The Crank Shaft Story

                                                  The Crank Shaft Story

                                                             1964

                         A true story written 12/27/2010 and Re-written 04/24/2016

                                                       Howard Yasgar

               

    It was late in 1963, and here I was living in Miami Florida, and it looked like I was out of a job.

    My good friend Lou Gladstein had decided to close down his auto wrecking yard that he had invested in.

    A few months before, Lou had asked me to come to Miami to find out what was going on at his

wrecking yard. He had said that once I got the place straightened it out, I could stay there and manage the business.

    The auto wrecking yard was called ABC Auto Wrecking, and it was located on NW 46 Street very close to NW 37 Avenue in Miami.

    I had just gotten married back in  New Haven, and I was looking for something interesting to do.

    Lou and his wife Gladys both knew that, so they said that my going to Miami to help them would be like a honeymoon for me and my wife.

    They knew that my mother had also just leased a small hotel on Collins Avenue on Miami Beach, and our trip to Miami  would give us the opportunity to visit her.

    To make the proposed trip sound even better, Lou said he would let me use a nice 1959 Plymouth sedan, he had sitting on his used car lot in Stamford Connecticut.

    Not only would Lou provide me with the Plymouth to use, but I could use his Connecticut “Junk Dealer” license plate on it, which meant that I had liability insurance.

    It all sounded like a pretty good idea, so I did it.

    After my wife and I arrived in Florida, we spent a week in my mother’s hotel on Collins Avenue, then my wife and I moved into a house trailer located in a trailer park on NW 79 Street.

    Back then 79th street was pretty nice place, but today I don’t think you could walk down the street without getting mugged.

    Living at the 79 Street trailer park was a new experience for my wife and I, it only cost us $20.00 a week and we met all kinds of strange characters that were also living there.

    The location was good as the 79th Street trailer park was closer to Lou’s wrecking yard.

    I found that running the ABC Auto Wrecking yard was a lost cause.

    The manager Lou had hired was embezzling all the businesses money.

    When I first got there and met the manager, I recognized him from the old days, when I was in college and working part time at Milford Auto Wrecking in Connecticut.

    I was sure he also recognized me as well.

    His name was Dave, and he had a pretty lousy reputation even back in Connecticut.

    So I thought Lou must have been crazy for hiring him  as manager.

    By the time I got there, Dave had already pocketed the wrecking yard’s rent for the last six months,

and he was also was stealing most of the business receipts.

    Turns out Dave was quite a character.

    When I first arrived, Dave took me to see the wrecking yard landlord, her name was Mrs. Cunio.

    He told her that Lou had sent me down to pay all the back rent, I couldn’t believe he said that, talk about nerve.

     By the time I could prove the embezzling that Dave had been doing, a couple of months had passed, and it was way too late for me to try saving the business.

    Lou then decided to close the place down, but unfortunately I had already put $1000.00  of my own personal money in trying to straighten things out.

    The day I finally had all the proof I needed about what Dave was doing, I called Lou, who caught a night owl flight to Miami.

    I picked him up in the middle of the night at the Miami airport, and we drove to the wrecking yard.

    Lou, using a cutting torch and a pry bar, opened the office safe. There was no money in it, but we found the companies ledger book.

    Lou, felt terrible about it all, because  he knew he would have to close the wrecking yard down, and he would lose all his investment.

    I felt worse about it, as I was counting on the wrecking yard as being my new start in Florida.

    Now I had to make a tough decision, did we want to remain in Florida,  or should we return to Connecticut.

    It was a difficult decision to make as I had no income coming from either place.

    While I was involved with Lou’s wrecking yard, I met a Cuban auto parts dealer named Renato Cepero.

    Renato was a refugee who had started an automotive parts company on NW 27th Avenue in Miami.

    Renato had given me a list of the used crankshafts that he needed, and I still had the list in my pocket.

    I went to visit Renato to see if I could continue to sell him the used crankshafts he needed.

    The day I visited Renato at his store, I was impressed, I could see he was a very busy man.

    I watched him, as he was at the sales counter talking to someone in Spanish while holding the telephone to one ear.

    On his other ear he would be talking to another person in English.

    Anyway, Renato agreed to purchase any good used engine crank shafts that were on his list for

$15.00 each.

    So now, to make a living, all I had to do was find him some good used engine crankshafts that cost me less than fifteen dollars each.

    I knew that was not going to be an easy task.

    At the time, I was still driving around Miami with Lou’s 1959 Plymouth Sedan, the car with the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plates on it.

    Every morning I started out by driving around  Miami, I was looking for gas stations and garages that did engine work, and had a junk pile next to their building.

    I hoped that I could find some used crankshafts that were on Renato’s list.

    I would stop every time I saw a mechanics shop, and I would ask if I could take a look at their junk parts, and if I was lucky I would  find a good crankshaft that was on Renato’s list.

    I tried buying the crankshafts for five to ten dollars each.

    I found that dealing with red neck mechanics and gas station owners, was not an easy thing to do, most of them said they didn’t want to sell me their junk parts.

    They all would say they were saving the junk parts in case they needed them someday.

    So here I was, driving around Miami in 90 to 100 degree temperature and no air conditioning.

    While I was out looking for used crankshafts, my friend Lou had returned to Miami with a forty foot diesel work boat that he had purchased at an auction in Connecticut.

    He just called me one day, to tell me he had rented a boat slip on the Miami River, and that I should stop by to see him.

    When I went to see Lou and the boat, he told me, he wanted to build a flash freezer in it, and then take the boat to Haiti, and go into the frozen lobster tail business.

    I didn’t know where Haiti was, but I figured that Lou knew what he was doing. So now, every evening, after work, I stopped by the boat slip to help Lou work on the refrigeration.

    When Lou returned to Connecticut, it became my job to drive by the boat slip every evening to keep an eye on it.                    

    After another month dealing with all the gas station owners, I was worn out. I knew that I needed to find a better way of buying used crankshafts.

    So on one terribly hot summer day, just before I was ready to give it all up, I pulled over to the side of the road, and sat there, sweating, I was thinking.

    Then an idea struck me, like a revelation from God.

    I remembered that when I worked in a gas station in Connecticut, we would throw all our used engine parts on the side of our building. Then once a month we would load up our pickup truck and take all the metal to the local scrap iron yard and sell it.

    Here I was negotiating with the crazy gas station owners when they were all going to sell the stuff to a scrap metal yard sooner or later.

    Suddenly I became very excited, I was so excited that I stopped sweating.

   I drove right away to North West South River Drive in Miami, that’s where all the large Miami scrap iron junkyards were located.

    I went into the first big junkyard, it was called Metro Iron and Metal.

    I went in the office and introduced myself to the two managers.

    I asked them if I could look in their giant scrap iron pile and buy some used crank shafts.

    They asked how much I was paying and I said $3.50 each.

    I couldn’t believe it, they were ecstatic.

    It appears that $3.50 ea. was a lot more than they were getting if they shipped crankshafts to a steel mill as scrap.

    Also they knew I would be paying in cash, which they could just put in their pocket.

    I drove my car down to their huge scrap iron pile and immediately started pulling out good used crankshafts.

    As I stood there, I was watching as pickup truck after pickup from all the Miami gas stations were coming and dumping their junk engine parts.

    I even recognized some of them as the same gas station owners that said they wouldn’t sell their junk to me.

    Now I was really in the crankshaft business.

    Then one afternoon as I was driving the 1959 Plymouth, on North West 27th Avenue, a Miami motorcycle cop noticed the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plate on my car.

    He pulled me over and said that he wanted to see my license and my registration.

    Well there was no registration, and my driver’s license was from Connecticut.

    The officer said it was illegal for me to be working in Florida with a Connecticut driver’s license, and then he said that he had never seen Connecticut Junk Dealer Plates before, so he was impounding

The 1959 Plymouth.

    I hitch hiked home, and after two days of constantly calling the Miami police, they finally told me that the 1959 Plymouth I was driving was a stolen car, they said the engine numbers had been ground off.

   They also said that a Miami detective would be coming to see me shortly.

   I immediately called my friend Lou up in Connecticut.

   When I told Lou that the Police suspected the 1959 Plymouth he gave me to use was stolen. He said,

“That’s impossible, the Miami police were full of crap, and I shouldn’t worry about it.

    Then Lou said, that I could now drive his 1958 Ford station wagon that was parked at the boat slip,

he said that the keys were under the floor mat.

    Then Lou said, I should find out where the Plymouth was being held and I should go there and get the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plate off the car.

    I went and did exactly as Lou told me to do. I called the Police to find out where the impound yard was, and I went there and I explained to the cop on duty that I needed to retrieve my stuff from the Plymouths trunk.

    The Cop at the impound yard told me to take out whatever stuff I wanted, so I snapped off the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plate and I put it under my shirt.

    After that, I never heard another word from the Miami police regarding the stolen Plymouth, nor

did my friend Lou ever mention it again.

    I think it was lucky for me, that back in 1964, Miami police didn’t have a good computer system.

    I was now driving Lou’s 1958 Ford station wagon and I suspected it was a stolen car as well.

    I started doing better business, I was now buying crankshafts from all the large scrap metal dealers in Miami.

    They would all allow me to drive my car down to their iron scrap piles and I could pull out whatever crankshafts I wanted.

    In each yard there was a crane operator, who piled up all the scrap iron as it came in.

    I always made sure I was nice to them, so every day I gave them a $2.00 Tip.

    That way they were always happy to pull a crankshaft out of the pile if it was too hard for me to reach.

     When I had first started looking for crankshafts, I was lucky if I could find one or two every day, now, I was able to find between five and ten crankshafts every day.

    Things were going well and I was doing OK.

    One morning I drove in a scrap yard in Miami Springs, that’s where I noticed something going on that I had never seen before.

    There was a team of about six black guys taking apart automobile engines.

    They had their own pickup truck with an air compressor mounted on it and they were using air tools

To take engines apart.

    I walked over to the fellow that looked like the boss, and I asked him what he was doing.

    He said that he charged the junkyards .75 cents each to take an engine apart, he said that he and his team of men traveled to all the scrap yards around the state of Florida.

    He said they spent one to three days in every scrap yard taking engines apart.

    I asked him, that if I pointed out a few engines to him would he take out and put aside the crankshafts for me? He said that for $1.00 each, he would do it.

    The following week, as usual I was making my rounds of the scrap yards.

    I drove into Metro Iron and Metal Company, and I said good morning to the managers.

    Then I drove into the scrap yard and down to the scrap iron pile.

    I was surprised to see the same group of black guys  disassembling engines there, it was apparent they were the same guys I had met in the Miami Springs scrap yard.

    I thought that was fantastic, so I went to the engine pile and started to mark the engines I wanted them to take apart for me.

    That’s when I heard a loud booming voice yell at me, “Hold on, that’s my engine”.

    I had no idea where the voice came from, until I looked up on top of the engine pile, and there sitting near the top was the biggest black guys that I ever saw..

   I watched as the big fellow gingerly made his way down to me from where he was sitting.

   As he got closer, I could see he was blind in one eye.

  He warily looked me over with his good eye, and I could see he was thinking about what to say to me.

    He shook my hand and said, his name was Charlie.

    Charlie said he followed the group of engine dismantlers, as they traveled from scrap yard to scrap

yard. and they took out all the crankshafts he wanted.

    Charlie said he had been doing this for quite a few years, he was in the used crankshaft business just like me. He then said that I was, infringing on his territory.

    I quickly realized that if I were to continue getting used crankshafts, I would have to use some good psychology, and try to work something out with Charlie, I knew it would do me no good to get into an argument with him.

    Here I was thinking that I had  discovered an easy method of getting good used crankshafts, and Charlie had been doing it a long time before me.

    That day, I watched Charlie, to see exactly how he operated.

    He would always give the magnetic crane operator a $10.00 tip.

    That way Charlie just pointed to the engines he wanted, and the crane operator would pull them gingerly out of the engine pile. Then the team of guys would take the engine apart, and Charlie gave those guys $1.00 for each engine they took apart for him.

    I could see that Charlie had every aspect of the used crankshaft business under his control.

    I politely asked Charlie, if he would let me take about five crankshafts a day, for my customer, and he could keep all the rest for himself.

    I know he didn't like it, but he agreed and we shook hands.

    For me, it was a good deal, I could stop by once a day and take the crankshafts I needed, and Charlie could still sit way up on top of the engine pile, all day long, acting like he was the boss.

    After a few weeks, working under this system, Charlie and I became pretty good friends, and I started bringing him a sandwich for lunch.

    By the end of 1964, several things happen. I was buying into a rebuilding company called Automotive Parts Industries, and my customer Renato Cepero lost his order for crankshafts.

    So now I was officially out of the crankshaft business.

    I went to the scrap yard to tell Charlie that he no longer had to save any crankshafts for me, but

he wasn’t there.

    I went to his house and it was completely empty, he was gone, his girlfriend was gone, and even the furniture was gone.

    I never saw Charlie again.  

      

    

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