counselor,” he says. “These people are my friends.”
In a way, they are the friends Panciera didn’t have during his teenage years.
At the age of 12, his natural mother sold him for $75 to his present parents. “She couldn’t stand me, I was always a pain in the ass,” Panciera said. “I never knew what true love was until I lived with my step-parents.”
“Panciera had troubles in high school, graduating when he was 20. “I was in school so long, they almost made me a desk,” he joked, trying to avoid the subject.
A ‘butterfly'
Yet Panciera is a man who worships butterflies. “Butterflies are so great.”
And for Panciera, his story resembles that of the never-satisfied butterfly.
After his June 14, 1963, high school graduation (“A day I’ll never forget”) he traveled across the country, working as a roadie for a rock group, (The Telstars), busing tables and “generally hanging out.”
But he took his talent in art and put it to use.
'Trashman’
“I was a trashman (garbage collector) in Washington, D.C. and I took stuff out of the garbage and used them for art sculptures and other things,” Panciera said. “Hell, people throw away such good stuff.”
Then he had a grand inspiration. “I decided I was gonna build a fountain in my living room,” he said, “so I worked for nine weeks in a boarded-up apartment in D.C. I used 3,000 pounds of sand and managed to put 27 stitches in my hand blasting the sand. I wanted to finish it before my birthday.”
And finish it he did. Panciera had a picture folder with him, revealing photos of an opulent living room he had built in Washington. In it he is sitting, a wide grin on his face. He is surrounded by flowers and pools of water, with a fountain behind him.
He had stories written about him, and he adopted the pseudonym of the “Trashman.”
He secured a job with Klein’s in New York as an interior decorator, but was unhappy. “I was making about $27,000 a year,” he said. “But I wasn’t happy. The rat race, the pressures, and especially the people I worked with all started to make me a nervous wreck.”
It was at this time (1964) that he had marital troubles. “She was too young for marriage, and so was I,” he said. “She left me with 80 cents in the bank and thousands of dollars in debt.” She also took his child, who he has rarely seen since.
His second marriage was even worse. “I saw this woman talk down the stairs and thought, “Wow! This has to be it,” Panciera said.
She was a former Miss Virginia Beauty Pageant contestant who took him away from the New York life and led him to California. He left behind his friends, the fountain, his job and his family.
“I wanted to be free from all the pressures, and I wanted to paint,” he said. “I also wanted to paint something grand for her, to show her my love.”
His love offer was to paint a nine foot background in the St. Joseph’s Church in Mountain View. But then, the bubble burst.
“She left me, and I still think about her sometimes, and I wonder where she is…” he said with a soft note in his voice. “But, that’s all in the past.”
Panciera today
Now he sits on the SJSU campus and spreads love and happiness with a smile. He wakes every morning at 5. “I love it… the sun is coming up, there’s no one around and I can just walk down the street and relax.”
After two hours of loading his car, he sits outside and sells his wares, along with his unique personality.
“Hello! What can I do you out of?” he asks of a student wearing a fancy suit standing with a few coins in her hand.
“I’m a few cents short for a doughnut,” she says.
He took a coin out of his pocket and tossed it in the box. "There you go, enjoy,” he said.
“I love my job,” he said. “People come to eat, to talk. What other job in the world is like it?"
He says he’ll stay as long as he’s wanted. “I love California, but it’s not my home. I love the art, the people, and the sense of nature, though. This is more me. Back east, they worry about money and status. Not me… I’m into happiness.
His customers reacted well to him, some surprised, some friendly and all looking at the suspender-suited man enjoying himself and making people smile.
He said he also feels strange sometimes. “I walk into the Pub and people look at me and they must think some strange things. I do feel embarrassed. But, that’s me, and I’m not gonna change,” he said defiantly.
At 39, his hair is beginning to thin. Gray speckles are forming around the temples and his eyes have more wrinkles than he’d like to admit.
When talking about another butterfly in his life – his mother – Panciera’s eyes begin to tear openly.
“She was a beautiful lady,” he said. “She died last May 20. My father had a plane ticket for me to go out and see her, but I arrived on the 26th.”
“I had carved a cane for her, but by the time I got there, it was too late…” he said, his voice trailing off, his hands unabashedly wiping away tears.
“I miss her every day,” he said. “She was my butterfly, my angel. Every day I stop and smell a flower for her. Some guy watching me must think I’m trying to get a buzz-on or something!”
Job and Friends
But he’s happy. “Hey, I’ve got my friends. If you have your friends, no one can take them away from you. I’ve got 20 sets of suspenders, a good roommate, a job that keeps me happy… what can they take away from me?”
He is a man with plans, though.“I’m thinking of doing a gig at Nickelino’s in Sonnyvale as a stand-up comic,” he said. "I’d rather think of myself as a personality, not as a comic, though.
“I’ve done it once before. You see that electric cord in the wall? That’s where the vibrator was plugged in. Man, I was shaking all over while I was doing it (performing live).”
He’s also an avid SJSU-football fan. "I work out with the guys once in a while, watch them practice. I’m so proud of them and the way they beat Stanford. That’s another thing about my job. I see the players and they come to me and talk. They make me feel like a superstar… me, a doughnut vendor!”
His job and his friends mean a lot to him. But he is also a man that is at peace with his Lord. “If I had to die tomorrow, I know the Lord would come down here and say, ‘Gio, lets smoke one last number and get high, and then we’ll go.’ ”
“And you know what? I’d go gladly.”
