The Billy Flynn Story

                                                             The Billy Flynn Story

                                                                           1956

                                A true story about My friend Billy who became a drag racing legend

                                                       Written 2010 Re-written 08/01/2015

                                                                     Howard Yasgar

     Who ever would have thought back in 1956 that my friend Billy, a seventeen year old kid with messy blond hair and buck teeth, would become a legend?

     But that’s exactly what happened, It appears that after getting out of the service, Billy Flynn became the head driver for the Chrysler Corporation’s experimental car and drag racing team.

     By 1963 I had already moved to Florida, so I didn’t  know what Bill was doing, and I had no Idea of his success.

     Once I learned what Billy had accomplished, it was too late for me to contact him, it was 2004 and Billy had passed away. I never had the opportunity to see Billy in action with his car the “Yankee Peddler”.

     Although I couldn’t shake his hand and congratulate him, I knew that my interaction with Billy in 1956  was instrumental in his career, and in a way that makes me feel good.  Billy didn’t know it but he was instrumental in my career as well. 

     For the people that knew Billy, I hope they find the following story interesting.

     For me, it all started in 1955, when I was 16 years old, and I had just gotten my driver’s license.

     I had purchased a really neat, dark green 1940 Ford convertible.

     One of the first things I did was drive down to Henrys Auto Parts and buy and install a Hollywood muffler.

     1955 it was the beginning of the Hot Rod era, and with that Hollywood muffler on my car, I felt as though I had a hot rod.

     Kids were starting to buy up the older Fords and modifying them, drag strips were becoming popular. The magazine racks were loaded with do it yourself custom car magazines.

     If you had money, Hot rod and custom car shops were opening up.

     A whole new vocabulary came into existence, people talked about chopping and channeling cars,

Installing blowers, they talked about candy apple paint, and flame jobs.

     These were words we had never heard before but were now part of the everyday vocabulary.

     By my buying  that 1940 Ford convertible, I thought it put me right on the cutting edge of hot rod history.

     My 1940 Ford was certainly no hotrod, but I thought it was, and I heard that there was a New Haven hot rod club called the “Road Barons”, I wanted to join them.

     I don’t think the Road Barons were very  happy about me joining up, but I did.

     I attended my first club meeting, and didn’t know a soul, so I took a back seat in the meeting room.

     I was in the back row when I noticed another fellow sitting by himself.

     He was also sitting in the back row, slouched down, his foot was on the chair in front of him, and he looked bored.

     The fellow had sandy blond hair that was uncombed and buck teeth, and he was wearing a black motorcycle jacket.

     My first thought was that I should stay away from him, he looked like trouble.

     After a while I reconsidered and when the car club took a break, I went over and sat next to him and introduced myself.

     He said his name was Billy Flynn, and he lived on Forbes Avenue in New Haven.

     We talked for a while and Billy said he was bored with the car club meetings, he aid they didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.

     I asked Billy what he did for a living and he said he worked for a car agency and he specialized in building engines.

     That caught me by surprise, because at the time I was just thinking about rebuilding the engine in my 1940 Ford.

     I had driven my 40 ford as fast a it would go in second gear until I could hear the rod bearings knocking, so I knew it needed a rebuilding, but I didn’t have the money to have someone do it, or knowledge to do it myself.    

     I attended several more Hot Rod Club meetings and always found myself sitting in the back with Billy, and I started asking him questions about rebuilding my engine.

     Eventually, Billy said, “You pull that engine out and I can teach you how to rebuild it”.

     That evening I discussed it with my father and he said he would help me build an “A Frame” in the yard to pull the engine out. I could rebuild the engine inside our garage.

     About a month prior to my meeting Billy, I had the opportunity to buy another 1940 black Ford coupe which also had a burned out V8 engine in it.

     I had paid fifty dollars for it, it was a beautiful little Black car and I had all the intentions of fixing it up some day, but In the mean time I parked it in my yard.

     I remember making that first telephone call to Billy telling him I had the engine out.       

     When Billy came over to my house, first thing was, he spotted that black 1940 Ford coupe in my

yard and went right over to look at it.

     I told Billy all about my intentions of fixing it up, he said, “Just looking”.

     Over the next several weeks Billy came over to my house in the evenings and instructed me on how to take the engine apart, and how to clean and inspect the parts.

     He went over every detail with me, then he showed me how to properly how to hone the cylinders and how to put new rings on the pistons, and how to measure the crankshaft, and how to install new crankshaft and connecting rod bearings .

     Billy had advised me to buy adjustable valve lifters to replace the original valve lifters that were in the engine. I ordered them from a hot rod parts magazine.

     After waiting two weeks, the new lifers came in the mail, I went to install them and they wouldn’t fit in the engine.

     I panicked, I just knew they had sent me the wrong parts, and after I had  waited  so long, so I ran up stairs and called Billy.

     In a panic I called Billy, and I explained the problem to him.

     Billy said, “Put the new lifters in your refrigerator freezer, and wait until tomorrow to try them”,

I did what he said, and the lifters had shrunk and fit perfectly into the engine.

     Billy knew all these tricks of the trade, and he was happy to teach me.

     By the time the engine was completed, Billy and I had become really good friends, he had come to my house in the evenings and met my family and I had gone several times to his house on Forbes Avenue.

     I noticed that every time Billy came over to my house, he till went over and looked at my black 1940 Ford coupe.

     Finally, I knew it was coming,  Billy asked me to sell it to him.

     He said he was building a new hot Ford flat head racing engine and that 1940 Ford would be the perfect car for it.

     I didn’t want to sell it, but it was Billy, and I owed him, so I relented and I sold it to him.

     That was back in 1957, and after I sold him the car I didn’t hear another word from Billy for several months.    

     One day, I picked up the New Haven Register, and there was a big picture right on the front page. It was my 1940 Ford coupe, and it was wrapped around a tree on State Street in New Haven.

     Sitting in the middle of  the street was Billy’s souped up V8 engine.

     The engine was just sitting there, it had Edelbrock finned aluminum heads on it and 3 carburetors.

     It was just sitting there, like some one  had carefully removed it from the car.

     That car crash had been so violent that it ripped the engine right out of the car and set it in the middle of State Street.

     The article said that the accident occurred on a Saturday afternoon and the driver Billy Flynn was taken to grace New Haven Hospital, with injuries, but he was expected to survive.

     I cut the article out of the paper to save it.   

     I was too nervous to call Billy, so I waited about two weeks before I called him at his home. I was afraid of what his parents would say, I didn’t want to hear it.

     But I was surprised when Billy answered the phone.

     I said holy shit Billy, what the hell happened.

     Billy said, “I had just finished building an installing new really fast racing engine in your 1940 coupe, and I invited a friend named Vernon Carlson to come with me to make a test run.

     “We were going down State street wide open at about 100 miles an hour, and it started raining.

     “The next thing I know this nut Vernon, turns and yanks out the ignition key, and he throws it out the window”.

     “Billy said, as you know, when you remove the ignition key the steering locks up, so here we were going 100 miles per hour in the rain and I can’t steer the car”.   

     “All I could see was a big curve coming up, and then all I remember was I was standing on the brake pedal and hitting the tree sideways at about ninety miles an hour”,

     Billy said, “I remember waking up in hospital”.

     Billy said that no one ever asked him if there was any one else in the car with him and he never mentioned it.

     He said he was told many hours later that when the tow truck came to pick up the engine and  smashed car, they saw his spare tire up a hill on the porch of a house.

     When they went to retrieve the tire they found this guy Vernon laying in the bushes and he was still alive.

     I asked Billy if the Vernon was still alive? Billy told me he didn’t know and he didn’t care if he never saw the guy again.     

     I asked Billy, what was up next, and he said, he was going to enlist in the Navy.

     He was afraid that charges that might be filed against him because of the accident.

     After that I lost contact with Billy, and I had no way of knowing that he would become a celebrity, driving for Chrysler Corporation.

     It wasn't until 2007 when I met some folks that had known Billy, they said he had an automotive shop in West Haven Connecticut, and he had died of cancer.

     After that I Googled Billy Flynn, on the Internet, and I read that he was a paratrooper, so I guess he went into the Army and not the Navy.

     Google had all the stories about Billy’s car the “Yankee Peddler”. There was also a live interview with Billy and I saw his hair was combed neatly and the buck teeth were gone.

     In the interview, Billy said that he and Chrysler had experimented with lengthening and shortening the wheel base on the Yankee Trader trying to change the cars center of gravity.

     He said that’s what started the “Funny Car” craze in drag racing.   

     I kept that picture of Billy’s wreck for a long time.

     Billy had taught me how to rebuild engines and from that I went on to learn to rebuild other automotive parts.

     Eventually I made a career rebuilding automotive parts.

     Thank you Billy Flynn. 

                 

     

The Crooked TV Story

                                                              The Crooked TV Story

                                                                        1964

                                                                  A true story

                                           Written 12/29/2011 and rewritten 02/04/2016

                                                                 Howard Yasgar

In 1964, I was living in Hialeah Florida.

It was in 1963, when I had been asked to come to Florida by a friend that was leasing an auto wrecking yard in North West Miami, and he suspected that the manager was stealing from him..

So he asked me to come to Miami and find out what was going on.

What I found out was not so good, so my friend ended up closing the place down.

However once my wife and I found out how nice it was in Florida, we decided to stay.

My father had passed away in 1961, back in Connecticut and my mother had needed a change of scenery so she had moved to Florida.

At the time of this story my mom was renting a room at the Cadillac Hotel on Miami Beach.

One day my mother called me and said that one of her friends who was also living in the Cadillac hotel was liquidation all her furniture as she was returning to New York.

So we drove down to the Cadillac Hotel and she showed us all her worn out, and well used furniture.

Just as we were getting ready to leave the women said that she had more furniture in storage in the hotel basement. We didn’t want to appear rude, so we agreed to take a look at it.

As I had expected, it was mostly a bunch of worn out crap that no one else wanted.

However, there was a thirteen inch black and white television mounted on a brass colored metal wire stand.

I asked my mothers friend if the television worked.

She said, it worked perfectly, it was there in the basement because she had replaced it with a larger model.

She only wanted forty dollars for it, so I looked around but there was no place to plug it in to see if it worked.

Well, the lady appeared to be an honest person so we bought the TV and stand.

Once we got home, I immediately plugged it in, and sure enough it worked.

The only problem was that the picture was crooked, it was higher on the right side by about three inches.

I had always heard that you could fix this type of problem by moving the copper coil that was on the picture tube inside the set.

So I took the rear cover off the television. However, once I looked inside, there was a warning label. So I decided I didn’t want to stick my hand in there and get some kind of a high voltage shock.

I then put the TV back together again, and I placed a small cardboard box under the right side of the set to level out the picture, it really looked pretty stupid, and nobody in the house wanted to look at it.

Now, whenever I was driving in my old neighborhood where the auto wrecking yard was, out of curiosity I always looked to see if there was someone new renting the place.

The auto wrecking business had now been vacant for over a year.

One day, I saw several cars parked there. So I pulled in to meet the new tenants. They were three Cuban fellows and they spoke some English, so I introduced myself telling them that I had come to Florida a year or so before to manage that very wrecking yard, but unfortunately the owner had to close it down.

The three fellows said they had come down to Miami from New Jersey, and they had just rented the property. They said, that they were all sleeping on the floor in the office, it was all temporary until they got the business up and running.

Then they asked me where they could buy a cheap Television set.     

I told them that I had a nice thirteen inch black and white TV that worked fine, the only problem was that the picture was a little crooked.

Two of the fellows told me in English and in Spanish that a crooked picture was an easy thing to fix. They said, all you had to do was take the back off the TV and turn the magnetic coils located on the back of the picture tube.

They said they could fix the TV in five minutes.

So I sold them the crooked TV for the same forty dollars that I had paid for it, and I kept the TV stand.

I never heard another word from them, so I assumed they had fixed the television.

About a year passed by and I saw the wrecking yard was closed again, and the three Cubans were gone.  

About another two years passed, and one day my family decided we should go and get a pizza from a pizza store located downtown on East 4th Avenue in Hialeah.

We had always joked about the Pizza store because it was owned by a grizzly old guy who wasn’t Italian.

We hadn’t been to the Pizza place in a couple of years, and we hoped that he was still there.

As we walked into the store, the first thing I saw was on a shelf in the back, he had a 13 inch black and white television with a crooked picture, and he had put three books under the right side to make the picture level.

We couldn’t stop laughing.

I should have told him all he needed to do was remove the back of the TV and adjust the coils on the picture tube.

It was an easy fix.  

       

 

                                             

The Cute Little Forklift Story

                                    The Cute Little Forklift Story

                                                                 1975

                                     How my friend Barney Kaplan modernized me                              

                                       Written 12/2011 Re-Written 8/2015

                                                           Howard Yasgar

This is a story all about getting my first forklift.

It’s how a good friend, had to actually threaten me, in a nice way of course, to get me to change my way of thinking about buying a forklift.

However, once he did it, it set in motion circumstances that I felt was worthy of me writing all about it.

This story Actually started in 1973 when I had just started a new division of our company in Miami called API Marine.

API Marine remanufactured outboard and inboard marine starters, and alternators.

I had started the new company in Miami in the same location as  API, (Automotive Parts Industries) which was our automotive parts rebuilding company.

We had just started doing business with a surplus automotive and marine parts dealer located in Detroit, his company name was Barney Kaplan Surplus.

At the time, Barney was purchasing most all of the excess  marine parts from the Prestolite Corporation.

At the time, The Prestolite Corporation was one of the largest manufacturers of Marine electrical parts.

Our being able to obtain these Prestolite parts from Barney was crucial to the success of our company.   

Barney not only became our biggest supplier, but he also became my good friend and eventually my mentor.

My relationship with Barney was unique, every time I talked to him he gave me lots of suggestions on how to improve the running of my business.

Every few months I would fly up to Barney’s place in Detroit and sort and prepare lots of Prestolite parts for Barney to ship to us in Florida.

The Prestolite parts would usually come to Barney in large pallet boxes, I would then sort through the Boxes removing the parts I wanted, loading them into empty 55 gallon open top barrels that were provided by Barney.

Each barrel when filled, probably weighed somewhere between 400 and 800 lbs.

As soon as I filled enough barrels Barney would call a commercial trucker to haul the stuff to Miami.

If I filled too many barrels, Barney would hold them for the next shipment,

At the time, Barney, was a bachelor, so when I flew up to Detroit he would have me stay with him in his apartment.

This gave Barney the opportunity to give me his advice for a full twenty four hours, and that was whether I wanted to hear it or not.

At the time Barney was in his fifties and he had a lot of experience in the automotive rebuilding business. Consequently he never once stopped advising me about how to improve my own business.

Barney didn’t care at all if I disagreed with him, he just wouldn’t stop advising me.

Sometimes I would get tired of listening to him,  and I would go so far as to tell him that I thought he was wrong.

But then after my telling Barney he was wrong, I would find out later that Barney’s advice was actually correct.

Whenever that happened, and it was often, I called him to apologize and I told him he was 100% right, and that always inspired him to give me more unsolicited advice.

In the long run I estimated that my friend Barney was giving me good advice at least seventy percent of the time.

One day he asked me how we were unloading the truckloads of parts he was shipping to us, so I told him exactly how we did it.

At the time, our receiving truck loads of parts was a relatively new experience for us, we never had a loading and unloading dock, or a forklift or anything like that.

So I told Barney step by step how we unloaded his barrels of parts.

I told him that first we would put about six used car tires on the ground, then I would climb up into the truck with three husky helpers, while two or three guys would wait below on the ground.

We would then, by hand, rock the heavy barrels into position on the end of the truck and let them drop on to the tires on the ground.

The three fellows standing below would kind of steady the barrels as they bounced off the tires.

Occasionally a barrel would bounce the wrong way and tip over, then my guys standing on the ground would pick the barrel back up and refill it with what had fallen out.

We knew this was a crude way of unloading a truck, but it was cheap, I knew a forklift would be better, but I felt that the cost of buying a forklift just seemed too much for us at the time.

One day, Barney said, “Why don’t you have a forklift”, I told him we never had one and I don’t think we need one.

Barney said, “How many of your guys show up for work the next day after unloading a truck”. I had to think a minute, Barney was right, after unloading, the next day most everyone complained about sore arms and shoulders.

Barney said, “It looks like I need to get you a forklift”.

I replied, please don’t do it, I don’t want one, and besides that, I really can’t afford one.

I had hoped that was the end of my forklift conversation with Barney.

About a week went by, and Barney was on the phone, and he was again talking about a forklift.

He said, “You listen to me, on your next truck load, I am sending you a forklift, and when you get it, and after you get the forklift  running 100 % percent to your satisfaction, you should send me $250.00”.

Barney then said, “If you don’t take the forklift, I won’t sell you any more parts in the future.

I knew Barney couldn’t be serious about not selling us, so even though I didn’t really want the forklift, I didn’t say no.

I felt it was easier for me to accept the forklift from Barney than to have to listen to him talk to me about it every time I spoke with him.  

A few weeks later, a truck arrived from Barney and I went out to look at what he had sent to us.

The truck driver opened the trailers rear doors, and laying there on its side in front of the barrels of parts, was the smallest, dirtiest and rusty little forklift I had ever seen.

At first, I didn’t even know what I was looking at, because it had very faded yellow paint and there was so much rust. It just looked like a pile of scrap Iron.

We called a neighbor over with his forklift and he unloaded the piece of junk Barney had sent me.

Once it was unloaded and standing on its four hard rubber tires, I could see it actually was a forklift.

However, especially noticeable were the missing front forks.

Right away, I intended to call Barney and give him hell.

It was pretty obvious that this forklift had been laying in someones outdoor scrap iron pile for a very long time.

I wondered, did Barney really think I was a complete idiot and going to buy it?

I was so mad, my hands were actually shaking.

I instructed my men to push the tiny forklift off to the side of the warehouse, and get it out of the way.

I felt that I needed to compose myself before I called Barney and raised hell with him for sending me such a piece of crap.

I was hopping mad, but once I was in my office, I sat at my desk and I got busy with phone calls, and pretty soon forgot to call Barney.

After a day or so, and when I was in a better mood, I walked out into the warehouse to look at the forklift again.

This time I looked at the data plate, and I saw was that the forklift was a 2000 pound Towmotor, and it was built in 1942.

It was only about three feet wide, it was so narrow that it probably could fit through my office doorway.

So here it was 1975, and Barney had sent me a 1942 forklift, it was like an antique piece of junk that was used and abused and over thirty years old.

I felt that the tiny forklift had probably outlived it’s usefulness a long time ago. I was sure someone had thrown it into their junk pile.

However as a mechanic myself, I admit I was curious, and curiosity got the best of me. I forced myself to look at what a rusty antique Continental four cylinder engine looked like.

The engine was sure cute, but it looked like it hadn’t run for many years.

The more I studied it, the more I smiled, it was the smallest and cutest little forklift engine I had ever seen in my life.

I instructed one of my men to go ahead and put in a new 12 volt battery.

I knew the engine would never run, but what the heck.

Well two hours later, the new 12 volt battery was in, oil was put in the engine and I sat on the torn forklift seat and turned the key several times, but nothing happened.

By now I had collected a crowd of curious employees all watching.  

I considered the situation, as long as we already wasting time putting in a battery, I asked one of my men to remove the starter motor, after all, rebuilding starter motors was our business.

Later that day, the rebuilt starter was installed, and I again turned the start key, but the little four cylinder motor just wouldn’t turn over.

I tried turning the cooling fan and belt, but nothing happened, the engine appeared to be frozen solid.

Well, I knew how to fix a rusty engines, I thought that perhaps all it needed some penetrating oil in the cylinders.

I then proceeded to remove the four spark plugs and when I looked down the spark plug holes into the motor. I could see the heads of the valves and all the rust.

I figured I couldn’t hurt anything by putting some oil in the spark plug holes, so for two days, I poured penetrating oil into the four spark plug holes.

I poured it in until the they were full, and then I watched as the oil slowly ran down the  spark plug holes and onto the engines valves.

I tried the starter again, and by now everyone in our entire shop was watching me.

None of us  could believe our eyes, the engine was now actually turning.

Now when I looked down the spark plug holes and I could see the tops of the intake and exhaust valves, and they weren’t moving down, they appeared to be stuck in the open position.

I poured more oil down the spark plug holes and pushed the valves down with a metal 3/8 socket extension shaft,  and with a hammer I tapped each valve down.

Then when I turned the engine over, with the starter, to my surprise the valves came up and went down by themselves.  

We cleaned and gapped the sparkplugs, drained the fuel tank and put in fresh gasoline, and that’s all it needed, the engine started right up and ran, no one  could believe it.

It was a 12 volt battery I had installed, so we removed the 6 volt ignition coil and replaced it with a late model 12 volt coil.

Then we rebuilt the distributor, and installed a new alternator and voltage regulator.  

For some reason, I wasn’t mad at Barney anymore, for us, it was now a challenge to get this little Towmotor working.

Next I called Barney, and I told him what a beautiful and cute little forklift he had sent me.

I told him the engine ran absolutely perfect, but the forks for the forklift were missing. Barney said, he would find a set of forks somewhere.

He also said that in the meantime I should check the forklifts transmission to be sure it had oil in it, and to make sure everything was working good before we paid him the $250.00.

Next morning went back out to the warehouse to look at the transmission.

The floor shift transmission had a long gear shift lever that was held down with eight bolts.

I loosened all the bolts, lifting the transmission forks up very carefully I placed it on a shelf  so I could reinstall it back in the correct position.

When I looked into the transmission, my heart nearly stopped.

The transmission was full of rusty brown muddy water and oil.

The brown water had been in there so long it had completely rusted and pitted up the entire inside of the transmission.

I stuck my finger in the mud and it was a solid thick brown, it was the kind of reddish brown mud that stuck to your fingers and wouldn’t come off.

It took me two days for my blood pressure to calm down, and then I looked closer at the transmission.

I studied it from all sides and came to the conclusion that a forklift transmission wasn’t like a car transmission.

The only way to remove it was to take the entire front mast assembly off of the forklift, and then move the engine forward.

I could see that once that was done, the transmission could be unbolted from the engine, and slid backwards and out, boy was I pissed off, that was a lot of work.

At that point, I could see that the entire forklift needed to come apart, to fix it, but by now I had so much time and money invested in this piece of junk that I had no choice, I had to do it, like it or not.

It was certainly a major project, but by my using heavy duty jacks, wooden levers and blocks and a lot of sweat, I was eventually able to disassemble the entire front mast assembly.

But, in order to do it, the work had to be done by my laying on my side on the concrete floor of the warehouse.

When I finally unbolted the transmission from the engine, it still wouldn’t slide back.

I assumed there was a hidden bolt somewhere but I couldn’t find it.

I was by now so frustrated I proceeded to pry the transmission out with a crowbar, and that’s when we heard a cracking noise.

Yes there was a hidden bolt, and now I had broken off the top of the transmission bell housing.

I tried to remain calm, as I finally removed the transmission and unbolted the broken piece of housing from the engine.

We then washed out the oily mud inside of the transmission, so I could better see what was going on.

I was surprised to see that all the gears were very pitted from the rust but all of them were still intact.

My solution was to soak everything in mineral spirits for two days, I rinsed it until all the gears in the transmission eventually turned by hand.

I then proceeded to disassemble all the gears bearings and shafts carefully, putting all the parts in their proper order on a bench.

My intention was to sandblast them to get the rust off.

There was an upper main shaft and it had a large sliding gear on it, so I knew it was important to make sure the gear didn’t get taken off the shaft and accidently reversed.

I called over my trusted Cuban sandblaster Jose.

I knew Jose spoke some English, he had worked for me for several years, and he always understood me and did everything exactly as he was told.

While I welded up the broken piece of the transmission case, Jose sandblasted all the transmission gears, bearings and shafts for me.

He did a beautiful job, he even oiled up all the parts after sandblasting them.

I was a little nervous, so just to be sure, I asked Jose a second time if he had taken off and reversed the gear the main shaft.

He looked me squarely in the eye and said “No Mister Howard”.

I decided that even if all the bearings and gears were badly pitted, I could still reassemble the transmission, I knew that the transmission gears and bearings worked in heavy oil, so I felt that the pitting would actually help lubricate everything.

The transmission assembly job went like clockwork.

I then bolted the transmission on the engine, and reinstalled the forklifts mast.

I needed help and it took us two days to complete the entire job.

Finally I got on the seat and started the forklift up. I put it in reverse gear and backed the forklift out of the warehouse and onto the street.

Everything was going just fine, so I shifted into first gear, and the forklift took off just like a race car up the street.

When that happened, it was an incredible feeling, I was so proud of our accomplishment, so were all our employees.

Then I  went to shift into second gear. But there was no second gear, nor was there a third gear.

I kept trying to shift and eventually realized that I had three speeds in reverse and only one speed forward.

At that point, all my employees came out to the street to see what was wrong.

I took the shift lever off and tried installing it in several different positions, none of which worked.

I then peered into the transmission and quietly studied every gear and what was going on.

The problem soon became obvious, Jose had reversed the upper large sliding gear when he had sandblasted it.

I questioned him again about it but he just gave me a blank stare, that’s when I found out that Jose didn’t speak even one word of English, he never understood when I told him not to reverse the gear.

The only English Jose spoke was “Yes Mister Howard”.

It took another two days to take apart the whole forklift and take out the transmission again. It was easier the second time, because we knew where all the nuts and bolts went.

Eventually our 1942 Towmotor was all together and actually working and its 35 year old engine ran perfectly.

By now we had invested so much time and labor into the little forklift that I probably could have bought a brand new fork lift cheaper.

We paid Barney his $250.00 and we used that 1942 Towmotor for over ten years, unloading hundreds of trucks.

We used the Towmotor until 1985, when Barney sent us a much bigger, thirty five hundred pound Clark forklift.

We retired that cute little Towmotor by parking it under the pallet racking in one of our warehouses, and there it just sat for another 20 years, until 2005.

My wife Katherine was now running the company and I told her the story about the

$250.00 dollar Towmotor that Barney Kaplan had sent us in 1975.

When she heard the story she brought that little Towmotor forklift over to our main building, and we gave it a new coat of yellow paint, we wrapped it in clear plastic, put on a giant red bow and loaded it on a truck.

We sent it back to Barney in Detroit, along with a note thanking him for the use of the machine.

Over 30 years had passed since Barney had talked me into buying the rusty little Towmotor, so we thought that sending the little Towmotor back to Barney would be our little joke on him, Barney was now over 90 years old.

When I called Barney I was surprised, when he told me that he had received it and had already sold it again.

He had sold it to a mutual friend, Mike Murley, of Murley’s Marine, in Fairhaven Michigan.

I had to call Mike and tell him the whole story.

Mike said, he loved that little machine, and he was using it every day.

On January 2012, Mike Murley called to wish us all a happy new year, and he said that he had just converted the Towmotor to run on propane gas.

Is that a cute Towmotor forklift story, or is that a cute Towmotor  forklift story?