Tuesday, July 28, 2015

The Army Secret Economy Story

                                          The Army Secret Economy Story
                                                                    1961 
              A true story about my going in the army and how I found out about the crooked
              dealing going on there.
                                       Written 01/2010 and Re-written 07/ 07/2016 
                                                              Howard Yasgar


In 1961, I joined the Army Reserves in New Haven Connecticut.
Once I joined, I was ordered to Fort Dix New Jersey to do my eight weeks of basic training.      The Army’s travel orders were as follows. 
I was to leave New Haven by bus, and go to Penn Station in New York City, there I was to  transfer to another bus going to the reception center at Fort Dix in New Jersey.
I decided to leave a day earlier, and stay overnight in New York City.
I wanted to be sure that I had plenty of time to catch the bus to Fort Dix. 
I certainly didn’t want to be late for my induction into the Army.
Before I left  New Haven, I decided to stop by and say goodbye to my cousin Allen, so my dad dropped me off there.
My cousin Allen, at the time was renting an apartment with one of his friends
At the time, I was twenty two years old and my cousin Allen was about a year younger. We were both working part time at the same gas station.
Allen and I were both good buddies, as we both liked to fool around with hot rods together but my cousin Allen was a bit more of a hippie than I was.
As I remember,  when I walked into cousin Allen’s his third floor apartment,  Allen was fully into “Hippie Mode”.
He had dimmed lights and a psychedelic light machine going with some sort of a strobe light set up. 
In the dim light of his apartment, the contraption splayed moving rays of color all over the apartment walls and ceiling.
We spent an hour or so talking before I left for the bus station, that’s when my cousin Allen offered me a hit on his marijuana cigarette that he had. 
To this day Allen denies it. 
Because I had never smoked marijuana before I was kind of hesitant to try it but I was pretty sure marijuana was all a bunch of crap, and nothing was really going to happen if I tried it.
So I took a puff or two. 
When I eventually woke up, I was sitting on a bus in Penn Station and I had just arrived in New York City.
Don’t ask me what happened in between New Haven and New York.
It was about ten in the evening when I awoke, it was just as the bus arrived at the station in New York. 
I double checked my travel voucher to verify my bus ride to Fort Dix New Jersey.
It stated that bus didn’t leave until eight on the following morning, so I knew I would need to find a hotel somewhere near the bus station.
As I left the Bus Station, I was carrying my small suitcase, and I found myself walking up a dark street with very few neon lights,
At first it didn’t bother me that it was so dark, as I was so sure I could easily find a hotel along the way.
But that street was dark, and getting darker, so I started thinking of how stupid I must have looked.
I must have looked like a country hillbilly walking along that dark street carrying my little suitcase. 
Everyone had always warned me about walking around New York City at night, so I started to worry about getting mugged.
I started walking faster, and now I was walking s fast as I could, I wanted to get to a main street with bright lights.
Beads of sweat were now forming on my forehead, and that’s when I  heard it.
As I passed an alley, it was a loud “Meow”, just like a cat, but it was coming from someone who I thought was walking right behind me. 
I walked faster towards the only neon light up ahead and finally, thank god, I was there, it was, a small white neon sign that said “Hotel”.
At that point I couldn’t have been happier, so I made a sharp left turn into the open doorway under the hotel sign and walked up a long flight of stairs to a set of swinging doors that had the bright red word “Hotel” painted on them, no one was following me.
Inside, the lobby it was pretty smoky and dark but there was a young desk clerk and he asked me how many nights I would be staying. 
I told him it would be only be one night, so he asked for two dollars cash in advance. 
At first I was hesitant, but then I reasoned he didn’t know me, so why should he trust me, so I gave him the two bucks. 
Then I got to thinking, the price sounded too cheap, even for 1961. But I was happy to pay him, and my heart rate started to slow down. 
The lobby of the hotel was dark and the air was thick with cigarette and cigar smoke, the whole place had the smell of stale beer. 
I think that’s when I realized I had checked into what was called a flop house.
As I looked around, there was no question about it. There were some guys reading news papers and some sleeping in chairs. No question, I was in a hotel for bums.
I was given a room key and the desk clerk pointed to a concrete stairway to get to the next floor.
Once I found my room, I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find the light switch.
Fortunately the bright light in the hallway showed through the big holes in the room’s door and I saw a pull cord hanging from a single bulb on the ceiling. 
At first I was concerned, and a little scared by the lack of privacy due to the holes in room’s door. 
I thought someone could easily be looking in, so I tried to plug the holes with bits of rolled up paper that I ripped from my hotel receipt.
As I did this, I got to thinking, what was I possibly afraid of, if someone wanted to peek in let them do it. I was only going to be in the room a few hours until morning, and I had no intentions of even taking my clothes off.
The next morning, when I woke up, there was sunlight coming in from under the window shade, and that’s when I realized what a real dump I had slept in.
I went into the bathroom only to find an old scratched up porcelain sink, and a toilet that appeared to be from the turn of the century, it had its water tank hanging up on the wall with a pull chain.
I left the hotel, went back to the bus station and caught the bus to the Fort Dix reception center.
Once there, I wasn’t alone, there was about sixty other new recruits who were also just like me, all of us carrying their little suitcases.  
We were all ushered into an empty barracks with long rows of unused bunk beds, all the mattresses  were rolled up.
As we all waited for someone to tell us something, small groups got together to talk. I listened to the conversations. Some guys had been drafted against their will. I even overheard some older guys that had been in the Army before and were now re enlisting.
I was sitting on the edge of a steel bunk smoking a cigarette, when two fellows walked over and sat across from me and asked for a cigarette
They both spoke with heavy Brooklyn accents
One of them was about my size and had dark hair and a dark complexion, I thought he looked to be Lebanese or Egyptian. He said he was Egyptian.  The other guy was smaller and had wavy blond hair and an angular face and a curled lower lip, that made him look like he was angry. He said he was Puerto Rican and Irish.
As we talked, it turned out that both the guys were best friends from Brooklyn New York.
They had both been drafted together. 
They said they had never met a person from Connecticut before, nor had they ever been fishing, hunting or even out in the woods. 
But it turned out both guys were really friendly, and we talked.
One of them said he didn’t think the army was for them. I had no idea of what he meant, but I was to find out later exactly what he meant.
Eventually, we were given a battery of tests, and then loaded on buses, and taken to a supply warehouse where everyone was given a hand full of loose fitting military clothing.
Then carrying all our junk we were bused to our Barracks, there we were told we were now members of  Company “C”.  
In our basic training camp at Fort Dix there were over three hundred of us. We were placed in the five barracks al by alphabetical order. 
Each of the barracks was an old two story yellowing wooden buildings that slept 40 guys on each floor.
I knew which barracks my new found friends from Brooklyn were in, but we were always so busy training, we rarely ever saw each other again. 
After a couple of weeks went by, we were marching by their barracks.
In a second floor window I saw my Egyptian friend, he was sitting there watching us. He had dyed his hair purple, and after that, I never saw him again.
They said his blond Puerto Rican friend was found down in the bathroom fishing with a string in one of the toilets. 
I heard they were both dismissed from military duty as “Unfit for active duty” and I never saw either of them again.
But now I knew what they meant when they said the Army wasn’t for them.
     After eight weeks of basic training and taking lots of tests, I was hoping to become a military truck mechanic.
I was excited when one morning our drill sergeant asked if anyone knew how to drive a big truck, we thought it was our chance as they obviously needed truck drivers, so several of us raised our hands, and we were all given brooms, to drive and sweep down the company area. 
Eventually they really did send us to be tested and I obtained my military driver’s license.
I was disappointed, as I aspired to be more than just a truck driver.
I  didn’t know it then, but being a truck driver in the military was one of the best things to have ever happened to me.  
After eight weeks of training, all my barracks friends were assigned to various military bases all over the world, except me.
I received orders to return to Fort Dix New Jersey for six months of active duty, I had been assigned to a motor pool as a truck driver.
I found out that in the Army, everyone wanted to make friends with a truck driver, because riding in the back of a truck was a lot better than marching.
As far as I was concerned, I found working in a motor pool to be loads of fun.
First of all I got to know how to drive a whole assortment of military vehicles, they let me drive everything from 1/4 ton Jeeps up to 5 ton cargo trucks.  
As a motor pool driver, you were assigned every day to drive for whoever needed the use of a truck.
Because Fort Dix is like a big city, everything has to be moved or delivered somewhere by truck. 
One day my motor pool Sargent said his regular driver for the bakery detail was going on leave for two weeks, so he assigned me to fill in on his job.  
I thought it would be awful, as I was expected to be at the Fort Dix bakery at five in the morning and pick up loaves of white bread to deliver to four different mess halls, which included my old mess hall at Company C.
Upon my arrival at the bakery I found five other truck drivers already sitting there drinking coffee and they said they were waiting for their breakfast.
Sure enough, soon a baker came with a tray of unsliced hot bread right out of the oven. The loaves were so hot we had to bobble it from one hand to the other to hold it until it cooled down.
I watched the other drivers, as they opened a refrigerator that was full of quarter pound sticks of butter. 
Every one put a ¼ lb. stick of butter into their hot bread. 
I asked the other truck drivers where all the sticks of butter came from, and they said that one of the drivers, who was on the butter detail, he had brought it.
Where did he get it I asked, and they said it was simple, the driver was delivering butter to several mess halls and he shorted each mess hall by keeping aside 20 or 30 sticks.
Then he brings it here for us on bakery detail to use.
We give him stuff from our trucks when we deliver, that’s how the system works.
Wow I thought, that sounded easy, there must have been way over a hundred sticks of butter in the refrigerator and obviously no one had ever missed them. 
I knew each army mess hall had to feed a certain amount of troops, but they also needed a lot of extra food for soldiers that showed up for temporary duty, and they needed extra food  to be able to serve seconds to the troops. So I no one knew exactly how much of any kind of food was being delivered or eaten. 
The Army would need a whole team of food counters installed at every mess hall to keep track of everything, now that was an interesting thought.
I decided to put it to a test.
At Fort Dix, where I was housed was a large barrack that had about twenty small, two man living quarters in it.
The head cooks also lived upstairs in the same building as I did.
But for some reason all the cooks who were always dressed in white kitchen uniforms, didn’t ever want to talk to us. 
They always acted like they had an attitude.
Whenever we would pass each other on a staircase, they walked by without so much as a hello. 
Everyone I spoke to said, the cooks had a racket going, and they didn’t like regular soldiers nosing around too much.
At the time I had no idea of what kind of racket the cooks were involved in.
The next morning the bakery, they loaded up my truck with bread to deliver to four mess halls, and as I made my deliveries to the various mess halls, I put aside twenty loaves, and I did it at each delivery that I made. 
So  the end of my morning delivery run I had about eighty loaves of bread left over.
Now that I had all this bread, I started to wonder what I would do with it all. 
Who the hell needs eighty loaves of fresh baked bread, and that’s when I started to think I had made a big mistake. 
I backed my truck up to the loading dock at my mess hall where I ate my meals, then I walked into the kitchen.
The head cook didn’t even appear to acknowledge that I was there.
I said, to him, I have some bread for you.
Without even looking at me he had four soldiers go in my truck and unload all the bread.
I was afraid to ask him what he was going to do with it, and I never did ask him.
I did this same routine every day for the whole two weeks that I was detailed to delivering bread. 
On the last day of my assignment, I told the other truck drivers at the bakery what I had done.
To my surprise they all said they were doing it also, and they said truck drivers all over the base were doing the very same thing. So it appeared that removing cargo off their trucks was being done by all the truck drivers. 
My motor pool at Fort Dix, was run by a Staff Sergeant  Kimbrough.
As soon as there was a need for a vehicle somewhere on the Post, Sergeant Kimbrough would dispatch drivers, one by one. 
Now Sergeant Kimbrough was a pretty savvy Staff Sergeant, and he knew everything.
So one day he crooked his finger and called me into his office.
He said that because I was doing a good job he was going to assign me to a section called “Condiments”. He said Condiments was a cushy job with little work involved, he said it was run by a buddy of his.
I found out that Condiments was just a small wooden  building, with three soldiers working as laborers to load and unload trucks. The little warehouse building had a tiny office with one Staff Sergeant in charge. 
The job of Condiments was to deliver meats like steak, bacon, and liver, and also all kinds of condiments like salt, pepper, sugar etc. 
But most of the time, I could see that everyone just hung around doing nothing.    
Every morning the Staff Sergeant would ride up front with me, in my 2-1/2 ton truck.
But once we were all loaded up with meat, he would get in the back of the truck, and he stayed there.
At first, I assumed he was counting and checking his paperwork to make sure we were delivering the right quantities to the right places. But after several weeks my curiosity got the best of me. 
There was a small canvas window in the cab of the truck, if I rolled it up a little, I could see what was going on with the Sergeant in the back of the truck.
So the next morning we were going to pick up a load of sliced liver, and as usual the Sargent rode in front with me until we loaded up.
Then he got in the back of the truck for the long ride back to the mess halls. 
When we stopped for a red light, I looked in the canvas window.
There was the Sergeant, he had every mess halls shipment opened up and he was removing sliced liver from each of them. 
He was making up a separate load of liver, and just as I watched him, he looked up and saw me looking, but he didn’t say anything, nor did he stop dividing up the liver.
The following day was Sunday, and after breakfast I returned to my barracks for a nap.
I was napping on a lower bunk on the second floor of the barracks, when I was startled to wake up with a soldier sitting on the floor right next to me.
I immediately recognized him as one of the gay soldiers working as a laborer in the Condiments warehouse. 
He said, “Sorry to wake you, but the Sargent sent me over with a present for you”.
I looked and he had sitting next to him two big number ten cans full of sugared fruit pieces used for baking mincemeat pies.
The soldier said, “The Sargent wants you to have them and he wants you to know if you need any steaks to let him know”. 
Steaks, what the hell was I going to do with steaks, I was living in a barrack and at my mess hall I could eat all the steaks I wanted for free.
I told the fellow, please tell the Sargent I don’t need anything, but thanks anyway. 
When I woke up again the cans of candied fruit were still there, so I brought them to my mess hall head chef and gave them to him, he just took them but never said a word to me.
In the morning the Sergeant at the Condiments building called me into his tiny office. He said that if there was anything I wanted,  just let him know. 
He said he always made separate packages of meat every trip we made to the base butcher.
He said that he gave the packages of meat to his wife, and she sold it to other soldier’s wives.
He said all the Staff Sergeant’s running the various base warehouses were doing the same thing.
He said, he thought the military knew all about it, but just sort of overlooked it.
That’s when I realized that there was a whole secret economy going on and it was going on at every Army base, and no one ever talked about it.
One day, as I was going up the stairs, to my room, the head chef was coming down, he looked at my name tag and he asked me if I was going home on leave.
I was shocked, it was the first time a cook had ever spoken to me. 
I told him I was leaving Friday night and heading for New Haven Connecticut. He said, “Stop by the kitchen before you leave”. 
I did go to the kitchen on that Friday afternoon, and the head chef ushered me into a back storage room.
He said, “Help yourself to anything you want here, it’s all extra stuff”, and then he left me.
On the shelves were every kind of canned military food you can imagine, it was all the leftover stuff the truck drivers had been stealing and bringing him.
I realized that all these cooks must have been running some kind of side business selling food.
They even had my two cans of candied fruit on the shelf there.
I saw big number ten cans of lard, coffee, grape jam, strawberry jam, and apple butter.
There was so much canned food there that it was mind boggling, and I couldn’t even imagine what my mother would do with it if I took any, the no.10 cans were so big.
I think the cooks and everyone else on the base were selling the food to stores or restaurants in the local towns around Fort Dix, and I’m pretty sure it’s going on every military base in the world. 
Its, a whole secret economy.      
        

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The Aluminum Piston Story


                                            The Aluminum Piston Story
                          How I beat the scrap yard crooks at their own game
                                                                1963
                                       Written 1/2014 Re-written 7/2015
                                                        Howard Yasgar


By November of 1963, my good friend Lou Gladstein had closed down his auto wrecking business, and that also closed down my job in Florida.
Helping Lou to manage the auto wrecking business had been the reason I came to Florida in the first place.
Unfortunately Lou’s former manager had had already embezzled all the companies funds, forcing Lou to close the place down.   
At the time, I had just gotten married in Connecticut, and Lou had convinced me that coming to Florida to manage the auto wrecking business would be like being on a honeymoon.
It just happens, that at the time, my mother had just leased a tiny hotel on Collins Avenue on Miami Beach, and Lou knew that was another incentive for my coming to Florida.
My good friend Lou was in the used car business ( Or stolen car business) in Stamford Connecticut.
So to further entice me to go to Florida, he offered me the use of a nice 1959 Plymouth to make the trip with.
Lou had suspected that manager of his auto wrecking business in Miami, was stealing. So when I confirmed it, it was no shock to either of us.
When I had arrived in Miami, my wife and I stayed for a while in my mother’s hotel on Collins Avenue, but after a few weeks, we rented a house trailer located in a trailer park on NW 79th Street in Miami.
The trailer park was cheap and much closer to Lou’s auto wrecking yard.
As soon as I got to Lou’s auto wrecking business, I tried to get things in order, but every day a new and unknown debt appeared.
I soon realized the full extent of what the manager had done.
He was stealing everything, he had even failed to pay the rent for more than six months.
Once I found out the extent of his embezzlement, I knew that straightening out all the problems was almost an impossible task, so my recommendation to Lou, was that he close the yard down, and that was exactly what he did.
Once the yard was closed, I had to make a decision about staying in Florida or returning back to Connecticut.
It was kind of a difficult decision to make, because if we did stay in Florida, how would I earn a living?
Our living expenses were small, and we found that living in a trailer park was a big novelty, and an adventure for us.  
We met people there that I never would have met otherwise. Most of our neighbors in the trailer park were either just going to jail or had just been released from jail.
As I remember it, we were paying twenty dollars a week rent for a semi furnished trailer.
To make our lives more comfortable, I bought a good used television for only fifty dollars.
It was a nineteen inch black and white television, that was formerly a pay to view TV. It still had the holes drilled in it for a coin box that had once been attached.
Eventually we decided to stay in Miami, I was still driving the 1959 Plymouth automobile that Lou had given me to make the trip to Florida.
The Plymouth still had one Connecticut “Junk Dealer” license plate on it.
The plate was from the set of 2 that Lou had given me to use.
That license plate that always created quite a bit of controversy in Miami.
Anyone that saw it, wanted to know what it was all about, because no one in Miami had ever seen a Connecticut Junk Dealer’s license plate before.
Once Lou’s auto wrecking business was closed down, I did what I knew best. I started driving around looking for used auto parts.
I started buying things like used engine crankshafts, and old automobile starters and generators.
I would buy them, and then re-sell them to Miami auto parts rebuilders.
In order to do this, I kept using Lou’s 1959 Plymouth, loading it like it was a truck, that was until the Police confiscated it, and said it was a stolen car.
One day I was stopped in traffic, and the Police noticed the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plate, and they questioned me, and that’s when they found that I had no registration papers, so they impounded the 59 Plymouth right then.
When I tried to recover the car, the Police told me they that it was a stolen car. They said it appeared someone had ground off the engine serial numbers, can you believe that?
When I called Lou up in Connecticut to tell him what the Miami Police had said, Lou simply said the cops in Miami were full of shit and not to worry.
Lou had another car for me, it was a 1958 Ford station wagon.
Lou said the car was parked at his boat dock on the Miami River. I suspected it was probably also another of his stolen cars he had brought down from Connecticut.
Lou, then calmly told me to find out where the Police had stored the 1959 Plymouth, and he said that I should go there and remove the Connecticut Junk Dealer license plate from the car.
I did just as Lou told me, and I never heard another word from the Police again.
While I had been managing Lou’s auto wrecking yard, I had met a Cuban fellow named Renato Cepero, Renato was a sharp Cuban who owned an auto parts store on 27th Avenue in Miami.
Renato  was buying used automotive engine crankshafts, and rebuilding them for export.
I loved dealing with Renato, because he needed a steady supply of used engine crankshafts, and he paid me $15.00 for each good one that I brought him.
Now, finding good crankshafts for Renato wasn’t as easy as it sounds. (See the Crankshaft Story). The crankshafts, all had to be the certain models that were, popular in Cuba, because I think that’s the country that he was shipping them to.
So now, I was using Lou’s 1958 Ford station wagon just like it was a truck.
Once I found that the rear seats could be folded down, I filled up the back of the station wagon  with lots of used auto parts just as if it was a truck.
I was really surprised at how much space I had in the back of that car as well as how much weight the Ford station wagon could carry. I think I could have done an advertisement for Ford Motor Company.
The only problem I had with the station wagon was that it had no air conditioning and was obviously another of Lou’s stolen cars from Connecticut.
One day while I was driving around Miami looking for crankshafts, I saw a sign in front of a company called “National Motor Exchange Company”.
The sign said that they were an engine rebuilding and installation company.
The business was located just off NW 27 Avenue near 71st Street.
As soon as I saw the sign, I stopped to see if they had any good used crankshafts to sell.
While I was in their front office, I met Irving, who was the owner of the company.
After talking to Irving for a few minutes, I realized that Irving himself was no engine rebuilder.
Turns out my assessment was correct, Irving was a money man, an investor, who had put in money in the failing engine rebuilding business, and then ended up owning it when the original owner ran away.
I told Irving that I was in the market for buying used crankshafts, and he told me to walk around inside his building to see if there was anything I could buy from him.
I think Irving was happy to meet me.
His building was pretty big, and he had over thirty employee’s all of them working at rebuilding and installing engines in cars and trucks.
Everywhere I went in the building, it was loaded with a lot of scrap engine parts that had accumulated there over the years.
The next day, I asked Irving what he was doing with all the scrap metal in the building?
He told me that a junk man came by every now and then and picked up some of the scrap.
So I asked Irving how that worked out for him.
Irving explained that the scrap man had a scale on the back of his truck, and he paid for the scrap he picked up in cash”.
I was pretty familiar as to how junk dealers worked, so I knew right away that the junk man was stealing as much as he could from Irving, but Irving didn’t know it.
So I sat down and out of the yellow pages I called three of the largest scrap yards in Miami.
I asked them how much they would pay me for scrap cast iron if I delivered it right to their yard.
I already had a pretty good idea of what the Miami scrap prices were, but I wanted to confirm it before I said anything to Irving.
All the big scrap companies I called said they were paying around $23.00 dollars a ton for automotive cast iron if it was delivered to them.
That having been done, next, I sat down with Irving and offered him a proposition, I said that I would pay him $18.00 a ton for all the scrap cast iron he had in his building.
I told Irving that would give me five dollars a ton profit.
Now, five dollars a ton wasn’t much profit considering all the work involved, but I needed to be fair to Irving and show him that I was honest, and I needed the money.
But when I first made the proposition, Irving looked at me and laughed.
He said you must think I'm a pretty dumb guy, I'm already getting $28.00 a ton from the local junk dealer that comes here with his truck.”
I said, look Irving, the junk dealer can't pay you $28.00 a ton because he is only selling it for $23.00 a ton. He is lying to you, and is probably stealing a few extra tons from you each time he comes here.
I told him that all I want to do was make $5.00 per ton profit, and I will do all the work. I will load all the cast iron junk in my station wagon and take it to the scrap yard myself, and then I will show you the receipts from the scale when they weigh the car, I will show you exactly how much money they give me.
I remember Irving tapping a pencil on his desk while debating with himself to determine if I was lying to him or not.
I again picked up the phone book and found the big Miami scrap dealers phone numbers.
I told Irving to call one or more of them and find out if $23.00 per ton was the top price they will pay for scrap cast iron delivered to them.
Irving called two scrap yards, and they both said they paid exactly $23.00 dollars a ton for scrap cast iron delivered to them, so now, Irving knew I wasn’t lying to him.
Irving then hung up the phone, and told me to start hauling all his scrap cast iron any time I wanted to.
I spent the next several weeks hauling Irving’s cast iron to the scrap yards, and eventually I cleaned up his whole building of all the iron scrap.
Once the building was clean, of the cast iron, I saw that there were about 30 or 40 large barrels full of old used aluminum engine pistons.
Now, I knew that scrap aluminum was worth good money. At the time, clean aluminum was worth around 12 cents a lb.
The problem was, all the aluminum pistons Irving had, still had the old piston rings on them, and that made them contaminated aluminum, which was worth much less, around 6 cents a lb.
I studied the situation carefully, and I determined that if I could removed the piston rings by myself, piston scrap would then be a higher quality of aluminum and worth more money.
I made an experiment, I took a dirty piston out of the barrel, and with a little practice, I found that I could remove the steel piston rings.
I started cleaning all the pistons by hand.
I found that taking the piston rings off was labor intensive job and really hard on my hands, but I could do it.
Next, I took a sample of one cleaned piston, and went to one of the largest scrap yards in Miami called “Metro Iron and metal Company”,
I chose them because I knew they had an big aluminum smelting furnace, and I assumed that they would pay the highest aluminum price in Miami.
Also I chose them because I had met the two managers that were running the place, we were about the same age and I felt they would treat me fairly.
I took my sample aluminum piston, and caught the attention of one of the managers, his name was Arthur, Arthur was the quieter and less hyper of the two partners.
I told Arthur that I could bring him about five thousand pounds of clean aluminum pistons, the same as the sample that I had brought him.
Arthur was as friendly as can be, and said he would pay me 12 cents a pound for the clean automotive pistons as per the sample I showed him.
I went back to National Engine Exchange and told Irving that I could sell the aluminum pistons for 12 cents a pound, so if I cleaned them myself,  I could pay him 9 ½ cents a pound, leaving me with a 2 ½ cent a pound profit.
Irving agreed to it, so I started to remove all the steel piston rings off the pistons in the barrels.
By late afternoon the next day I had completely filled up the back of the Ford station wagon.
Then  I headed to the scrap yard to sell the load of clean pistons.
When I got to the scrap yard, I drove the Ford wagon onto the weighing scale, and got out of the car to get my weight receipt.
As I did that, I was approached by the second partner, his name was Nordy.
Nordy, walked out of the office, and reached into the back of my car and took out one of the cleaned pistons.
He said, “We are paying you 8 cents a pound for these pistons.
“My heart nearly stopped, hold on, I said, I have 9 ½ cents in them, and your partner quoted me 12 cents a lb.
I can’t sell them to you for only 8 cents a pound, I would lose money.
I didn't mention to him that I also spent the whole day cleaning the pistons and cutting my hands to shreds while I was doing it.
Nordy knew he had me, he said, I don't care what  Arthur told you, you can take 8 cents, or leave it.”
Needless to say, I was shocked, and depressed.
Nordy knew that I couldn't drive the car away, because it was late in the day and the car was really overloaded.
Even if I did drive off, where would I go? Nordy knew he had me over a barrel, and he was determined to take advantage of me.
So, here I was, with tears in my eyes, I reluctantly agreed to let them pay me the 8 cents a pound. It was pretty obvious to everyone there listening that Nordy was cheating me.
The employees instructed me to drive over next to their aluminum smelter to unload the pistons.
I drove the station wagon off the scale and backed up to where their aluminum smelting furnace was, and there I unloaded all the pistons out of the car.
I had lost money, money that I could not afford to lose, and I felt cheated by this guy Nordy, who I thought was a friend.
When I returned to National Motor Exchange, I saw Irving, and told him what happened.
Irving looked at my receipt and saw that I had received only 8 cents a lb.
He said he felt bad that they had cheated me, so Irving told me to lower the price I was paying him, he didn’t want me to lose any money.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night, I didn't understand how I could have been treated so badly.
The following day, I started to clean more pistons, but now I had an idea.
On the floor near the barrels of pistons, were neatly stacked, several piles of giant, and very heavy Mack truck engine flywheels. Those truck flywheels were solid steel and very heavy, some of them must have weighed over two hundred pounds apiece,
So with superhuman strength, and some help from Irving’s employees, we put six of the flywheels, on the floor inside of the station wagon.
I think that they must have weighed way over twelve hundred pounds total.
Then I covered them all up with the clean aluminum pistons that I had prepared.
I went right to the scrap yard and drove onto the scale, and after weighing up the car, I backed up to the secluded area where the aluminum smelter was.
Next to the smelter I unloaded all my aluminum pistons.
Once the pistons were out of the car, I then I unloaded all the heavy steel flywheels.
They were so heavy I could hardly lift them, so I rolled them out of the station wagon and onto the ground.
I then drove the station wagon back on the scale, and got my weight receipt, and my payment for 8 cents a lb.
I did the same thing for two more times, until all the aluminum pistons were gone.
By the time I was finished I had brought them 18 flywheels.
I estimated that they weighed about thirty six hundred pounds in total, which I had been paid 8 cents per lb.
Scrap yards are notorious for cheating their customers, they do it all the time, so it gave me great satisfaction to able to beat them at their own game.
When I told Irving what I had done, we both had a good laugh. Then I gave him the full 9 ½ cents per lb. as I had promised him.
Irving was so happy he sent out for pizza for everyone.
About fifteen years later, I had a reason to visit Metro Iron and Metals Company again, I had heard that the managers, Nordy and Arthur had been fired.
While I was there I took a nostalgic stroll down to the old aluminum smelting area, which, by then, it was no longer being operated.
There they were, my thirty six hundred pounds of steel flywheels, still leaning against the metal barrels just as I had left them so many years before.