Tuesday, September 29, 2015

The Haiti Paintings Story


                                           The Haitian Paintings Story
                                                             1971
                     A true story about how I got involved in selling Haitian Art    
                         Written 3/2011 and rewritten 09/11/2015 unedited
                                                 Howard Yasgar

    It was 1963 when I came to Miami Florida to help out my friend Lou Gladstein.
    I had worked with Lou in Stamford Connecticut for about a year.
    Working with Lou was always interesting, he was what you would call a professional wheeler dealer, and not everything he did was on the up and up.    
    I had just gotten married, in New Haven and Lou had been my best man at my wedding and his wife Gladys  was our witness.
    I didn’t know it at the time, but a few months back, Lou had leased a auto wrecking yard in Miami.
    One day, a couple of weeks after my wedding, I was at Lou’s house in Bridgeport Connecticut and he told me all about it.
    Lou said he leased the place six months prior, and he had hired a fellow to manage the business, but he now suspected that the guy was dishonest and stealing.
    Lou suggested that I go to Miami and find out what was going on with the business.
    His wife Gladys said I could make the trip to Miami, like it was a honeymoon.
    To make it even better Lou said he had a nice 1969 Plymouth sedan that I could use to make the trip.
    So that evening I told my wife I was taking her on a honeymoon to Florida.
    Once I was in Miami, it didn’t take long to figure out what was going on with the business. The manager was stealing all the money, including 6 months of  back rent he hadn’t paid.
    He knew immediately why Lou had sent me, and he left, never to be seen again.
    The business was so deep in debt that I suggested Lou close the place down, which he did.
    Rather than return to  Connecticut, my wife and I  decided to stay in Miami.
    I started dealing in used auto parts, and it wasn’t long before Lou returned to Miami, but this time it
was with a forty foot work boat.
    Lou said he wanted to build a freezer in the boat, and eventually take it to Haiti to go into the lobster business.
    In my spare time I helped Lou refrigerate the boat, and I kept my eye on it when Lou returned to
Connecticut.
    One evening I went to check on the boat, and it was gone.
    The boat slip owner said that Lou had shown up in a taxi loaded with provisions, he paid up his boat slip rent and took off, not saying where he was going.  
    Lou had never even said a word to me, so I assumed something really bad had happened to him in Connecticut.     
    I also was pretty sure Lou was headed to Haiti.
    As time passed, I eventually went into the auto parts rebuilding business.
    Miami was fast becoming the hub for exporting goods to Central and South America as well as the Caribbean, and we had customers from all the different countries coming to see us all the time.
    However whenever customers came from Haiti, I never asked them if they knew Lou Gladstein, I was always afraid of what they would say.   
    However, all of that changed in 1967 when my old friend Lou called and asked me to fly to Haiti right away.
    I couldn’t refuse him, so I went.
    Once I was in Haiti, I found out that  Lou had somehow managed to buy the Haitian railroad, and he needed me to help him dispose of it.      
    So for the next several years, I traveled back and forth to Port Au Prince Haiti while assisting Lou in the disassembly and sale of the railroad.
    As a diversion, whenever I had some spare time, I would stop by and see some of my auto parts customers that I was still doing business with.
    That’s how I got involved in the Haitian Art business.
    One day in the summer of 1971, I was in down town Port Au Prince, with my good friend, Paul Sherlock.
    Paul was one of my used parts suppliers in Miami and I thought it would be a good idea to introduce him to a few of my customers in Haiti so he could see where his parts ended up after we rebuilt them.
    We were walking down the street, when I recognized one of my customer’s buildings.
    The building had two large roll up doors that were open to the sidewalk, they allowed customers to walk in to a parts sales counter.   
    As we approached the open roll up doors, I could see a long parts counter inside, it  was at least thirty feet long.
    As Paul and I walked in the building, I immediately saw that there were several rows of colorful hand painted Haitian primitive art paintings of assorted sizes, they were leaning up in rows against the parts counter.
    There were so many  paintings that you could hardly walk into the building, there must have been over a hundred of them.
    As soon as we entered the dimly lit building, my friend Alex, who was the owner saw us.
    His office was on the second floor, and he came down stairs to shake hands with us.
    I introduced Alex to my friend Paul.
    I asked Alex, what in the world he was doing with all the paintings?
    Alex smiled and said, “That’s an interesting story”.
    As you probably have seen, here in Haiti we have a lot of itinerant street artists.
    All of them trying to sell their paintings to the tourists.
    Every week each artist paints at least one beautiful work of art, and tries to sell it.
    If by Saturday, they don’t sell the painting, they know that I will give them two dollars for it.
    So they all come to me, take the two dollars and with the money they buy a bottle of rum and some  food.
    They get drunk, and then when they wake up on Monday, they paint another picture.
    I was fascinated with his story, so as Alex spoke, I opened my wallet and gave him a one hundred dollar bill and I said, Alex, please ship some of the pictures to me in Miami, I want to try and sell them.
    It was about a week later when I got a call from Air Haiti.
    They said there was a shipment from Haiti waiting to be picked up.
    When I got there I found that not only had Alex send the paintings but he also sent forty hand carved picture frames with them.
    I called Alex in Haiti, he said the frames cost him another two dollars each.
    I was so excited, so I spent the entire day mounting all the pictures in the hand carved frames.
    I soon found that I had run out of room in my building to display the pictures,  I now had Haitian pictures hanging and leaning against every wall in the building.
    Not all of the paintings were primitive Haitian art, there were giant colorful bowls of fruit and many paintings were just bright flowers.
    I felt that they were certainly all interesting but I had no idea of what to do with them or where to sell them.
    The next day, I poured through the yellow pages of the Miami phone book and I called anyone that had anything to do with art.
    As soon as they heard the paintings were from Haiti, they laughed, and some of them actually stopped talking to me.
    The bottom line was, not one person wanted to see them.
    Some galleries said they were absolutely worthless.
    I must have made about fifteen phone calls that day and the consensus of opinion from all the Miami art experts was that I was wasting my time.
    As I sat there, I was thinking about what a big mistake I had made.
    Then the wife of a friend came over, and right away she saw a big oil painting of flowers. She asked me, and I told her it came from Haiti.
    I don’t think she knew where Haiti was.
    She asked “How much is it? I said, twenty dollars, She said, “I want it”.
    Next a very nasty city of Miami inspector came in, he said our company was in default regarding some kind of license, but he liked one of the Haiti paintings, he took it and the license was approved.
    Within a month ninety percent of the paintings were finally gone, most I had ended up giving away, but at least I was out of the Haitian art business.
    Many years later, in the 1990’s, I visited a Haitian Art gallery in Key West, there was a large primitive art painting on the wall and I recognized the artist’s name.
    I had given away several of his paintings.
    How much is that painting I asked, it was only $3500.00.
  
           

The Cuban Crazy House Story


                           The Cuban Crazy House Story
                                                                                  1980
                                             A true story written 10/2010 and Re-written 9/2015
                                                                             Howard Yasgar

     In October of 1980, that was when the Mariel Boat lift took place.
     Mariel is a port city on the north coast of Cuba.
     Fidel Castro had decided to allow anyone who wanted to leave Communist Cuba could leave.
     At first it seemed like a humanitarian gesture on his part.
     When he announced it, thousands of Cubans bought or rented boats in Miami and in the Florida keys, all intending to go to Mariel and bring their family members to Miami.
     Even the big shrimp boats from the Key West went there thinking they could make money hauling Cubans to Miami.  
     However, Castro, being a pretty clever fellow, besides from letting regular Cubans leave the island, he also emptied out all his prisons and mental institutions, allowing everyone to leave Cuba for the United States, all at the same time.
     For companies like mine, located in Miami, we thought it was an excellent opportunity for us to hire some talented employees. We knew they would all need jobs once arriving in Miami.
     We were able to  take advantage of this unique opportunity, and we did hire a few of them.
     Some of the refugees arriving in Miami, were entrepreneurs and they immediately opened up small businesses.
     Because our company was in the automotive electrical business several of these new business men came to us to buy repair parts.
     One day one of our new Cuban customers came by, and I took him for a walk around our shop to  acquaint him about what we did.
     As we walked around I saw that he had focused his eyes on one of our employees.
     As he was leaving the customer said to me, “You should be very careful”,  I asked him why?
     he said, “When I was in Cuba I once visited the insane asylum which he referred to as the “Casa de Los Loco’s” or crazy house, and he said he recognized one of our employee’s named Jorge as being a patient in the insane asylum there.
     I told him that we had not had any problems with Jorge, but I appreciated him telling me.
     About two days later I was approached by the employee Jorge.
     Jorge said that he had seen me  showing a new customer around the company.
     Jorge said, “I want to warn you, please watch out for him, once when I was in Cuba, I had visited the insane asylum and I recognized that fellow, he was a patient there.”  
     It appears they both were in the crazy house at the same time.   
     
  

The "Is Someone Listening" Story


                                                                   The  "Is Someone Listening" Story

                                                               A true miracle and how it happened
                                                                                       2015  
                                                    Written 9/2015 and rewritten 02/2016 unedited
                                                                              Howard Yasgar


       In 1958, when I was nineteen years old, I was living in Westville Connecticut, and I had a very close friend named Jon.
      Jon lived about 20 miles up the road from me in Bethany Connecticut.
      Both Jon and I were car enthusiasts and got along well together, Jon had a liking for the 1957 Ford hot rods that were built for the Connecticut State Police. He had one and we would go to upstate New York, stopping at road houses to take on anyone that wanted to race.
       On day, Jon came to see me and told me that he was getting married. It was quite a shock as I realized I was now losing my good racing buddy.
       After Jon married, I tried to go and see him a couple of times but I detected that Jon’s wife didn’t appreciate him associating with his unmarried former old racing buddies.
       Time passed quickly, and for me, the army came and went, and then in 1963 I moved to Miami Florida.
      By 1963, I had pretty much had lost track of my old friend Jon, but I never forgot about him, so over the next 52 years, whenever I happened to think about Jon, I would punch his name into Google, but it appeared my friend Jon had simply disappeared off the grid, I hoped Jon hadn’t died, so I never gave up looking.
      Over those 52 years I faxed a few people that had the same name, and I sent e-mails to perhaps a dozen more, but with no luck, so by the year 2015 I had pretty much come to the realization I wasn’t ever going to find my old friend Jon.  
      Then a strange thing happened, Out of the blue, I received a Facebook inquiry from a lady in Canada who I had met more than fifty years before. She reminded me that she had known Jon, and best of all she knew Jon’s middle name and she said that she thought Jon had moved to Texas.
      Well that narrowed the field down, it also got my wife interested in helping me to find Jon.
      My wife sat down with her computer, and by using Jon’s first, middle and last name she hoped that by triangulation we would find him, but she didn’t find him. What she did find was a divorce recorded in Texas and Jon’s former wife’s phone number was there.
      My wife asked me if I wanted to call Jon’s ex-wife, but I hesitated, the last thing I wanted was to hear a tirade of bad things from a vindictive former wife.
       Eventually I couldn’t help myself and I called his former wife’s phone number. Luckily her new husband answered, and he listened to my story. He said that he had no idea of how to reach Jon, but he said he had a phone number of a relative that I could try.
      The next day was Sunday, and at eleven in the morning, I called the phone number, but sadly it was some ones answering machine so I left a message.
       We returned from doing our errands around three in the afternoon and there was a message on my wife’s cell phone.
       I returned the call, and low and behold after fifty two years it was Jon. So we must have talked for half an hour. Jon said that he had no computer or cell phone so that might be why it was so hard to find him.
      Then Jon said, “I can’t believe that you called me today, I know it’s been over fifty years, since we last saw each other, but every morning when I wake up I always say a little prayer, and this morning I mentioned in my prayer the names of two of my neighbor friends here in Texas, but for some unknown crazy reason I mentioned your name also.
      Jon paused, and I said, do you think someone’s listening?

        

        

The Canadian Fishing Trip Story

                                                                   The Canadian Fishing Trip Story
                                                                                        1987
                                                             A true story about a simple fishing trip     
                                                  Written 01 1010 and rewritten 09/05/2015 unedited
                                                                                 Howard Yasgar


        In 1991, I was doing business with a company in Detroit called Barney Kaplan Surplus.
        One day, Barney, who was the owner of the company as well as my friend, called me up, and said that he had a customer, who had just bought a fishing lodge somewhere up in Ontario Canada.
       Barney said, the customer had just invited him to come to visit his fishing lodge, and he made it all sound very exciting.
       The fellow told Barney the weather was beautiful in Ontario and they were catching lots of lake trout. So when Barney heard that, he called me up right away and he suggested that we go up to Ontario and stay at his customers fishing lodge, and catch lake trout.
       Barney said he would take his son Jerry and I should take my son Jack along, he knew that my son, Jack, who was twenty two years old was working with me, would probably enjoy the trip.
      He was right, when I told my son Jack, he thought the whole trip sounded exciting, as we had never been lake trout fishing in Canada before.
       So after we discussed it, my son and I went out right away and bought new, take apart fishing rods and also a special plastic carrying cases for them.
       My son and I, were to meet Barney and his son Jerry at the airport in Chicago, where we would all catch a plane to some place called “Red Lake” in Ontario Canada.
       Barney said his friend told him that he would make all the arrangements for us to get to his place once we landed in Red Lake.
       I got our tickets, and we left Miami to meet Barney and his son at the Chicago Airport, where they were flying in from Detroit.
       Everything went just as planned, I had assumed that Barney had everything pretty well organized to get us to the fish camp once we were in Red Lake.
      At the time neither my son nor I knew the name of the fishing camp we were going to, we just assumed that Barney knew where it was, only, that it was somewhere near a place called Red Lake in Ontario.
       We arrived at the Red Lake Ontario airport, and as we waited for our luggage Barney went to talk to a cab driver. As he did that, I walked over and I saw that Barney had a folded brochure in his hand which he gave to the cab driver.
       What’s happening, I asked, “Nothing”, Barney said, “The cab driver will take us to an airfield where my friend has arranged for a small plane to pick us all up. Barney’s friend had said it was merely a hop skip and a jump, from Red Lake to his fish camp. I saw that the cab driver nodded, and he said he knew exactly where to take us.
       We all piled into the cab and the cabby drove us out of town to what looked like a grassy airstrip that was next to a lake. It was all pretty rustic looking country.
       As we all got out of the cab waiting for the airplane to arrive, I saw there was an old antique float plane sitting by the dock at the lake,  so while we waited, I walked down to the dock to look at the plane.
     On one of the float pontoons someone had written “DHC2 Beaver”, wow, I realized that it was an antique De Haviland Beaver, De Haviland used to name all their planes after animals, and they were used a lot in WW2, but that was a long time ago and most of the planes have been scrapped by now or put in a museum somewhere.
       I walked back to the cab and asked Barney how long before his friends plane arrived, Barney said, “Don’t worry, my friend told me, he would have his company pilot come and pick us up any moment”.
       I saw that the cab driver was looking around, and eventually he looked at me and said, “You can never depend on these bush pilots”. I said, what do you mean Bush pilot? I had never expected to be flying anywhere with a bush pilot it sounded scary.
       About a half hour later, a fellow came walking out of the woods, heading towards us. The cab driver said, “Here comes the pilot”.
      I was a little shocked when I saw him, this guy was not a pilot. He looked like a lumberjack. He had mud caked, lace up boots, heavy work pants and a plaid heavy duty jacket. He also had a beard about a foot long and he had a stupid looking pull over wool cap.
      He asked us if we were the fishing guys, and Barney said yes. Barney handed him the brochure he had taken back from the cab driver.
      I really had to look the guy over a second time, he sure didn’t look like any pilot to me.
      Then the fellow pointed towards that old Beaver float plane. Well, at that point there was really nothing I could say, so we all carried everything down to the plane, and as I had long legs, I climbed into the passenger’s seat. The pilot loaded the bags, then he got in and fiddled around with some switches and started the plane’s engine. There was a lot of smoke and a lot of noise. Everything in the plane looked very old and worn out, so I just closed my eyes as he taxied out into the lake and took off.
      Barney, Jerry and my son jack were sitting right behind me. I only opened my eyes when I heard the pilot say, “Where are you guys going?”
       How could he possibly ask us where we were going, didn’t he know, so I waited for Barney to answer but there was no immediate answer. Then Barney said, “I don’t know where we are going, we have never been here before, don’t you recognize the fish camp name that’s on the brochure I gave you”.
      The pilot said, “No, never heard of it, there are a million fishing camps up here in Canada. Then the pilot turned to me, and said, “You mean to tell me you guys don’t know where we are going”.
      Here we were in the sky flying and I couldn’t believe the conversation that was going on.
      I looked out the window, we were flying over what looked like endless tundra, and it all looked the same as far as my eyes could see in every direction. I tried squinted my eyes, but there was no sign anywhere of a house or human being.
      As I forlornly sat there looking out the planes window, the Beaver’s nose started dropping. The pilot
reached above and the engines picked up speed and the nose came up, I had that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, how did I let myself get talked into this?  About every five minutes the nose dipped and the pilot revved the plane’s engines to bring her back up. Thinking we would soon be crashing, I looked at the floor it had mud all over it, and I saw that there was what was left of a folded map laying under the pilots muddy boot.
     Barney yelled loudly over the engine noise and told the pilot the fishing camp owner’s name, and he said the guy drove a black and white Chevrolet Blazer.  I was thinking, if that’s all the information Barney had I was preparing for doom, I could see it all now, Miami man and son lost flying in old antique De Haviland airplane deep in Ontario wilderness.
      As we droned on, it seemed like hours were passing, and I was now preparing myself for the pilot to tell us any moment that we were out of gas and going to crash land.
      That’s what I was thinking, when all of a sudden the pilot was pointing downward, I looked out of my window and there was a Black and white Chevy Blazer.
       The pilot circled the area three times, after the third go around, I asked him if he was going to land.  “Yes he said, but you should help me look for rocks in the water, if we ever hit one while landing it’s the end.”
       The plane taxied up to the dock. We tied up and several young fellows came down to take our luggage.
      We walked up to the main building where Barney’s friend was so happy to see us, I could understand why, as we were the only customers there.
      That night we had a fried fish supper and were given a cabin in the woods with a pot belly stove. We looked the stove over but no one wanted to chop wood and it wasn’t cold enough to use it, so we just unpacked our suitcases.
      Barney said he had brought an extra pair of long johns just in case it got cold. He said they were the real original long johns complete with the trap door rear. No one volunteered, so he asked my son Jack if he wanted to put the long johns on, but Jack, coming from Florida, had never seen long johns before and said he wouldn’t ever consider wearing such a ridiculous thing.
      I think it was about four in the morning, we were all awake and it was freezing cold and that’s when my son Jack put on Barney’s long johns, Barney never forgot about that and he always reminded me about it.   
      In the morning we were assigned several young Canadian college students as fishing guides, and they took us fishing for Northern Pike, even though we wanted lake trout.
      After I had caught two or three big Pike, I told the guides that I wanted to take some back to camp to filet up to bring to Miami.
      I already knew that the guides were all young nature loving college kids, and this was probably their first job they ever had, but that’s when they really pissed me off.
     They referred to all the big Northern Pike we had caught as “Snakes” and one said to me, if you can afford to pay to come up here to fish, you can afford to buy your own fish at home.
     Later that day the guides stopped along the way and we caught some Walleye, which they said that they would cook up for lunch for us.  
     They stopped at a campfire site fire place, and they took out a three foot wide cast iron frying pan and threw in a one pound hunk of lard. When the lard melted they started filleting the Walleye and removing the skin. Barney, whose father was once a fishmonger said, “Hey fellows, leave the skin on the fish that’s where all the flavor is”. The young guides who I am sure didn’t know their ass from their elbow, looked at Barney like they wanted to kill him. They eventually cooked a few pieces with the skin on to please Barney. Barney was right, his fish tasted better, but I don’t think those young kids learned anything.  Barney later said, “These Canadian kids are all morons, and they don’t know what they are doing, anything they put in the frying pan with so much lard would taste good, even a piece of wood.
     The next day Barney and I took out a boat by ourselves to try catching Lake trout. It was cold as hell and nothing was biting, Barney, in his usual  good humor, took out a small dried kosher salami that he had in his pocket and put a chunk of it on the fish hook, but it didn’t help.
      I have to admit it was an interesting fishing trip, but we never saw one lake trout, but I did pack up some Northern Pike fillets to take home to Miami, it was awful, I should have listened to the guides.
      I don’t think my son Jack or I will ever forget that Canadian fishing trip, nor will I ever forget my dear friend Barney, He died in 2014 at 96 years of age.
   
 

 
 
 
 


 

The Guano Smuggling Story



                                                                 The Guano Smuggling Story
                                                                                   1967
                                                            A true story that happened in Haiti
                                                         Written 1/2010 and Re-written 1/2015
                                                                            Howard Yasgar


       In 1967, I was living in Miami Florida when I received a phone call from an old friend named Lou Gladstein.
       I knew that Lou had moved to the country of Haiti, and he said that he wanted me to fly there as soon as possible to help him with a project.
      At the time I knew that there was a country called Haiti, somewhere, but I didn’t exactly know where it was, however I was soon to find out all about it.
      Once I arrived in Haiti, my friend Lou and his wife Gladys picked me up at the Francois Duvalier airport and we drove up into the mountains to an area called Fermathe, where they were renting a beautiful home owned by Dr. Fritz Cineas, a government official.
      Once we were there at the house, my friend Lou told me all about why he needed me to help him.
      It seems that he had acquired the entire Haitian railroad and he needed my help to disassemble and sell it.
      I agreed to help Lou, and I stayed at their house for a few days discussing the project.
      In Haiti, in the evenings, it was customary to have friends come by for a cup of local coffee, or a drink of rum and some conversation, so one evening, Lou’s wife invited a Haitian friend over for supper. His name was Doctor Marc Bulliet.
      Mark was a tall, light skinned, distinguished looking Haitian fellow.
      Lou’s wife had said she liked Marc, because he was an interesting guy, as well as good looking.
      Lou jokingly told me that Marc was a bit of a story teller and probably worked for the C.I.A.
      One evening over coffee, Mark told me that  was Haiti’s chief archaeologist, and he showed me a business card to that effect.
      There was no question about it, I found Marc to be a very interesting and entertaining fellow.
      Besides from telling me that he was the chief archaeologist in Haiti, it appears that he also got involved in all sorts of interesting projects and side deals.
      Actually I think it was best to say that Marc was always getting involved in anything that he could make a buck off.
      Marc seemed to like the fact that I was also interested in getting involved with some of the deals he was talking about, and believe me Mark had  plenty of deals to choose from.
      Later that same day, Mark asked me if I ever had heard about Guano, and I told him that I had read that Guano or bat droppings was one of the best fertilizers to be had.
      I knew that bat Guano was very high in Nitrogen which made it ideal as a fertilizer. Marc was over-
joyed that he had finally found someone that knew what Guano was.
      Marc said that he had discovered a big cave in the interior of Haiti that was loaded with Guano. He said the cave was in a very remote location, but the Guano could be dug up, bagged and brought to the capitol of Port Au Prince  by burro.
      Marc wanted me to team up with him and sell the Guano in the United States.
      Well, never having tried selling Guano, I didn’t know, if I could, so Marc said if I stopped by his office in downtown Port Au Prince, he would have some samples for me that he had already prepared, and I could take them back to Miami.
      Mark said that he had already had an official chemical analysis done on the stuff, and I could use that information to help to sell the Guano in the States.
     The next day, Lou drove me down to Marc’s office in Port au Prince so I could get the samples before I left Haiti.
     We easily  found Marc’s office, it was in a very old French style building  with tall rounded top doors.
     His office was on the ground floor right off the noisy and dusty dirty streets of Port Au Prince.
     Mark’s office was clean and uncluttered.
     On Marc’s desk, he had already prepared several beautiful samples for me.
      It appeared that he had obtained some soft gray, three inch wide soft vinyl tubing, and he had made it into pouches about eight inches long. Each pouch had the Guano’s chemical analysis neatly typed on the gray vinyl.
      It appeared that the ends of each pouch had been stapled shut with a simple office stapler. I opened my attache case and found that six of Marc’s vinyl pouches nested in it perfectly.
      I left that morning on an Air Haiti flight to Miami.
      When we arrived at Miami International Airport, I went directly to the line for returning American citizens.
      The airport was crowded and noisy, but the line moved quickly.
      When the customs officer asked me to open my attache case, I simply placed it on the inspection table, unclicked the latches and opened it.
      It seemed like suddenly the entire airport became  silent, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.
      It was so quiet that I’m sure you could have even heard a pin drop.
      it appeared that everyone in the airport was staring at the neatly placed vinyl pouches of Guano in my attache case.
      I think no one in the room could believe it, they must all have thought that U.S. Customs had just caught a cocaine smuggler, and a really dumb one at that.
      Suddenly there were six armed Customs Agents around me.
      The head  agent in front said, “And what may I ask is that?” I said, that’s bat Guano,  looking him straight in the eye.
     “I’m sure it is”, he replied, “But it looks like drugs to me,”
     They gently picked up my attache case and marched me to a glass walled office, where the Chief Customs officer sat.
     They placed my attaché case on his desk and said something to him. I saw his eye brows lift as he pointed to a chair for me.
      “What do we have here he said?” I said they are all packages of Guano fertilizer, the analysis is typed on each pouch, but I could see he didn’t believe me.
      He sat there thinking with his finger to his lips.
      He placed a sheet of white paper on his desk and removed one of the pouches. He gently removed the staples from the end of the pouch with a letter opener, and a grayish granulated powder came out.
      I could tell this was going to get serious.
      As the Chief wet his finger with his tongue, he was going to taste the powder.
      Again he said, “What did you say this was, and where did it come from?”
I said I came from Haiti Sir, and it’s a fertilizer called Guano, you know “Bat shit”. He immediately withdrew his finger, and decided against tasting it.
     He sat back, thought for a minute and then told me to take my stuff and get out of there. I think everyone in the airport was watching me leave.
      So as not to leave you guessing, the next week I made several phone calls to golf courses and fertilizer distributors, and I got the same story from every one.
      I was about fifty years too late with trying to sell Guano. It used to be popular, but now commercial high Nitrogen fertilizers are available, they can be made to order and done very cheap.
      Oh well, I couldn’t sell the Guano but at least I got a good story out of it.