The Aunt Adele's Medicine Story (Short)

               

                                    Aunt Adele’s Medicine Story (Short)

                                                                     Written 1/28/2019

                                                                       Howard Yasgar

Aunt Adele was one of three sisters.

My mom Betty was the oldest and her sister Lilian was the youngest.

By 1964  all three sisters had all lost their husbands and were living on Miami Beach.

Eventually the youngest sister Lillian left for Connecticut, and my Mom leased a small 24 room hotel on Collins Avenue.

Adele met a nice guy named Al. Al, was a retired electrician from New York, they got along so good that Adele eventually moved in with Al who was living at the Monte Carlo Hotel on Miami Beach.

Adele’s son Allen and his wife Diana had 50 foot sailboat and every year they came from Colorado to sail in the Caribbean. When they did it, they always stayed with us a few days.

Over the years when my wife Katherine and I visited Adele, and we noticed her ability to talk to us was diminishing.

Soon it was at the point where she would only say “Hello dear”, and “Yes dear”, and that was it.

It was almost Impossible to have a conversation, actually it was embarrassing trying to talk to her.

One day when Allen was in Miami, we were all on Miami Beach visiting Adele.

We noticed that on her night stand, she had about thirty different medications, all in plastic bottles.

I asked Allen what he thought all the medicines were?

Allen picked one up and asked Adele who the doctor was and what it was for. Adele didn’t know, but she had been taking it for years.

Allen read the label, it had been prescribed many years before by a doctor in New Haven Connecticut, it was for some malady that Adele hadn’t had in years.

Allen made a complete list of the medications and went to see Adele’s Medicare doctor.

Allen presented the list to the doctor and asked if he would review it.

It appears the doctor for whatever reason took offense and said, “Exactly who are you”, Allen replied, “I am Adele’s son”. Perhaps the doctor was afraid  that it was a list of medications he had prescribed.

“Are you a doctor, the Medicare Doctor asked?”

Allen, seeing an opportunity to further irritate the Medicare doctor said, “Yes I am a doctor”.  Allen actually had a doctorate degree but it was in Engineering”.

The Medicare doctor said leave the list and he would look at it.

Of course Allen never heard from the Medicare doctor again.

The next time Allen and Diana were in Miami, we all went to visit Adele, but this time Allen had a computer, and he looked up each medicine on the internet. He was able to eliminate about 80% of the medications.      

On the next visit to Miami, when we all went to visit Adele, she was in a convalescent home for a few days recovering from minor surgery.

It had been several months since she had been off all the old medications.

We all met in the Convalescent home dining room.

To our surprise, Aunt Adele was her old self again, she was a talker, and we all talked about everything including world events.    

      

     

The, Where is Wasseal Story.

       

                                                    The, Where is Wasseal Story.

                                                                        2006                          

                                                                   A true story

                                                                 Written 2017

                                                                Howard Yasgar

      This story was told to me several years ago by one of my good friends and neighbor, named Charlie.    

      We always ask Charlie to tell this story every time we have a get together, it’s a classic.   

      Charlie is originally from New Jersey, and his wife is from Natchez Mississippi.

      Charlie’s wife’s family still owns a considerable amount of farmland in Mississippi.

      So every year they drive to her ancestral home a couple of times.

While Charlie’s wife takes care of family business, Charlie, being a craftsman, always spends a couple of weeks fixing up, and repairing all the old farm buildings on the property. Some of the old buildings are more than a hundred years old.

      One year, Charlie’s project was a farm building that was pretty old and needed quite a bit of exterior wood replaced.

      A decision was made that after he rebuilt the building, the best approach would be to coat it with Thompsons Water Seal.

      Thompson’s Water Seal is a popular product sold worldwide. It is used  to preserve and protect wood from the elements.

      You can buy Thompsons Water Seal in any hardware store it’s sold by the gallon.

      But Charlie estimated that he would need at least five, 5 gallons of Thompsons Water Seal. It was much more than he cared to have to haul up to Natchez Mississippi in the back his pickup truck.

      So Charlie called the Thompson water seal company, and they told him that they would arrange it so he could pre order what he needed, and they would make sure it was waiting for him when he got there.

     They said the Natchez Mississippi hardware store would have the water seal compound ready for him when he arrived.

      So just to double check, before he left for Mississippi, Charlie made a call to the hardware store.

      He said, he wanted to confirm that his order for the Thompsons Water Seal would be ready when he arrived.

      There was silence on the phone for several seconds.

      Then the clerk replied, Wasseal, he don’t work hear no mo.

      Obviously the clerk misunderstood him, so Charlie, again said, I just want confirm my order for Thompsons Water Seal is ready.

      The clerk said, “Just a minute” and there was silence on the phone again.

      Then the clerk once again came back on the phone and said, “I done told you, Wasseal don’t work here no mo”.

          

The Ugly Looking Tomato Story

The Ugly  Looking Tomato Story

Written 11/2018
Howard Yasgar

     I was told this short story back in the 1990,s by a good friend Richard Schneider.
     Richard was an entrepreneur who was involved in various businesses. He always had his eyes open for the possibility of a new venture.
     One day, Richard was driving South on U.S. 1, he was heading for a meeting in Homestead Florida.
     At the time Homestead and the surrounding area was the tomato capital of Florida, possibly the world. Hundreds of acres of farm land  was devoted only to growing tomatoes.  
      Today, NAFTA has changed all that, the tomatoes now come from Mexico and all the acreage in south Florida that was devoted to growing tomatoes, now have private  homes and condo’s built on them.
      Anyway, as Richard was driving South on U.S. 1, as he was passing through Homestead there was a terrible smell, it smelled like a garbage dump.
      Now, every day, when Richard drove down U.S. 1 there was always the awful garbage smell.
      He noticed that the smell was strongest as he passed by  all the vegetable packing houses.
      Back then there were all kinds of packing houses in homestead, packing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that were  grown in South Florida. 
      One day  Richard decided to drive behind the packing houses, and find our where the smell was coming from.
      It took a bit of maneuvering to get behind the packing houses, but when he did  he couldn’t believe what he saw.
      There was a absolute mountain of tomatoes, with a Caterpillar bulldozer driving over the pile and crushing them all, that was the garbage smell, it was tons of rotting tomatoes.                                                       
      Richard got out of the car and walked over to the mountain of tomatoes and picked a couple of them up. 
      The tomatoes were perfect except they were deformed, one was a double tomato, like two tomatoes grown together, another one looked like some ones behind. He picked up another one and it looked like a pair of boobs. 
      The packing house foreman saw Richard looking and came over to him.
      I think at first he thought Richard was some kind of inspector, or possibly the police, as  I’m sure it was illegal to just crush tons of  tomatoes, like they were doing.
      Richard asked the foreman why they were crushing thousands of perfectly good tomatoes?
      The foreman said they were the ugly rejects, he sais the buyers of tomatoes only wanted perfectly
 round ones, and  all the deformed ones were all thrown away.
      The first thought Richard had was, there are millions of starving people all over the world  that would be happy to eat an ugly looking  tomato.
       Every day Richard thought about it, why not just crush the tomatoes and make tomato sauce out of them, or tomato juice or something, Richard felt that anything would be better than throwing them away into the garbage.
       Richard had heard that the actor Paul Newman had just come out with all kinds of tomato based
Spaghetti sauces.
       Richard felt that he was sure he could get all the deformed tomatoes he wanted for free perhaps he should Call  them, he had heard that Paul Newman’s company said they want to help feed needy people.
       What could be better, he could sell the tomatoes to Newman’s company for next to nothing, they could just pay the freight and a small commission for Richard to arrange it.
       So Richard called Paul Newman’s  company and to his dismay, they weren’t even slightly interested. 
       It appeared they all knew about ugly tomatoes.
       The tomato growers and packers have tons of deformed tomatoes and no market to sell them, and they must to pay to take them to the dump. 
        

The Medical Researcher Story

                                            The Medical Researcher Story

                                                                                     1983

                                                                          Written in 2016

                                                                           Howard Yasgar

                                 A true story that happened when we attended Mardi Gras in 1983. 

It was Mardi Gras time 1983, so my wife and I decided to head to New Orleans. 

After several calls we found a room at the le Richelieu hotel located on Chartres Street, a nicer place you could never find. 

Once we were there, we checked the parade schedule and found that there was one slated to come down Canal Street that very evening.

So about two hours before parade time we walked down to Canal Street hoping to find a good spot along the parade route, I hoped to find a place where I could catch some of the colorful beaded necklaces that they threw from the parade floats.

That evening, even though we were two hours early, the crowds had already started lining the streets, and in some places they were already lined up 6 or 7 people deep, and that was for the entire length of the parade route. 

Eventually we found a spot and we edged our way in, we did it until we had only one or two people in front of us.

As the parade eventually started coming by, I noticed there was a fellow standing next to me, he was standing on a small plastic cooler, the height of the cooler made it easier for him to catch the necklaces that were being tossed to the crowds. 

When the passing floats slowed down and several of the marching bands started going by, the fellow  got off the cooler and opened it up. He took out a pint size cold bottle of Southern Comfort,  and took a few slugs from it.

As he put the bottle back, I looked him over, he appeared to be a pretty presentable and normal looking guy about 30 years old. 

I could see he was already a bit tipsy, but  I thought he was a pretty smart guy to have brought a cooler to stand on, so I complemented him on it, and then we started talking. 

He said that he was from Chicago, and he was going to be in New Orleans for a couple of weeks.

So to make conversation, I asked him what he did for a living in Chicago.

He said that he worked in a laboratory as a research chemist.

I said you are fortunate to have a job that lets you come to New Orleans for two weeks. Yes he said I’m very fortunate it’s a good job, they pay me while I am here, I come to Mardi Gras every year. I have been with them  for several years.

I was curious, as to what the hell a young guy who was a research chemist does, as I have always liked to fool around with chemistry projects myself.

So I asked him what he was researching?

He said he was working for a government funded company that was researching for a cure for cancer.

I had to stop and think for a second, then I said, what happens if you find a cure, does that mean you are out of a job, and won’t be able to come to Mardi Gras?

He stepped  back up on the cooler and he looked at me sort of like I was an idiot, and with a wide smile, he said, I don’t  think you ever have to worry about that.  

I took that to mean, he wasn’t worried, because his company had no intention of ever finding a cure.

But, I have to admit it got me to thinking about how many companies are paid by our government to find a cure but they never seem to find one. 

I bet there are hundreds of them, they are all taking part in the same scam of supposedly seeking a cure.

That conversation was back in 1983 and I bet he is still  getting paid to go to Mardi Gras, and who knows perhaps the fellow we met  is the president of the research company by now.  

My opinion is,  perhaps the government should put term limits on all the cancer cure research companies, 4 years and no cure and the money stop, what do you think?  

                        

The High Blood Pressure Story

                                                           The High Blood Pressure Story

                                                         This true story happened in 2002

                                                                 Rewritten 1/21/2019

                                                                      Howard Yasgar

 

 In the summer of 2002 my wife and I were in Islamorada, in the Florida Keys.

 I needed a new pair of eyeglasses so we thought it would be pretty easy to find a local optometrist.

 My wife thought she had seen one in the local Tavernier shopping center, so we drove over there.

 Sure enough, there was an optometrists office there.

We went inside, and standing behind the counter was a very nicely endowed young woman with extensive cleavage and she was proudly displaying it the best she could.

She appeared to be too young, but she said she was the optometrist.

Trying not to stare, I told her that I would like to buy two pairs of glasses.

She said that I would have to go through a full eye examination, and I agreed to do it.

As my wife took a seat and was reading a magazine in the outer waiting room, I followed the optometrist into the examination room.

In the examination room I sat down in the  optometrist’s chair, and she said that she needed to take my blood pressure.

I thought that strange as I never had an Optometrist take my blood pressure before an exam. But what the heck, I knew my blood pressure was always normal anyway.  

As she prepared to take my blood pressure, she was leaning over me with her bosom no more that a inch or two from my face, and I couldn’t help but stare at her cleavage as my nose was practically in it.

She pumped up the blood pressure machine and stared at the dial.

She said, “My goodness” your blood pressure is very high, it’s so high that it’s actually off the scale.

I became very alarmed and I asked her what I should do?

She said I needed medical attention right away.

Fortunately, right next to the same shopping center was Mariners Hospital.

I told my wife what the optometrist had said, that my blood pressure was so high it was off the scale.

My wife immediately drove me to the emergency room at Mariners Hospital.

By now I was sweating profusely, and fearing the worst.

As we registered at the emergency room desk, the receptionist  asked what was wrong and I told her that the optometrist said my blood pressure was so high that it was off the scale.

She went into action immediately, and found a nurse who rushed me into a room and rapidly hooked me up to a blood pressure machine.

You can be sure  I was really concerned as to what she would say, was I having a heart attack?  

She said, “Who told you your blood pressure was high”, so I told her it was the Optometrist.

The nurse said your blood pressure is perfectly normal.  

The hospital didn’t charge me anything, for the blood pressure test, and I got my glasses in Miami.      

      

                                                    

The Al Weiner Computer Story

                                                The Al Weiner Computer Story

                                                     A true story that happened in i992

                                                           Re-written 1/21/2019

                                                                 Howard Yasgar

Back in the early 1990’s, I was in the automotive parts rebuilding business in Miami.

At the time, computers were just becoming popular for small companies like ours, but we didn’t know anything about them.

We  wanted to computerize our company, but we didn’t have a clue as to what we needed, so we started randomly calling in computer companies that supposedly helped  in computerizing small businesses.

We were told we would need a main frame computer which would need a dedicated air conditioned room with anti static carpeting.

We would also need a computer programmer to design a program for us to use.

So we  had several meetings with computer consultants and their programmers.

We were told that the part numbering system that I had worked on for several years, was not compatible with a computerized system.

So we kept looking everywhere for a system that would work with our company.

At the time, in Miami there was a company called Alco Industries, it was owned by a friend of ours named Al Weiner.

Al Weiner’s company Alco Industries specialized in rebuilding automotive starters and alternators, much the same as we did, but Alco was a  much larger company than ours.

The owner, Al Weiner thought he would get in on the ground floor in the automotive industry by designing a computer program that could be used by smaller rebuilding companies like ours.

Al, got together with Singer Corporation, they would supply Al with the main frame computers he needed and Al would supply  the programming that would be needed.

I don’t remember if Al called us first, or we called him, but he  invited us to his office to show us how well his system worked, we were a potential customer.

My partner Don and I sat in Al’s office as he proudly explained to us how his computer system worked.

When he was done, we felt he had designed an absolute masterpiece.

The program, he said had been designed especially for companies like ours, it would make us money, because it took into account every detail of our business.

His program calculated how many used parts could be reused, it calculated how many parts could be rebuilt, and how many new parts would be needed. The program also took into account the labor cost of each item, and the computer would calculated the total final cost of the unit being rebuilt.

Al was pretty proud of the system that he designed, it certainly sounded very impressive.

Before we left,  as a final sales pitch, Al asked us if we would like to see his computer program in action.

Al had sitting on his desk his current parts catalog and his parts price sheet.

I looked over the price sheet, and I picked out one of the most popular starters that both our companies rebuilt.

It was a popular Ford starter known in the industry as a number 3124. I asked him to use that starter as an example.

Al, started punching  in a few things on his keyboard, then he got up and motioned us to follow him.

We walked down a hallway and entered an anti static carpeted, air conditioned room with a row of Singer main frame computers all buzzing and clicking away, they even had little lights blinking.  

Al, said it would take about 15 minutes for the computers to print out a complete report.

Well, It actually only took about 10 minutes, and a printer spit out a report that was about 10 feet long.

When the printer was done Al tore the printout off and carried it to his office with us following him.

Al couldn’t have been prouder, and with a big smile he said the computer print out said his  cost was for rebuilding a 3124 starter, was exactly $24.50 each.

I opened up Al’s catalog and price list and it said he was selling that 3124 starter for $22.50 ea.

So according to his computer system, his company was losing $2.00 on every 3124 starter he sold, and had been doing so for several years.

Obviously Al had never checked his own computer to see if he was making any money.

             

The Playboy Channel Story

                                                                        The Playboy Channel Story
                                                                                           2000
                                                                                 Re-written 1/2019 
                                                                                    Howard Yasgar

    We live in a town house condominium in Doral Florida, our Cable television, Comcast, is provided
by the condo Association.
    We have never had any complaints regarding the programming that was provided to us.
    That’s why we were very surprised when my wife received a call from Comcast.
    The lady at Comcast told my wife that we had the Playboy Channel, and they had not been billing us for it.
    My wife told the Comcast Lady, we didn’t have the Playboy channel, we never had it, and we wouldn’t want it, even if it was for free.
    The Comcast lady, said she was sending out a repair crew to disconnect us from the Playboy channel.We said fine, as we knew we never had the channel in the first place.
    Guess what, the next day we had the Playboy channel. 
    They never billed us for it, but we knew it was there, because  we  occasionally bumped into it, as we surfed the channels.
    That Summer our grandson Alex came to stay with us, for a week , he was 7 years old.
    We noticed that Alex spent an inordinate time in the guest bedroom with the door closed.
    When Alex left, my wife went into the guest bedroom to change the linens, she turned on the television,  and you guessed it, it was on the Playboy channel.

      

The Feng Shui Story

                                                           The Feng Shui Story

                                                                    Written 1/2019

                                                                     Howard Yasgar

Back in the 1990’s I was making Marine parts in Miami Florida.

It was a time when the Japanese and the Taiwanese were making inroads into the U.S. market.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that  Japan and Taiwan were soon going to dominate the  parts making business U.S.

The Japanese salesmen that were coming to sell to us were difficult to deal with, if you asked them a question, they would talk among themselves in Japanese, excluding us from the conversation.  It became obvious that the Japanese felt that we were inferior and they were superior to us. However at about the same time the Taiwanese were also entering into the U.S. Market, but they were doing it much nicer way.

Many Taiwanese  chose American or European style first names, that alone made  talking and dealing them much easier than the Japanese, also the Taiwanese were much more eager in trying to obtain our business.

Eventually, I decided that for us to survive in our manufacturing business we needed to be making parts in Taiwan.  

My wife and I decided that we would take our next vacation in Taiwan, and seek out manufacturers that we could do business with.

I knew that we were going to enter into a culture very different from our own and I was anxious to see just how different from us they would be.

I had prepared a list of companies in Taipei that we could visit. However the moment we were in our Hotel room, the phone never stopped ringing. They were Taiwanese companies offering to send cars to pick us up and bring us to their factories.

I found that when reading the Taipei phone book was geared to attract foreign buyers, and I found several  interesting companies I wanted to visit.

One of them was called “Paal”, they specialized in making small quantities of parts, just what we needed.

Paal’s office was located in an apartment building, and for me that was a cultural surprise. In Taiwan an apartment  building could have a small factory in one apartment and a family with kids in the next apartment.

The Company Paal was run by  a fellow named Kiv Wang and his cousin Han Chen. They used a whole group of  small manufactures to subcontract for them.

We started doing business with Paal, and they served our needs very well  for the next several years.

Eventually our business with them grew so large that they felt that they needed to put up  an industrial building, with the entire second floor to be devoted to making parts for us.

They called me to tell me that they were actively looking for property in an industrial zone to build a Factory, we was just as excited as they were.

Eventually after several weeks, they happily called to tell me they found a location, so I asked when they would start building?

Oh, they said, first we need the Feng Shui to approve it.

Feng Shui, what the heck is a Feng Shui I asked. Well I learned that the Feng Shui is a Chinese Pseudoscience that claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals or buildings with their surrounding environment. So before they would buy the  piece of property, they needed the Feng Shui’s approval.

This sounded like nonsense to me, but I asked them how much the Feng Shui charged  to look over the property, they said $500.00 U.S.

Needless to say I was shocked, back in the 90’s $500.00 was no small sum.

A few days later they called me to say the Feng Shui said “Bu Hao” in Chinese that means no Good.

Several weeks went by, while they looked for another property.

Eventually they called me to say they found another property, and the Feng Shui was going over to check it out.

By now I felt the Feng Shui was like a Gypsy fortune teller, the gypsy’s knew how much money they could squeeze out of a client just by looking at them.

Sure enough, Kiv called me to say the Feng Shui had again said Bu Hao, (No Good) turning down the property, at a cost to Paal of another $500.00 U.S.

But Kiv said, not to worry, the real estate agent was out looking for another property.

I said, don’t worry Kiv, the next  property is also going to be Bu Hao (No Good) also. But I can 100% assure you that the fourth property will be “Hen Hao” (Good).

Kiv said, how do you know that? I said, when the Feng Shui met you and saw how nice your offices were, like a gypsy fortune teller he knew how much money you were good for. He felt he could squeeze $1500.00  U.S. out of you.

Kiv said, I was wrong, Feng Shui has been used by all Chinese people for a thousand years.

I never said any more about it to Kiv, and he never said anything about it again to me.

The Feng Shui did BU Hao the third property making a total of $1500.00 U.S.

However, just as I had said  he approved the fourth one.

Like our Gypsy fortune tellers, the Chinese Feng Shui are no dopes.