Monday, April 7, 2014

The Chinita Story


                                                    The Chinita Story
                                                               1985
                                                          A true story
                                      written 02/05/2014 Re-written 7/29/2016
                                                        Howard Yasgar


      In 1985, I had the good fortune to have a Cuban friend named Miguel Marquez. Miguel was a refugee that had escaped from Cuba in 1964, and he came to work for me
just a few days after arriving in the United States.
     Miguel and his family had lived on a small island just off the North coast of Cuba.
The island was called Cayo Coco.
     Miguel had five brothers, and three sisters.
     There was Manuel, Mongo, Jorge, Ricardo and Rudolpho, and then Marcia, Rosa and Mercedes.
     Miguel told me they all lived on Cayo Coco in a big farm house with a palm frond thatched roof.
     Being curious, I asked Miguel what he did with a thatched roof when it rained hard and the roof leaked.
     Miguel said they simply moved their beds to a dry spot.
     Most of the entire Marquez family had thought that Fidel Castro taking over Cuba would be a good thing, but as we all know it didn’t turn out that way.  
     The problems started when his youngest brother Rudolpho was conscripted by the government to fight Castro.
     He was machine gunned down by Castro’s forces, never to walk again.
     Then there was Miguel’s brother Ricardo, he tried to escape in a boat, and he was caught and sentenced to prison for eight years.
     Eventually Miguel and the family decided to try and escape from Cuba.
     They all did it with the exception of Miguel’s sister Rosa, as she had married a Communist, and his brother Mongo who was involved in something  and didn’t want to go, however Mongo eventually came over on the Mariel Boat lift in 1980.
     As soon as Miguel arrived in America he came to work for me, we quickly became friends.
     I started to teach Miguel English and in return he taught me his Cuban Spanish.
     By 1985, almost all Miguel’s family were living in Miami and my wife and I were treated as if we were part of their family group.
     We would attend all the family functions, and parties.
     Miguel  had taught me enough Spanish, so I had no problem talking with everyone.
     By 1985, my wife Katherine and I were traveling back and forth to the Dominican Republic, we were trying to establish a business importing Amber  that was mined there.
     One evening we were attending a party at Miguel’s house, and we mentioned to several people that we would be in the Dominican Republic the following week.
     Miguel’s brother Ricardo, known as “Rico” overheard our conversation and he asked us if we would do him a favor when we were there.
    We said certainly we would be happy to, what, do you want us to do for you?
     He looked at me kind of sheepishly and he said “Chinita” I need you to bring back as much Chinita as you can.
     I knew that in Spanish, Chinita meant a little Chinese girl.
     I knew Rico couldn’t be asking us to bring home some  Chinese girls, so I asked,
what the hell is Chinita?
     Rico held up his thumb and forefinger, sort of like he was holding a little bottle or vial. He looked at me so my wife Katherine shouldn’t see or hear what he was saying.
     In Spanish he said it was “Un liquido para sexo”, a liquid for sex.
     I replied to Ricardo in Spanish, a liquid for sex, I had never heard of it.
     Oh yes, Rico exclaimed, “you put a little liquid on you, and you are good for the whole evening”.
     What the hell is it, Novocain, I asked?  No, No, he said it’s not medicine, it is a special herb grown in the Dominican Republic.
     Rico, and everyone else that had overheard the conversation were now laughing.
     I never had heard of Chinita before and they were  probably thinking how dumb can this guy be, everyone knew what Chinita was.
     So the next week my wife Katherine and I were in the Dominican Republic.
     We had landed in the capitol city of Santo Domingo, and rented a car to drive to the city of Santiago where we were working there with a dealer in amber.
     Back in 1985, Santiago was a sleepy town with a small park in the center, it was just like any small town in America.
     As we were obviously Americans, so we could sit on a shaded park bench and eventually we would be approached by every salesman and huckster in town trying to
sell us something.
     I discretely asked a couple of them where I could get Chinita.
     They chuckled and they said all the street vendors in town had it.  
     By the time we were done with our business, and we had gone to a restaurant for lunch, it was about one in the afternoon, which was siesta time for all the locals.  
     My wife and I started walking down the main street.
     However, we saw that all the larger stores were closed, and all the street vendors were
now resting, taking their siesta.
     Most of them were lying down in the shady doorways of the larger retail stores.
     We noticed that many street vendors had been displaying their wares on the sidewalks by using blankets, they now had now pulled them off the sidewalks and into the doorways with them for siesta.
     So that afternoon, Katherine and I were the only people walking on the side walk.
     It was an eerie feeling, the main street of Santiago was dead silent, not even a car went by, I think it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.
     Katherine and I walked silently up the street trying to not disturb any of the napping vendors.
     I noticed in one doorway there was a small chubby kid sitting next to a blanket with all kinds of trinkets on it, and he wasn’t napping. He was just sitting there and staring at us.
    What the hell, I thought, so I went over to him and asked him in my best Spanish if he had any Chinita.
      He looked at me like he didn’t understand what I had said, or perhaps like he didn’t expect an American to be asking him for Chinita.
     So I asked him a second time and his face lit up.
     He said “No tengo”, that meant, no I don’t have it, so I asked him if he knew where I could buy some.
     The little chubby guy, couldn’t have been more than  eight years old got up and motioned us to follow him.
    We followed him as he went out into the middle of the street.
    Then, in  the loudest voice I ever heard, he yelled, “Los Americano’s care Chinita.”
    That meant the Americans want Chinita.
    He was walking down the main street yelling it at the top of his lungs.
    My wife Katherine was so embarrassed that I think she shrunk to half her size.
    Yes, we finally found Chinita for Ricardo they only wanted 50 cents for a small glass vial with a plastic screw cap.
    I bought  I Rico three or four of them.
    I smelled and tasted it, it was just like oil of cloves.
    I told the vendors it was for a friend in Miami, they snickered and said “Si”   
    Anyway Rico was happy, and I bet the vendors in Santiago are still talking about the Americanos that needed the sexual aid Chinita.
         


             
              

The Making Money Story

                                                    The Making Money Story
                                                                  1955
                                                        Written 3/3/2014

                                                          Howard Yasgar

     Back around 1955, I had just gotten my drivers license and I thought I was the luckiest guy in the whole world, but I had no money.

     I was living in the suburb of Westville Connecticut and going to Hillhouse high school in New Haven at the time.

     My cousin Allen, who was the son of my mom’s sister Adele, was about a year younger than I was, and we were both shared an interest in anything to do with automobiles, and because of this we often hung around together working on cars in my backyard.

     One day Allen told me he had found a job at a local gas station and he said that they needed more part time help.

      Since I had just gotten my drivers license and had just purchased a green 1940 Ford convertible, what could be better than a part time job in a gas station. My old Ford used

gas and a lot of oil.

      The gas station was owned by Gulf Oil Company and located on the corner of Whalley Ave and Emerson Street in Westville. It was just about 10 blocks from my home if I ever had to walk there.

      The station was being managed by a fellow named Tony Navarro, who was a Korean War veteran.

      Tony had been at the battle of the Chosin reservoir in Korea. He said he was returning from a patrol, and he could only watch from a hill top as the North Korean soldiers climbed into the Red Cross trucks and killed every one of his buddies.

      Naturally Tony was never quite the same after seeing that.

      Tony said he needed me to help pump gas and do odd jobs. Those were the days when gas station attendants actually washed every ones car windows and checked your water and oil, and air in your tires.

      The Whalley Avenue gas station had an office and two bays. In one bay it had an air operated lift so we could lift up the cars and lubricate them, or change the oil.

      Once we had a car in the air, we could also fix any exhaust problems, as well as check the oil level in the differential.

       I thought the air operated lift was like a gift from heaven as I could put my own car up in the air and play with it every time Tony wasn’t around.

       We had a nice office with a metal desk and wood chair and a back room where there was the air compressor and several cases of oil and Coca Cola.

       Our two bay Gulf gas station was pretty typical of most small gas stations at the time.

       Besides from the bay with the lift in it, we had a second bay for washing cars and doing minor repairs. That second bay had a small work bench in the back and an assortment of hand tools hanging on the wall

      About 30 or 40 feet out in front of the office was a concrete Island with two gas pumps. One pump was for High test Gulf gas and one for regular Gulftane gas which sold for about .18 cents a gallon at the time.

       The concrete island also had a free air pump that was used for filling tires. I also had an oil rack that held around 12 quarts of Gulf oil. The oil rack a special drain feature built into it, designed to save every drop of oil, after we sold a can.

    . When we saved enough of the oil, it was put in one of those old glass oil bottles with a tall metal spout. That oil we saved was sold cheap, as it was all profit.

      I think those old oil bottles are collector items now.

      The station had a long hose that ran out to the island and when a car ran over it, it rang a bell so we knew a customer was out there.

       When things were quiet and Tony was out, I could sit in the office with my feet up on the desk like I was the owner.

       Some days there was little to do and my entertainment was watching all the neighborhood kids that would come in for air in their bicycle tires, some came on their bikes and some came with their repaired tire only. They came to get free air from our pump.

        I would yell for them to be careful as the air pump had too much pressure, but no one ever listened to me and I would hear the loud  bang, and watch the kids jump as their tire blew up in their hands, it happened every time.

       Outside the station between the two bays, we had a Coca Cola machine. When I first came to the station, it started out as a metal box with the cokes in cold water, but Coca Cola kept coming up with new models for Tony to lease and as Tony was a soft touch, and wanted to be a modern man, we always had the latest model machine installed.

       On the most modern one, you put 5 cents in, a big wheel rotated and a green bottle was released from a little door. I had the key to this modern technology, as my job was to fill the machine every day.

       As you walked inside the station office we also had a modern cigarette machine.

       A pack of cigarettes was .25 cents. You put in a quarter or two dimes and a nickel, then you pulled a knob under the brand you wanted.

       Our cigarette machine was pretty smart as it could also give you change.

       Sometimes people walking up Whalley Avenue would come in and ask me to make change for them so they could buy cigarettes, or sometimes they wanted to use the restrooms.

       Tony would curse under his breath every time some one came walking in with out a car as he knew they probably wanted to use the restroom. He called those people S.H.I.A.W, customers. That meant shithouse, information, air and water. None of which he made any money off of.    

      Once a week Tony would point to the water hose and it was my job to hose and mop out the restrooms. They needed it, and the hose was the best way to clean them. You didn’t have to touch anything.

       I had started smoking, so I thought having a cigarette machine right in the office was very convenient, but having .25 cents to buy the cigarettes wasn’t always that convenient.

       I sat at Tony’s desk, thinking a lot on just that problem.

      We didn’t have a cash register in those days and all the money was in a cash box in the top drawer of the desk. The money was always available to me, but I was too honest to even think of using any.

       I opened the drawer and studied the little black tray that held all the change.

       I picked up a dime and noticed that a copper penny was just a little bigger.

       I had a pocket full of pennies so I borrowed a dime from the box and went out to the work bench in the shop.

       I put the dime tightly against the penny and locked them firmly in the benches vice.

      Then I took down our file that was hanging on the wall. I then proceeded to file the copper penny down until it was the size of the dime.

      As soon as I had three copper pennies filed down, I put them into the cigarette machine, pulled the handle and out came a pack of Camels and 5 cents change.

      I  really found a way of making money.

      I spent the rest of the afternoon filing down all my pennies.

      It wasn’t easy filing all those pennies down, and I started sweating, but I knew that making money was never easy.

      By evening I had about 6 packs of cigarettes on the desk.

      The next day, the cigarette salesman came and opened up the machine. His job was to collect the money and re fill the machine with cigarettes.

       I watched his face as he dumped out all my filed down pennies into his hand.

       He looked at me and the 6 packs of cigarettes piled up on the desk.

       Do you know anything about this? He said.

       Absolutely not, I sheepishly replied.

       I followed him out to the work bench where he examined all the copper filings that were still on the vice and on the floor. I knew the jig was up.

 

The Barney Kaplan Grow House Story


                                     The Barney Kaplan Grow House Story
                                                               2014

                                     A true Story about my friend Barney Kaplan
                                      Written 07/17/2015 and Re-written 02/2016  
                                                       Howard Yasgar

     At this writing in February 2014, my good friend Barney Kaplan is now 96 years old.
     He has been retired several years now.
     Barney’s business had started declining perhaps 15 years ago.
     Barney had specialized in supplying automotive electrical parts, the parts were primarily for U.S. made vehicles.
     Once Japanese and other non U.S. vehicles started appearing in the U.S. domestic market, it changed Barneys parts business completely.
     The Japanese had studied the traditional U.S. market and they designed their replacement parts business to defeat it.
     It took them several years to do it but they did defeat it, and Barney’s business was one of the casualties.
     I first met Barney Kaplan, back in 1975. His company was called “Barney Kaplan Surplus” he later shortened it to “BKS”.
     Barney ran an extremely unusual company located on Wabash Avenue in Detroit Michigan.
     In 1975 when I first met him, he was buying and selling all types of automotive electrical  parts that many the big automotive manufacturers were getting rid of.
     So whenever I visited Barney’s Wabash Avenue warehouse, it was absolutely loaded with tons of wonderful things that my company needed.
     Once I met Barney, he became one of our companies major suppliers, and then, he became my good friend and my mentor.
     For 35 years Barney kept us supplied with tons of new, and used, surplus automotive parts, part that helped to make our company very successful.
    When Barney located something he thought was for us, he would call to advise us of what he was buying.
     After a while, and  as we became closer friends, Barney would call me in the evening.
     Sometimes his call was just to talk, but most of the time it was to tell me a funny story or a joke.
     As Barney got older, I heard some of those same stories and jokes many times.
     Barney would sometimes do business in Chicago, and that’s where he located a company making small 8 inch long Kosher Salami’s.
     Every month or so there would be a UPS package arriving with salami’s in it.
     Following Barneys instructions, we always hang the salami’s from our office ceiling to let them dry out properly before eating them.
     One time we hung them up and they turned white with mold.
     I was going to throw them away.
     I told Barney and he yelled at me, he said, “Don’t you dare”, just rinse them off with water, and he was right, I rinsed them off and they were perfect.
    Sometimes around 1985, Barney became my mentor, and he never stopped advising me as to how to improve my business and to make it grow.
    His advice, both good and bad never stopped for over 35 years.
    Barney seemed always to have an idea for solving just about every kind of problem that came up.
    He would even advise me on how to set up our work benches, and even how to set up our shops overhead lighting.
    When Barney first started mentoring me, he told me all the things I was doing wrong.
    At first, I took offense, but  over the years I had to call Barney up many times to tell him that he was really right, and I had been wrong.
    Eventually I calculated that Barney was right way over 70 percent of the time.
    Actually he probably was right more than that, but I still am too stubborn to admit it.
    To conduct his business, Barney contacted manufacturers as well as junk yards, he looked everywhere finding and buying anything vehicular that had been discarded. That’s how Barney found electrical parts for everything from locomotives, to lawn mowers.
    Around 1976, Barney had absolutely filled up his Wabash Avenue warehouse to it’s
capacity, so he decided to rent additional space upstairs above a scrap paper company.
     I just loved going there with Barney as we would stand downstairs next to one of the big scrap paper baling machines, and he would reach in and pick out all kinds of books that people were throwing away.
    Barney would always find, something in the paper scrap that he would take  home, just to give it out free to his friends and customers.
    Back in the 1970’s there were hundreds of  abandoned houses in Detroit.
    Barney once told me that the city of Detroit would sell an abandoned house to anyone for only a few hundred dollars, but only if you promised to fix it up.
    Right across the street from Barney’s Wabash Avenue warehouse, there was a two story wooden house with two families living in it.
    Then one day, I noticed that the families seemed to be gone, and I wondered what had happened to them.
    On my next trip to Detroit I kept my eye on that house, and I saw that the City of Detroit, had already nailed up plywood covering all the doors and windows.
    On my next visit, I kept my eye on that house.
     It wasn’t long before I saw that some of the pieces of plywood had been removed from the doors.
    Barney said it was probably done by drug addicts.
    A month later, I noticed smoke and burn marks around the windows, a sign that there had been some kind of a fire inside the house.
    Barney told me he had watched, as some guys ripped out all the plumbing and the electrical wiring out of the house.
    By the time I made my next trip to Detroit, the house was nothing more than an empty wooden shell that you could see right through it.
    The next trip to Detroit, the city had come in and knocked down what was left of the house, leaving nothing but an empty lot.
     I joked with Barney back then, telling him that pretty soon all of Detroit would end up the same way.
     I think that Barney having watched that house deteriorate right in front of him, it became his wakeup call, he saw that his Wabash neighborhood was deteriorating.
     Since Barney needed more space anyway, that was when he decided to look for a larger building in a better location.
     Just at the time, Barney that Barney remarried and he moved to a nice home in Southfield Michigan.
     One day, Barney called me in Miami to tell me he had purchased a large 28,600 square foot warehouse on Epworth Street in Detroit and he said he was moving his company there.
    Having the new Epworth warehouse, now gave Barney the additional space to spread out and buy more merchandise, and over the next 20 years he continued to do so.
    This now made Barney one of the largest stockers and sellers of specialized, hard to find electrical parts.
    Barney was always proud to take me along on his buying trips and introducing me to all of his suppliers.
    Barney, was anxious to show me how he was always welcomed and appreciated by all the factories that he bought from.
    Then, by the late 1990’s the market in the United States started changing. As many more items were now being imported from, Japan, Taiwan and China.
    Little by little, the market for older, and odd ball U.S. industrial parts diminished, and Barney’s business began declining with it.
    America was becoming a throwaway society, and the rebuilding business was now in decline.
    By 2006 Barney, was now 88 years old, and his heart was broken over the changes in the automotive market.
    He no longer had the items that were needed.
    So reluctantly Barney decided it was time to liquidate all of his inventory.
    The immense job took him several years, but with the assistance of his son Jerry, Barney was eventually able to sell off and scrap most all of the inventory that he had accumulated in over seventy years of being in business.
    By year 2012, with most of the inventory now gone, Barney had an empty Epworth warehouses to deal with.
    With the city of Detroit now in a tailspin, and the entire United States economy in decline, there were no customers to be found for his warehouse.
     Barney called me in the evenings, he was depressed and lamenting over the cost of taxes, and insurance bills for his building, and there was no income coming in.
     Then one day the graffiti artists found the Epworth warehouse.
     The city of Detroit wanted to fine Barney unless he cleaned up the mess they made.
     I spoke to Barney often, and my only advice to him, was to sell his building at a loss.
     I told him that he should sell the warehouse at any price.
     I felt Barney needed to get the building out of his name, and as soon as possible.
     It was the only advice I could give him, as the buildings were now a big liability for Barney.
    Eventually, Barney sadly agreed with me, he realized there was no way he could ever recover his original cost of the warehouses.
    That’s when he then reluctantly put the warehouse in the hands of a real estate agent.
     By 2013, nothing had happened, there were no buyers in Detroit for an abandoned warehouse.
     Barney now realized that just getting rid of the buildings at any price would be a blessing.
     He was now was calling me every evening to lament over the poor job the real estate agent was doing.
     Barney was now 96 years old, and he fully realized that there was no hope of doing anything about selling the property.
     Then, with the assistance of his two sons Larry and Jerry, Barney came to visit me in Miami, we knew it would be my friend Barney’s last trip.  
     As soon as Barney returned to Detroit, I received a call from him.
     Barney  said the real estate agent had found a client, but the client was only offering $35,000.00 for all the warehouse property. I advised Barney to take it, as soon as possible, and he reluctantly agreed.
     Barney said, after all the commissions and taxes were paid there would be little or nothing left over. But I said the buildings would be gone, and they would be out of his name, no longer a liability.
     Barney called to tell me that the sales transaction went like clock work, the buildings were sold quickly and the new buyers had even agreed to keep all the left over furniture, it was  truly a blessing for Barney.
     About three months passed, when I received a large brown envelope in the mail. It was a picture of Barney’s building and a story cut out of the Detroit newspaper.
     The pictures were of the open front door of Barneys Epworth building, with his big BKS sign there for everyone to see.
     It appears the Detroit police had just raided Barney’s building.
     The new owners were using the warehouse as a marijuana grow house. The BKS Epworth building was now pretty famous in Detroit.
     Many of my good friends in the Detroit area, knowing that I was close friends with Barney sent me the pictures and stories out of their local newspapers.  
     It was ironic, because the front door of Barney’s building was wide open, and the scavengers were now ripping everything out of the buildings interior, like the copper plumbing and electrical wiring.
     It was just like they had done to the house across the street from his warehouse on Wabash.
     My dear friend and mentor Barney Kaplan, died peacefully on October 1, 2014.