The George Lustig and the Cognac Story
1975
A true
story about my friend George in Chicago
Written
1/2012 Re-written 05/02/2016
Howard Yasgar
As I
go through life I have met several people that I can say they were real “Characters”.
I can tell you George Lustig was one of
those people.
George lived and worked in Chicago, and
in 1975 he was buying and selling large quantities of excess automotive and truck
parts.
George was what was known in the industry
as a “Surplus parts dealer”.
He had started out as a young man
attending government surplus auctions in Chicago and eventually he hooked up
with a fellow named Bobby Keene and they began dealing in commercial truck
parts.
That’s was what George Lustig was doing
when I met him.
If
you can, please read (The George Lustig and the pipe bender story).
In 1956, when I was living in New Haven
Connecticut, I had gotten involved in the buying and selling of surplus in a
small way. Because of this, I had the privilege of meeting several larger surplus
dealers that were operating in my home town of New Haven and also in New York
City.
What I had learned dealing with them, was that
after WW2, around 1950, when the sources of military related surplus material began
slowing down, all the surplus dealers started looking for other sources of excess
surplus material.
Many of them eventually moved into the
commercial parts market place where they found that excess merchandise could be
bought cheaply from all the large factories.
So
by 1974, I was setting up two companies in Miami, one was API Marine and the
other company was Rebuilders Supply of Miami.
Rebuilders supply sold automotive
electrical parts both in the U.S. and also for export.
It
wasn’t long before the demand for our products outstripped our ability to
supply the export market. We needed to find a good source of excess surplus automotive parts.
Several friends told me that some the surplus
dealers were in business in the Chicago area. I was told that I should contact
a company called Fleet Supply, and ask for a fellow named George Lustig, which I
did.
I called
George and eventually went to meet him in Chicago.
His Company was called Fleet Supply and was
located on Canal Street.
George had a very large warehouse that
was just loaded with lots of new automotive and truck surplus parts.
For
me, finding Fleet Supply was like finding a gold mine, so as time went by, my
relationship with George Lustig became just as nice as it could be, and George appeared
to be thrilled to have found a new customer from Florida.
Over
the next year or so, I visited Fleet Supply many times, buying everything he
had that suited our business.
I think we had become a good customer for George.
So,
one day in the winter of 1975, I was walking through George’s warehouse, in
Chicago looking at all the wonderful new surplus items he had acquired.
As I was walked around the warehouse, I bumped
into another customer who was from Texas.
The Texas fellow was doing the same as I
was, but he was buying different items than I was.
The
Texan, looked to be 35 years old, just about my age.
He wore cowboy boots, cowboy hat, and he
had a big silver belt buckle. There was no question this guy was a real Texan.
We were both walking around George’s warehouse
together, each of us picking out the items we wanted.
By
late that afternoon after we had both finished finding everything we wanted.
That’s when George invited us to follow him
into the break room, it was a room which was located in the back of his warehouse.
Just before we entered the break room,
George opened up a door into what appeared to be a storage closet.
Standing in there was a large metal bakers
rack, that was about 4 feet wide and about 5 feet tall with 6 shelves on it.
Each of the shelves contained assorted boxes
of expensive cologne’s and perfumes, I also recognized several bottles of
expensive whiskeys and several bottles of what appeared to be some kinds of expensive
looking wine.
As I looked, I couldn’t help but notice on
the bottom shelf was what appeared to be
a
some kind of liquor.
The
reason I noticed it because the bottle was a darker color than the rest, and it
had a bent neck. I had never seen a liquor bottle with a bent neck before. That
bent neck made it stand out from all the other bottles on the rack.
The bent neck bottle also appeared to
have a handwritten label on it.
George
quickly stepped in front of the rack and said, “Fellows, I would like you to take
whatever you want, as my gift to you”.
That really bothered me, when he said
that, and actually I was a little insulted that he would be offering me an
expensive gift.
I felt like it was a bribe he was giving us to do
business with him.
I told George that while I appreciated his
generosity, I thought that instead of offering me an expensive gift, he should
lower his prices on what I had bought from him.
I could see the Texan agreed with me and
neither of us took anything off the bakers rack.
Our not accepting a gift, didn’t appear to
bother George at all, and he said, “Come on guys follow me into the break room,
I have something I want you to taste”.
He then
motioned for us to have a seat at a table.
The table was like a long picnic bench
with an oilcloth on it.
As I sat down on the back side of the table,
the Texan was sitting across from me.
George
said, “I want you guys to try something very special”, and he put two whiskey
glasses on the table in front of us.
George then went to an upper cupboard in
the break room and very gently took out a bottle of Cognac.
It was identical to the bottle I had seen
on the lower shelf of the bakers rack, and it had the same bent neck and
handwritten label.
George poured each of us a shot glass full of the
liquor.
He
said, “This is some of the finest and most expensive Cognac available, I had imported
a case of twelve bottles that were shipped to me direct from Cognac France,
each bottle cost me $800.00”.
George
handed me the bottle and I could see it had a special hand written label on it.
The label had some kind of story
written by hand in cursive French writing, and I could see that Georges name
and the date were also written on it. George had said that the Cognac was made
exclusively for him in Cognac France.
I lifted my glass, and I quickly drank the
Cognac.
It was possibly the worst thing I had
ever tasted. I don’t know how I kept my composure, but I knew George was
watching us, so I gritted my teeth and managed a smile.
But I watched the face of the Texan
sitting across from me and I thought he was going to throw up.
Unseen by George, the Texan’s face was contorting
in every possible way.
“Now wasn’t that really good” George asked?
Both the Texan and I nodded in agreement,
but I saw the Texan was crossing his eyes
as he looked at me.
George
went on to say, “That Cognac should be good after costing me $800.00 a bottle.
Plus the cost of shipping it here to Chicago.
George then went on and told us a cute story
about how he had kept in his liquor bar at home, one of the $800.00 bottles of
Cognac.
He
said it was in a locked cabinet, and it was protected inside a sealed cardboard
sleeve.
George
said he was saving that bottle of expensive Cognac for a special occasion.
One day, when the special occasion came, and
after George had finished telling his guests all about how expensive the bottle
of Cognac was, he removed the bottle from the cardboard sleeve, only to find the
bottle was empty.
It
appears that every week when his maid came to clean his apartment, she took a
nip or two, and over a period of time she had emptied the entire $800.00 bottle
of Cognac.
It
was a funny story.
That
evening as we were leaving Georges warehouse, I mentioned to him that I had
noticed his last $800.00 bottle of Cognac that was sitting on the lower shelf
of the bakers rack
I
asked George, what would have happened if when he offered me anything on the bakers
rack, and I had picked the bottle of Cognac with the bent neck.
George
got very quiet. He was thinking, then he said, “I would have given it to you”.
I should have told George that I wouldn’t
want that bottle of Cognac even if he paid me to take it, but I didn’t say
anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment