The Abe Greenstein and the Dildo Story

                                    The Abe Greenstein and the Dildo Story

                                                           1985

                               Written 2012 and Re-written 11/2016 unedited

                                                      A true story                           

                                                   Howard Yasgar

       

                          

     This true story actually happened in 1971, and to this day I don’t know if the situation that transpired should be considered funny or not.

     I know that at the time that it happened, I felt pretty bad about all of it and I certainly wished that  it had never happened.

     Over the years, I have scratched my head many times, wondering if I could, or should have done anything differently.

     In 1971, our automotive parts company, located in Miami and was called “API”, or

 Automotive Parts Industries.

     In 1971, Miami was the hub for export to all of the South  American countries, as well as Central America and the Caribbean.

     Although we had originally started out as a local automotive electrical parts wholesaler, because of our location in Miami, we had the foreign parts buyers coming in to see us almost daily.

     We had customers coming in to us from just about every country in the Americas.

     All the parts buyers that were coming to Miami were all entrepreneurs, they not only bought our electrical automotive parts, but they would buy pretty much anything that we had in stock if the price was right.

     They would buy anything that they could sell back in their country.

     It soon became obvious that anything we had, if priced cheap enough would sell, so by 1975 we had started producing a catalog. The catalog was under our new company name.  “Rebuilders Supply Company of Miami”.

     The first catalog started out with only about six pages that I typed out at my desk with my IBM Selectric II typewriter. The catalog  had all my hand drawn pictures.

     Eventually after a few years the catalog grew to be eighty seven pages, and we were sending copies to automotive electrical rebuilders everywhere.

     For me, making the catalog was a lot of fun, every month I started to look for all kinds of new automotive surplus items to put in it.

     I looked for just about anything automotive that I could buy cheap and put into the catalog at a low price.

     The more crazy items I put in the catalog, the more the importers came to Miami to see us.

    It was absolutely amazing, some mornings I would come to work and there would be several importers from South America waiting for us to open our doors,

     They all had their attaché cases filled with lots of U.S. currency.

    Some days there were so many foreign customers waiting to buy our surplus items, that it presented us with another problem, we were running  out of inventory.

     So, it became obvious that we needed more cheap automotive parts for the importers to buy.

      For us to fill this need, we started doing business with several automotive surplus dealers located in Detroit and Chicago.

     We had found that those two cities seemed to be the hub of where we could find quantities of new but cheap parts.

     Surplus dealers were people that knew how to buy excess merchandise at lower than rock bottom prices.

     They bought parts that were the left over’s, or they were excess parts from a manufacturer.

     Sometimes they bought scrap material from junk yards that were still useable but had been thrown away for one reason or another.

     Sometimes they were able to buy discontinued items, or even buy parts from companies that were going bankrupt.

     Their sources of supply were varied, and their business depended on their enginuity.

     As we got to know several of them, we found that most of these surplus dealers, while specializing in automotive parts, they were liable to buy anything, as long as it was cheap.

     We found Surplus Dealers that bought all kinds of things, from tools, to motorbikes and even pin ball machines.

     Soon we also started buying all this kind of stuff from them, and we sent it all to our warehouse in Miami.

     My partner and I would travel to Chicago and Detroit every few weeks on buying

trips, we never knew what we would find as we walked through the different surplus parts dealers warehouses.

   After a while, we ended up zeroing in on a few good surplus dealers that got in the types of merchandise that we could buy at the right price.

     In Detroit, we started doing business Barney Kaplan of “Barney Kaplan Surplus” or

Otherwise known as  B.K.S. 

   Some days, Barney of B.K.S. would call us in Miami and tell us about a deal that was to be available in Detroit or Chicago, and we would send him the money in advance.

     We would trust Barney to buy on our behalf.     

     In Chicago we started doing business with two surplus dealers, both were located on Canal Street.

    One of them was a company called Fleet Supply, a business owned by Bob Keen and his partner George Lustig. Bobby and George specialized in heavy duty parts for trucks.

     But they bought so much surplus we would have to visit them on every trip to Chicago.

   Located right down the Street from Fleet Supply, was another surplus company “Automotive Surplus”, and it was owned by a fellow named Abe Greenstein.

    When we met Abe, we found him to be a very friendly fellow, he was a short guy about 5 foot 4 inches tall, with a long nose and he wore a toupee.

     Then to make matters even worse, Abe wore stilted shoes and loud plaid pants.

     We found that Abe had what was called a “Napoleonic Complex”.

   If you ever went out for supper with Abe, he would always complain to the waiter about everything.

     He would order a drink called a “Rob Roy”, but he always sent it back  because it was too hot or too cold.

     Abe would always order a butterflied steak, which he also always sent back to the kitchen for one reason or another.

     It was very obvious to everyone that because of Abe’s size and appearance, and the fact that he had too much money, Abe had developed that complex, and he fine tuned it.

     It  was always embarrassing to be with him in a restaurant.

     Abe Greenstein specialized in several things. He bought lots of rejected parts from auto parts manufacturers, and he specialized in was what was called “Dealer Buy Back items”.

     This is how that business worked.

     Back in the 1970’s there were quite a few major brand automotive parts companies and they were all vying for the same automotive parts dealer customers.

     Once they had a customer, they wanted him to sell only their brand of products, so to accomplish this the salesman was authorized to remove all the competitions parts and replace them with their own brand of parts.

     Then the salesman had to dump the parts they removed from the dealers shelves, and Abe was there ready to buy everything they dumped.

     Abe bought the parts by the pound for little or nothing.

     So when we first met Abe, he had lots of pallet boxes filled with all sorts of things like radiator hoses, and fan belts, and there were pallet boxes with thousands of mixed up automotive parts.

     We were elated, this was all stuff our export customers wanted.

     We paid Abe fifty cents apiece for all the radiator hoses and fan belts. Shipped them to Miami and sold tem for $1.00 ea.

     Needless to say, we did a lot of business with Abe Greenstein. We were selling this stuff as fast as Abe could ship it to us.

    One day in early 1980, Abe told me that he had developed a partnership with a fellow in the Philippines.

    He said he did it because his partner could sell Abe’s stuff  in the Philippines and pay for it in cash, eliminating U.S. income tax.

    So now every few months Abe would fly to the Philippines, he explained it all to me in great detail.

     Abe said that in the Philippines he found plenty of girlfriends there that liked him.

     I knew that Abe had no real social life in Chicago, as he wasn’t what you would call a ladies man, he was short and balding and he looked and dressed strange.

     Also because Abe was a real complainer, whenever a women went out with him, they would never go out with him a second time.

     So, now I thought it was a good that Abe had something nice to do.

     One day I suggested to Abe that when he went to Manilla he should make arrangements to fly down to Miami first and stay with me for a few days. Since we were

now such good friends. I think that at the time we were probably one of Abe’s best customers.

     Sure enough, on his next few trips to Manilla, Abe came to Miami and stayed at my house, we were the best of friends.

     Abe confided in me that it wasn’t all business he was doing in the Philippines. He said that in the Manilla all the women treated him nice and  he had a lot of girlfriends there.

      He said, the women in Manilla didn’t make fun of him like the women in Chicago, Abe was now  a  changed man.

      One day when I went to Abe’s office in Chicago, there was a young Asian girl sitting at the front desk.

     Abe said he wanted me to meet his new secretary named Myrna.

     Myrna who was  from the Philippines, looked to be about 20 years old.

     Myrna spoke very a little English, so I watched her, as she sat at the desk, as she piled up all the junk mail.

     Abe explained that Myrna was the daughter of his partner in Manilla and was now going to be his new secretary in Chicago.

     When we left Abe’s office we were laughing, Myrna hardly spoke English, how could she be a secretary.

     But we said between ourselves, apparently English wasn’t important to Abe if  Myrna liked him.

     It wasn’t long before we received a card in the mail announcing that there was soon

going to be a stag party for Abe and it also was an invitation to the pending wedding of Abe Greenstein and his pretty Philippine fiancé Myrna.

     Every day, as I spoke to people that knew Abe, we discussed what we could do to organize his stag party.

     The timing for the stag party was  bad for us and neither my partner nor I knew if we could attend, but either way, we knew we needed to get Abe something humorous for his stag party.

     We pondered the question of what kind of gift to get Abe.

     Abe was already a multi millionaire and had pretty much everything, so we couldn’t come up with any good ideas.

     Then one afternoon, my partner and I were in South Miami for a meeting with our attorney.

     As we left the attorneys office, we stopped in a strip mall to get a sandwich, and as we left the sandwich shop, there was a novelty store next door, so we both went in to see what they had.

     We were astounded, they had all kinds of stuff, and in the back of the store they had a display of all kinds of sexual aids.

     As we looked, we both thought that most of the stuff was pretty funny, especially the big dildo’s that were made out of multi colored silicone rubber.

     Some of them were over a foot long and over three inches thick.

     Both my partner and I had the same idea at the same time, we should  get one of these outrageous dildo’s for Abe’s stag party.

     It would be more humorous than anything else we could think of.

     The store also sold boxes of hard on pills, so we bought a box of them also.

     The next day we sent the stuff by U.P.S. to Abe’s attention, with a note that it was for display at his stag party, and we were sorry we couldn’t attend.

     Well, two days later my phone rang, and it was Abe.

     He said, “That was an awful thing you did”.

     I had no idea of what Abe was talking about, so I said, what are you talking about Abe?

     He said, “You know what I am talking about”. But I was dumbfounded, I had no idea of what he was talking about.

     Abe’s voice became very serious, so again I asked him what he was talking about.

     Abe said, “It was that awful thing you sent me”.

     It was then I realized he was referring to the silicone rubber dildo.

     At this point, I thought for sure that Abe was just joking around with me.

     But he was very serious, and he said, “You both were just lucky that my Myrna didn’t see it”.

     Well, at least now, I knew what Abe was talking about, but I couldn’t believe that he would call me to complain about it, I was a close friend.

     I admit the entire conversation took me by surprise, and now I was sure Abe was joking. I said, Abe, we got the dildo as a joke for your stag party, if you don’t like it, just throw it in the waste basket.

     I waited for an answer but then there was only silence.

     I couldn’t believe anyone would make such a big fuss out of something that was done as a joke, and in good humor, after all we were good friends with Abe, and we were also good customers, doing over a million dollars a year  in business with him.

     Again Abe spoke with a really serious voice, he said, I can’t believe you would do a thing like this to me.

     But now I was getting a bit miffed myself, I wondered how Abe could keep up the tirade over something so trivial.

     I again suggested to Abe that he just throw the dildo in the trash, really, I didn’t know what else to say, and I apologized profusely to him.

     Then again Abe said, “You are just lucky my Myrna didn’t see it.” By now I was starting to get irritated listening to him, so I said, Abe, why the hell are you so worried about Myrna seeing it. Where she comes from, in the Philippines little boys don’t even wear any pants.

     Do you think Myrna never saw a penis before in her life, I said, get over it.

     Abe hung up the phone, and he never spoke to us again, and we also never bought another thing from him also.