The Smuggled Gears Story

                                                           The Smuggled Gears Story
                                                 Smuggling and the Canadian Stink Bombs                                                       
                                                                          1959
                                         A true story written 01/2010 and R-written 04/27/2016 
                                                                     Howard Yasgar

 

      In 1957 my cousin Allen and I started going to Canada, Allen had relatives from his fathers side of the family living in Montreal. It was to open up a whole new world for us, a world  we were never new existed.

     Both Allen and I were working part time in a Gulf gas station that was managed by a local New Haven fellow name Scotty.

     My cousin Allen and I both loved working on automobiles, not only the automobiles that were coming in to the gas to be serviced but we were also always working on our own cars as well.

     When we were not in school or not working at the station, you could always find us in my back yard working on our cars, or working on some friend’s car.

      One day Allen told me that he had relatives living in Montreal Canada and he wanted to go visit them, it really sounded exotic, so we both went to Montreal, and I have to admit that trip became a life changing experience for me.

      At the time I had just graduated from Hillhouse High school and my cousin Allen was completing his last year at Commercial High School.

      I had just started rebuilding the engine on my 1940 Ford Convertible.

    I had driven that poor 1940 Ford convertible mercilessly until the engine just couldn’t take it anymore, and finally gave out.

     But I was fortunate enough to meet a fellow named Billy Flynn who offered to teach me how to rebuild that Ford flat head engine.(See the Billy Flynn Story).

     Once I started rebuilding the 1940 Ford engine, I got the brilliant idea that I could soup it up, while I was rebuilding it and make a hot rod.

      So that’s when I went out and bought a Ford Model a roadster body and chassis.

     I bought it with the intentions of making it into a drag racing car, and I was going to use  my souped up engine that I would remove from my 1940 Ford.

     At the same time I was thinking about this, my Cousin Allen was working on his own hot rod project.

      Allen had a 1949 Ford Coupe and he had installed a 1957 Oldsmobile V8 engine in it, and his car was always a work in progress.

      The bottom line was, at the time neither of us had a reliable car to go to Canada.

     Fortunately my dad had a 1952 Pontiac, and he had just bought a 1955 Oldsmobile four door sedan,  so naturally I hit on him to lend us his Oldsmobile to drive to Canada.

      One weekend, we gathered  all our available cash and we did it, we made the eight hour drive from New Haven to Montreal Canada.

      We found that driving from New Haven into Canada was really interesting because we had to go through Canadian customs, and swear we weren’t smuggling anything in.

      Then you had to do the same thing with U.S. Customs when you returned to the United States.

      As we weren’t smuggling anything, we thought going through all the Customs nonsense was all kind of a big joke.

      We had heard from friends that they could confiscate your car and put you in jail if they caught you smuggling.

      Once we were in Montreal, it was a cultural shock for us.

     They served French fries with vinegar, instead of ketchup and some of the people we spoke to didn’t speak English, they only spoke French.

     Then we were pleasantly surprised to see that our money was worth 25% more in Canada, which meant we could buy more Molsons beer.

     We met Allen’s cousins, There was Allen’s uncle and his aunt and they had four children. The oldest was Billy and Joyce who were both about our age and Gloria and Lorraine who were a bit younger they were perhaps eight or nine years old.

    They were all wonderful people and they always made room for us to stay in their home in Montreal North.

      Back then in 1957 and 1958, the hot rod craze was in full swing throughout the United States, and my cousin Allen and I were not immune to it.

      I had started attending New Haven State Teachers College, and I was driving my father’s 1955 Oldsmobile.

      One day dad said he was getting tired of me always using his car, so he went out and bought me a 1959 Chevrolet to have reliable transportation for college.

      Once I had that Chevrolet , we  could use it to drive to Montreal.

      Allen and I were now driving to Montreal about once a month.

      I have to admit that after meeting my cousin Allen’s very pretty Canadian cousin Joyce, she was the attraction for me making the trip every month.    

     Now back in 1957 and 1958, if you were building a race car, (Street Hot Rod) you needed a strong heavy duty three speed transmission.

      Hot rods with beefed up engines needed a transmission that would hold up under the strain of the high horsepower.

      So it was determined by the hot rod professionals that the three speed transmission used in the old 1939 to 1941 Cadillac’s would do the job perfectly.

    So, all of a sudden everyone started going to junk yards and buying up all these old Cadillac transmissions.

      It wasn’t long before the price of a used transmission was over $150.00 each, and that was only if you could find one. $150.00 back then was equal to $1500.00 or more today.

     So by 1959, looking for a used old Cadillac transmission in a junk yard anywhere in the United States became an impossibility.

     One day we were talking about it, and my cousin Allen suggested that possibly no one was even looking for these old transmissions in Canada, and if we looked there, we could probably find them.

     So I thought about it, and I concluded that Allen was right, no one living in Montreal would ever be looking for these old Cadillac transmissions.

    We could drive around the country going to all the small junk yards and probably buy them for about $20.00 each.

     So I told Cousin Allen that I thought it was a real good idea.

    It was then that I got to thinking about how to bring a used Cadillac transmission back over the border into the United States. The Canadian and U.S. Customs were very strict about that kind of stuff. it would probably require a lot of paperwork.

     I thought long and hard on the subject, and finally I came up with an idea.

     If we put a couple of junk transmissions in the trunk of my car, when we entered Canada we could declare them junk transmissions. Once we were in Canada we could throw them into the woods, and replace them with two good used Cadillac transmissions that we would buy from the junkyards in Montreal.

     Then when we returned, we could declare to U.S. Customs that they were all the same parts and they wouldn’t charge us any duty, I thought it was a great idea.

    So the next time we headed for Montreal, it was in my new 1959 Chevrolet, and we had two broken, junk transmissions in the trunk of the car.

    In the interim, my cousin Allen had studied the French language and had mastered an entire paragraph in French.

     He had memorized how to ask a French speaking junk yard owner, if they had any 1939 to 1941 Cadillac transmissions, and that we buy them for twenty dollars.

     So on the next trip to Montreal, we drove around the entire island stopping in every small back yard junk yard.

     Some of the little junk yards had cars in them that were so old, trees were growing through them.

     We would park in front of an old farmhouse, and Allen would knock on the door.

     Usually an Elderly French speaking husband and wife would answer the door and Allen would go into his prepared speech in French.

     I’m sure that listening to Allen speak French was so humorous that I the people didn’t know if they should laugh or cry, but they all listened to him, and we did find and buy two transmissions.

     We then threw into the woods the two old junk transmissions, I had in the car, and we brought back to the States, the two used Cadillac transmissions.

     Everything went as planned without a hitch, so we knew our smuggling system worked perfectly.      The following month, Allen and I were working at the Gulf gas station.

     The new manager now was a fellow named Tony.

     Tony had taken in a job to replace a noisy rear differential in a 1953 Buick.

     Now removing a differential from a 1953 Buick is no joking matter, neither Tony, Allen or I had ever removed one before.

     As hard as we tried, we couldn’t get that noisy differential out of the car, so we tried beating on it with a sledge hammer and chisels, and we even tried using crow bars, but it just wouldn’t come loose.

     So finally I went home and came back with my oxygen acetylene cutting torch, and with the torch we heated up the parts until they were red hot and then with Allen beating the hell out of it with a 5 pound sledge hammer, the differential finally came out of the car.

     We replaced the differential with a good used one that Tony ordered from a local junk yard.

    The old Buick differential that we had removed looked terrible, it was completely black from using my torch to heat it up, and it was dented from Allen beating on it with a hammer, so I just threw it in the junk pile behind the gas station.

     When it was time to make our next monthly trip back up to Montreal, I needed a junk transmission to put in the cars trunk, but I didn’t have one. All we has was that beat up 1953 Buick differential, the one we had thrown in the trash, so we put it in the car to show Canadian Customs. 

     At U.S. Customs, they made me open up my trunk, and the young customs officer asked me what the hell the awful burnt and dented part was?

     I said it’s a used transmission, he scrunched up his face and looked at me like I was some kind of nut, he knew it didn’t look like a transmission, but the part was so burned, dirty and greasy he didn’t even want to even touch it.

     Then he took me inside the Customs building and he had me fill out all kinds of papers.

      I got very nervous as I thought he was going to confiscate my car.

      I  knew that he knew something was wrong, but he didn’t know exactly what.

      He must have wondered what in hell we were up to, bringing a dirty piece of junk like that into Canada?

      I watched as he looked for a serial number, but he did it without wanting to touch the dirty burned

Up differential.

      There were no legible numbers, so he hesitatingly closed my trunk and told us to move on. I have to admit both Allen and I were more than a little shook up over the inspection, and that’s how we somehow ended up heading to Montreal on a different road than we normally took.

      It was late in the afternoon as we entered some small town, but as we entered it there was a big billboard, it said, Kupferberg Transmission Rebuilding, straight ahead.

     We both thought it must have been an omen from god, possibly Kupferberg had the old 1939 Cadillac transmissions we wanted.

      By the time we reached the Kupferberg Transmission Company, all the employees had already gone home, and the only person still there was Mr. Kupferberg himself.

      So we got out of the car and asked him if he had any 1939 Cadillac transmissions?

      Mr. Kupferberg was about fifty years old and spoke with a heavy German accent, he said he couldn’t believe we two young Americans  looking for the old transmissions.

      He said, he had never seen kids our age that knew anything about old transmissions.

      He was very curious and he asked us how we smuggled the transmissions back into the States.

      I told him the whole story of how we brought junk parts in and smuggled the transmissions out.

      Kupferberg said, “What kind of junk do you have in your car now”. I told him we had a beat up 1953 Buick differential.

      His facial features changed completely, he said let me see it.

      So I opened the trunk and there was the burned and banged up 1953 Buick differential sitting there.

      Mr. Kupferberg rolled the dirty differential over and there was tears in his eyes, he was almost crying, and he said, “How much do you want for it. I have a customer that needs one right now and I don’t have one.”

     I said, Mr. Kupferberg, you can have it for free.

     He couldn’t believe it, he picked up the dirty differential and carried it into his store.

     Then he motioned for us to follow him to the back of his building. It was a big warehouse that had a concrete beam ceiling.

     From the ceiling were hanging greasy burlap bags, each had a used differential in it.

     Kupferberg said he was the biggest rebuilder of U.S. differentials in Canada. He said he bought used transmissions and differentials in the United States and he personally smuggled them into Canada by the truckload. Kupferberg was so proud of his business, he showed us his entire transmission and differential rebuilding shop.

     It appears he now felt we were fellow smugglers.

     Just as we were leaving, he reached down under the front counter and brought out a brand new set of Chevrolet 4/11 differential gears, they were still in in an original Chevrolet box.

    He said please take this in exchange for the 1953 Buick differential you gave me,  I can’t take it for free.

    Those Chevrolet 4/11 ring and pinion gears were like gold, because  they were not readily available in the states, they were priceless.

     While my Cousin Allen and I were in Montreal, we had stopped at a magic and trick shop just off Saint Catherine Street, the store sold all sorts of tricks and magic items.

    I bought a box of stink bombs, they were small glass vials of liquid that when they were broken they gave off a horrible Sulphur stink like a fart.

     On our way home we stopped at the Canadian customs office where the inspector gave us the hard time about bringing the 1953 Buick differential into Canada.

    We asked if we could use their rest room, and they said yes.

    So once we were in the building we taped with a band aid a fart bomb in the corner of every door.

    We placed the glass vial so it would break when the doors were closed.