The Tommy and the Junk Yard Story

                                              The Tommy and the Junk Yard Story

                                                                       1961

                                               Written 4/2013 and Re-written 1/4/2016    

                                                                 Howard Yasgar

     By 1961, Tommy Letis and I had now been good friends for more than two years.

     I had met Tommy in 1959, while I was hanging out in the back row of the parking lot of Jimmy’s restaurant at Savin Rock. Savin Rock was located in West Haven Connecticut.

     It was 1961 when I started hanging out at the back row of Jimmy’s Restaurant. Jimmy’s was the “In” place for kids to hang out, especially if you had a neat car.  

     Hanging out at Jimmy’s became a pretty big social event, with everyone in the parking lot talking to each other, in between ordering their hot dogs and fried clams.

     On some evenings, a shiny black 1956 Ford pickup truck would show up. The truck went up and down the rows of parked cars, revving its engine and making its front end lift up, and that was something you rarely saw back in 1959.

     The rumor was, that the truck had a very secret high power engine and the hood had a lock on it, so no one could see it.

     The rumor was also circulating that the black pickup truck had never lost a race, and it was driving around Jimmy’s looking for someone to race.

     No one knew who owned the truck or who was driving it.

     I didn’t know it at the time but the owner of the truck, was a fellow named Tommy Letis, and we were later to become the best of friends. (See the Tommy Letis pickup truck story).

     My relationship with Tommy started one summer evening, when I was parked in the back row of Jimmy’s parking lot. The top of my  1959 Chevy convertible was down and I was sitting in the passenger seat.

     That’s when I noticed a fellow standing by the driver’s side door looking my car over.

     He was about five foot six inches tall, with sandy blond hair and a friendly cherubic face, and he was twirling a stubby little cigar in his mouth.

     He took the cigar from his mouth and said, with a big grin, “How does it go?” She goes OK, I replied.

     He said, “I had heard that Chevrolet was producing these factory hot rod cars, but I never really saw one until now”.

     Now, to this day, I don’t know why I did it, but I asked him if he wanted to try the car out. I had never said that to anyone before, but that’s how I met Tommy Letis.

     Tommy then introduced himself, got in the car and we took it for a spin. When we returned to Jimmy’s I asked Tommy what he was driving. He said, “I drive a pickup truck and he pointed to the black shiny 1956 Ford pickup he had parked across the street in the shadows”. From that point on in 1959, we became the absolute best of friends.           

     I was working part time evenings at a Gulf gas station located on Derby Avenue in New Haven, Tommy would come to the station and visit with me until closing.  He was always driving the 1956 Ford pick up truck.

     When I had time off, I would drive out to Tommy's house in East Haven. He lived on Hunt Lane in the town of Foxon, a town  which at the time was a very unpopulated semi-rural area.

     Right from the first, I thought Tommy was pretty amazing, we were similar in age but Tommy already had his own dump truck business and he was already making money.

     Tommy lived with his parents, on a piece of property where his dad long ago had an chicken egg business, but now the chicken coops were falling apart, but there still was a big barn that Tommy was using to park that black 1956 Ford pickup truck and it was a place Tommy could work on his dump truck.

     I loved going to Tommy’s house, his mother and father treated me like a family member.

    Tommy’s grandfather who also lived with them, was an old time German craftsman, he not only maintained the property but he grew strawberries and I saw how made sled runners by boiling and bending wood. For me watching Tommy and his grandfather was a novelty, because compared to

Them I was a city boy.

     As time went on, Tommy and I found that we got along well together, and we started doing things together.

     We both enjoyed automotive stuff, and most of all I admired the fact that Tommy was running his own trucking business at such a young age.

     Tommy had financial independence something that I didn’t yet have.

     I also liked Tommy because compared to me he was a maverick, he didn't take any crap from anyone, mostly because of his financial independence, having money allowed him to do whatever he wanted to do.

     One day I went with him to the local Ford agency, and I watched him negotiate for a brand new ten wheeler truck. He spent twenty six thousand dollars, which was more money than I had ever heard of anyone spending.

     So having Tommy as a friend added a whole new dimension to my rather dull student life.

     In the evenings Tommy would drive that black pickup around looking for someone to race.

     I  rode along with Tommy, and from that passenger seat I watched him win all the races.

     I always rolled down the window and waved good bye to the competitors.  

     We started going everywhere together, I thought Tommy was loads of fun and full of surprises.

     Sometimes Tommy would like to create a ruckus for no real reason, other than to cause some excitement.

     Everywhere we went he always put on a tough guy persona but he was a real softy and an easy going guy. Tommy carried a roll of money in his pocket, with a hundred dollar bill on the outside. He probably still carries it.

     Every night hanging around with Tommy a real adventure.

     One time we were all at a party in a big restaurant, all the people were drinking liquor, and Tommy who rarely drank alcohol, stood up on a chair. He yelled over the din of the party noise and he said, I’ll give $100.00 for a glass of milk.

     He was possibly the only guy I knew that even had $100.00 in his pocket.

     In Tommy’s town of Foxon, Tommy was well known, by everyone including the police. He had

successfully created himself into a character that everyone knew.

     Whenever I drove to Tommy's home, I had to drive down route 80 which was also called Middletown Avenue.

      At the time, Middletown Avenue was zoned industrial, and it was where many of New Haven’s automobile junk yards were located.

      I had worked part time for Milford Auto Wrecking in 1958 and 1959 while I was in college, so I thought I had a pretty good knowledge running  a automobile junk yard.

     Tommy, on the other hand had been buying junk cars and trucks on and off for years, and he had cut many of them up for scrap metal, doing it behind the family barn.

     So my friend Tommy also knew about making money junking cars.

     One evening, Tommy told me that he heard a rumor that a small automotive junk yard, located on Middletown Avenue was for sale.

     Tommy said that he thought the wrecking yard was owned by a local fellow named Carfora, and his

two sons were running it.

     We were both very curious so we got in my car and drove down to Middletown Avenue to take a look at the Carfora’s wrecking yard.

     We quickly found it.

     The Carfora junk yard was located on a small strip of land, about two hundred feet wide and perhaps five hundred feet deep. The wrecking yards front gates were set back about seventy five feet from Middletown Avenue, allowing lots of room for customer parking.

     The entire junkyard was fenced in, except the rear which looked like it was a salt water marsh.

     We drove up to the front gate and saw that inside there was a small wooden office building.

     As we walked into the yard, I looked across highway 80 behind me and saw Pete’s, it’s an old time diner where Tommy and I often went to eat at night. I thought about how convenient that was.

     As we entered the yard, there were about thirty or forty cars there, but it didn't appear as if anyone was doing much business.

     Standing on the steps of the small wooden office stood the two Carfora brothers.

     I think they thought we were customers coming to buy some auto parts.

     One of the brothers was short and hefty, and the other tall and lanky, and both were wearing greasy unwashed coveralls. They reminded me of the two comic book characters “Mutt and Jeff”.

     Tommy told them he heard that the yard was for sale, “Yes, they said, the wrecking yard was for sale, but we had to talk to their father who actually owned it, and he would only be there on Saturday.”

      It was pretty obvious to us just looking at these two brothers, you could tell they desperately wanted to get out of that place.

      You could see their heart just wasn’t in running a wrecking yard business.

      Tommy said to me later, that he thought the elder Carfora was making plenty of money driving an oil tanker truck and he had probably bought the junk yard so his two sons would have something to do.

      So on next Saturday, Tommy and I returned to the wrecking yard to find the elder Carfora waiting for us, and  we saw he had his big oil tanker truck parked right across the highway, next to Pete’s Diner.

      As Tommy had guessed right, Mr. Carfora said he had bought the junk yard for his two sons, but they wanted to do something different now, and that was his reason for selling the wrecking yard.

     He told us that he wanted $35,000.00 in cash, for everything, which included both the business, and the property.

     “Tommy asked if he would take a down payment, and a note for the balance, and the elder Carfora said he would consider any valid proposition.”

     So upon hearing that, we told him we were very interested, and we would get back with him as soon as we discussed it.  

     It was Tommy's opinion that Carfora was earning plenty as an oil tanker driver, and he didn't think he needed the money, which was probably a good bargaining point for us and a good reason we probably wouldn’t need all the money up front, which of course I didn’t have anyway.

     So we both decided we would offer Carfora a down payment of $5,000.00 and the balance to be paid over a five year period.

     Both Tommy and I felt sure that with the experience we had, and because we were both hard workers, there was no reason we couldn’t make a lot of money running the place.

     Tommy thought that in the beginning  he would continue with his dump truck business and work at the yard in the afternoons, and on weekends, and I could run the yard during the day.

     Thus the idea to buy Carfora’s  junk yard sounded like a good thing to us.  

     Tommy’s plan was that in the afternoon we could load up his dump truck with all our scrap iron, and he would haul it to the local scrap metal yard, and sell it for cash, and also Tommy said he knew a good attorney for us to discuss everything with.

     The next day we went to see Tommy's attorney, who listened to our whole story, and our plans.

     He suggested that before we made a deal, we should do what was called “Due Diligence”, and research the property, to make sure Carfora was on the up and up, he wanted to find out if Carfora really owned the property.

     So, we immediately went back to the Carfora's wrecking yard and told them that we would buy the place, but our attorney needed to check everything out, and he would draw up a contract as soon as possible.

     It happens the elder Carfora  knew our attorney very well, and liked him, so everything was OK.

     Now that we were going to buy their wrecking yard, the two Carfora boys became very friendly to us.

     We saw that the brothers did nothing every day, other than sitting in their little office.

     So the next day, I suggested that they let us start operating our business on the empty left side and the rear of the wrecking yard.

     I thought it was a good idea that we could start working while we were waiting for our attorney to get back with us.

     All we needed was for the Carfora's to let us borrow a couple of sets of their “Junk Dealer” license plates, so we could start buying and hauling in cars.

     They said that they had no objections to lending us the license plates, so this opened the door for us to get started buying cars to scrap.

     That afternoon, Tommy and I went to several of the other wrecking yards on Middletown Ave to look for some kind of truck we could use to haul the cars in with.

     Luck was with us, because in one of the larger wrecking yards, we found what I think was probably the oldest weirdest truck I had ever seen in my life. It was a 1948 cab over Coca Cola delivery truck that someone had built with a hand crank winch on the back.

     The old truck was painted original Coca Cola yellow, and to get to the engine, you had to unlatch the whole cab and tilt it forward, I had never seen anything quite like it.

     The winch on the back was an antique piece of equipment from the 1920’s, but it actually worked perfectly by manually turning a hand crank.

     I think the last time the truck had been used was in the 1940’s.          

     From my experience when I was hauling cars for Milford Auto Wrecking, I knew exactly what needed to be done to make this old truck work as a tow truck for us.

     So we bought it for $150.00 cash.

     It had no valid registration, or any papers. Once we got it running we drove it with our borrowed junk yard license plates up to the barn at Tommy's house on Hunt Lane.

     That’s where Tommy had a Hobart welding machine.

     I scrounged around Tommy’s scrap metal pile until I found all the parts I would need to weld up a towing rig on the back of our 1948 antique tow truck.

     I found some pieces of chain and an old worn out torque rod that Tommy had removed from one of his dump trucks, and using Tommy's torch and his electric welding machine, I cut and welded what

was the most beautiful towing rig and we mounted it on the rear of our antique Coca Cola tow truck.

     When it was completed, I was very proud of our accomplishment, even Tommy was surprised at how good it came out.

     Tommy and I, were now very excited to go out and see if we could buy some junk cars.

     Early the next morning, we started driving around the back country roads in North Haven looking for old cars that were sitting in people’s back yards.

     We already had calculated how much money a junk car would bring us in scrap, also we already knew how much the other junk yards were paying, so we came up with a price of fifteen dollars that we could pay for cars, that was providing the car were complete.

     We knew that our buying price of $15.00  was three dollars more than the other wrecking yards in New Haven were paying at the time.

      Buying cars became great fun for us, we found that many of the houses in the country side had at least one old car sitting in their back yard.

      As we drove up country roads, Tommy and I spotted the old cars, and we would stop, ring the doorbell, and buy them for fifteen dollars apiece.

      Everyone we spoke to was happy to get the junk out of their yard, and in retrospect, I think a lot of the people would have given us the cars for free just to get rid of them.

      We kept a pad on the car seat to keep track of all the cars we were buying, and I think by that by early that afternoon we had bought four or five cars.

      A t that point, we got to thinking we had new problems to deal with. There was no way I personally would have the time to go out and tow in the five cars, and to also run the wrecking yard.

     Not only did we need the cars to be towed in, but then the cars needed to be disassembled, and their iron chassis cut into three foot pieces to sell as scrap.

     There was a lot of work that needed to be done, the cars tires, battery and radiator, needed to be removed, That needed to be done before the cars were turned on their side so the engine and transmission could be cut out.

     It was just too much work for me to do alone, and there just were not enough hours in the day to do it all.

     Tommy gave it some thought.

     First he said that he said he knew a good torch man, he was a guy who could cut the cars up for us, and he thought he remembered where the guy lived, somewhere in a bad neighborhood in New Haven.

     Also Tommy said he had a good friend, named Bobby Allen, and Bobby had a young brother in law named Butch.

     Butch Tommy said, was a real ladies man, but he was strong as an ox, and he was also among the unemployed. Tommy thought he could get Butch to tow in the cars for us.

     That  we went on a mission, we drove to a pretty bad neighborhood in New Haven, looking for the  torch man that Tommy knew. After a few wrong guesses, Tommy found the guys house and he was at home, and unemployed with nothing to do

     We sat at the fellow’s kitchen table and laid out the deal.

     The deal was, I would flip the cars on their sides and then we would pay the torch man two dollars per car to come and cut up all the steel.

     We didn’t have to ask him twice, not only would he take the job but he had his own torch, and was ready to come to work anytime we called him.

     Later that same evening, Tommy called to tell me that Butch would come to the yard early the next morning and start towing in the cars that we had already bought.

     True to his word, the next morning, I met Butch, he was just as Tommy described, a handsome, solidly built guy, and best of all, Butch, really wanted the job of towing the cars.

     We showed Butch how the antique winch worked and gave him the pad with the addresses of the cars to be picked up.

     Tommy and I had already calculated that Butch could tow in about six cars a day which would cost us one dollar and fifty cents each. But after the first car, we saw that Butch wasn't happy, he said it was too little money, so we upped the price to two dollars a car, and Butch was delighted.

     The Carfora brothers stood by their little office, their arms folded in front of them, watching as Butch started towing in the first cars, I think it was more activity than they had ever seen in the yard before.

     We cleaned up the left side and rear of the yard, so we could start lining our cars up to be taken apart.

      I think what Tommy and I planned on doing was going to be revolutionary for the wrecking business in New Haven. We were aggressively going out and buying cars. No one in New Haven had ever done that before.

     So late every other afternoon, Tommy and I, began our ritual of driving the back roads and buying cars, Butch kept towing them in, and after three or four days the torch man showed up and started cutting up the cars for us.

     There was only one buyer of scrap steel in New Haven, it was Michael Schiavone and sons, and fortunately they were not too far away from us. Tommy could make a round trip with his truck loaded with steel in about an hour.

     Once we started cutting up cars, we realized we had another major problem that we were going to have to face, how were we going to get rid of all the car bodies.

     If we hauled it to Schiavone’s, they would only pay us three dollars and fifty cents each body, and it pay for Tommy to take the time to haul one or two car bodies

     If we burned the car body first, they would pay us  over six dollars each, but it was illegal for us to burn cars in the yard.

     We knew that we needed to get rid of the car bodies, because soon they would end up consuming all our working space in the yard.

     Tommy said, the only solution was, we needed a flat bed truck capable of hauling one or two bodies at a time to the scrap metal yard, and I agreed with him.

     I had seen a discarded truck flatbed lying in the back of the scrap yard near the swamp.

     Sure enough, I went to look and it was in perfect condition, someone had cut it off of a truck and just left it at the edge of the swamp.

     We asked the Carfora Brothers, and they said they didn't know who owned it, so if we needed it we should take it, but we didn’t have a truck to mount the flat bed on.

     Again Tommy came up with an idea.

     He said, I know a  guy that has the garbage contract for East Haven, and he probably has all kinds of  old garbage trucks for sale, so off we went to see the garbage man.

     The garbage man’s house was out in the country on what looked to be a farm, as we approached the farm I could smell the garbage, but I could also see about ten used trucks in various conditions all lined up on one side of the property.

     All of the old trucks appeared to have come from the Swift Meat Packing Company that was in New Haven.

     The owner of the trucks, who was Tommy’s friend, was a big roly poly black guy that weighed near four hundred pounds, his wife was the same.  

     He greeted Tommy like an old friend

     The stink of the garbage on his property was so bad it would almost knock you over, but that garbage stink didn't appear to bother the garbage man or his wife.

     Tommy explained what we needed, and the garbage man said all of his Swift Company trucks ran good, we could pick which ever one we wanted.

     The trucks were exactly what we needed.

      I climbed in the passenger side of a 1952 Ford truck that looked in fairly good condition. The big

fat garbage man climbed into the driver’s seat to start the truck  while Tommy looked at the trucks engine and hooked up the battery.

      I watched as the big garbage man attempted to lift himself into the driver seat, but suddenly he had

 a funny expression on his face like he had forgotten something, and he backed down to the ground and unzipped his pants to take a leak.

     When I glanced down at him, I got scared as I thought he had a big cat in his hand, but it was just him taking a pee.

     We bought the truck, and we paid two hundred twenty five dollars for it, and just as Tommy had predicted, the flat bed body we found, fit on the truck perfectly, and we were now able to haul the unburned car bodies to the scrap yard.

     About a week had passed and the torch man had showed up right on time and started cutting our cars up.

     late in the afternoon Tommy would back his ten wheeler dump truck into the yard, then he and I would load it with the iron cut from the chassis.

    The Carfora’s let us use their pole truck, and I would wrap the cable from the pole truck around a pile of steel chassis pieces making a bundle. Then I would use the pole truck to lift the bundle into the back of Tommy’s 0 wheeler dump truck.

     So now every few days, we would fill Tommy’s dump truck with steel, and he would haul it to the scrap yard and now the cash started rolling in.

     As we cut each car, we saved the tires, batteries, radiators and any engines and transmissions that we thought might be sold.

     Our hopes always were that someone off the street would come in and buy some used parts.

     But if no customers came, we would sell all the used tires to crap tire dealers for one dollar each.

     The cars batteries were also sold for scrap for one dollar each.

     I thought we had a good system going. We cleaned all the cars copper radiators and sold them for three dollars each. Then we loaded Tommy’s truck with old engines and transmissions to all be sold as scrap iron. It was a lot of hard work but our system began to function like a well oiled machine, and the money came rolling in.

     Very other day, Tommy and I were still out buying cars, Butch was hauling them in, and the torch man was cutting them up.

     The Carfora's were in utter amazement at what we were doing.

     We noticed that the Carfora’s appeared to be acting too nice to us, and we suspected something was wrong.

     Every few days the Elder Carfora would stop by, parking his tanker truck across the highway next to Pete’s diner, he wanted to know if we had heard from our Attorney, he wanted us to hurry up and give him some money and sign the papers.

      One day as we were cutting up a row of cars, I noticed quite a few strangers at the gate, they watching. I tried to make believe that I didn't notice them, but I knew who they were.

      They were all our competing auto wreckers from Middletown Avenue. They didn’t like the idea that we were cutting up cars on a production line. They thought we were taking  business from them.

      They felt that we were processing cars that belonged to them.

      By the third week, we realized that we had a big problem, we had been piling up the unburned car bodies in the rear of the yard, and we never had time to haul them to the scrap yard. It just didn’t pay to take an hour to haul an unburned body for just a little over three dollars, it just wasn’t worth my time.

      Pretty soon, we saw our pile of car bodies was getting pretty big, and taking up a lot of room.

      At the time we had about fifty car bodies piled up.

      One evening as we were getting ready to leave the yard, both Tommy and I looked at each other, we

Both had the same idea, at the same time.

      Before we left we lit some matches, and we threw them, along with Tommy’s lit cigar into one of the unburned cars bodies.

      That evening, Tommy called me and said that he thought he had heard the sirens of the fire trucks, on Middletown Avenue.

      In the morning, when I arrived, I wasn't surprised to see all the car bodies, perfectly burned, and I could see that the fire engines had been there.

      My joy was short lived.

      The Fire Chief, in his official red car drove by the front gate of the wrecking yard, and he called me over.  He said, “The next time you guys light a fire like this, you are both going to jail, and make sure you tell that to your fucking buddy Letis too.”

     I acted dumb, but he knew we had lit the fire.

     Then Tommy came by and said he heard a rumor that all the other wrecking yards were pissed off at us, and they already had a meeting regarding what to do about us. We were hurting their businesses.

     I told Tommy I had seen them all watching me from our front gate.

     It appears that in less than a few weeks Tommy and I had become famous, we had upset the entire Junk yard industry in New Haven as well as pissing off the fire department.

     Then Tommy said he received a call from our Attorney and we needed to go by for a meeting.

     The attorney said he had done a search on the property and found that a new turnpike was to be built going right through Carfora’s wrecking yard.

     The property was going to be condemned by the city and Carfora knew it.

      After the new highway was done Carfora’s wrecking yard, would only be forty feet long.

      He said Carfora’s property was basically worthless, and the junk yard license would also be worthless.

      He said the Carfora's knew this all the time, as they had they had already received notification from the state that the property was going to be condemned.

      When we told the elder Carfora that the property was going to be condemned, he acted like it was all news to him. He said he never heard about the new turnpike.

      Thus came to an end the Tommy and the Junk Yard Story.

       I joined the Army Reserves, and left for Fort Dix New Jersey, and Tommy got married and he said he used the flatbed truck we had made to haul his little bulldozer.    

    

    

   

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The Fort Dix Ammunition Story

                                               The Fort Dix Ammunition Story

                                                                  1960

                          A true story about finding an abandoned cache of military

                           Ammo and tear gas in the woods at Fort Dix New Jersey.    

                                 Written 4/13/2011 Re-written 04/20/2016

                                                          Howard Yasgar

    

By 1960, I had finally decided to join the Army Reserves.

The reason I had joined the reserves was because I felt it would be better than getting drafted.     I was also hoping that by joining the reserves I might get to go military mechanics school.

But that was just wishful thinking on my part as it didn’t turn out that way at all.

By joining up with the army reserves, it first required me to go for eight weeks of basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

Then after that everyone in my training unit was assigned to another military installation for six months of active duty.

I was surprised to learn that I was assigned right back to the motor pool at Fort Dix New Jersey, as a truck driver.

At first I was disappointed to be a truck driver, but as time passed I found being a truck driver was just about the best job you could ever have when in the service.   

I found that everyone wanted a truck driver as a friend, as riding in the back of a 2-1/2 ton truck was a lot better than marching in the rain.   

I found that working in the motor pool at Fort Dix was really a pretty cushy job.

In the morning after breakfast, I reported for duty at the motor pool, which meant sitting in the drivers ready room, reading magazines, and waiting until someone needed a truck and driver.

A motor pool was run by a non commissioned officer, usually it was a staff Sergeant.  

At Fort Dix, my motor pool was run by Staff Sergeant Kimbrough.

Kimbrough was a short timer, that meant he was due to retire soon.

The Army has a system, when a non commissioned officer gets close to retirement they usually put him in charge of running some facility like a warehouse or a motor pool.

Kimbrough and I became good friends, he was a tall no nonsense, black guy that had fought in Korea.

By the time I met him, it was important to Kimbrough was that he had an unblemished record, running the motor pool.

Getting court marshalled for some minor infraction before you retired was not a good thing.     While Sergeant Kimbrough ran a good motor pool operation, he did have a fault. He was a hoarder.

Whenever a truck was non operational, or “Dead Lined” it went against your record, so Sergeant Kimbrough did everything in his power to keep all his trucks operational, and how he did it was quite unique.

Whenever he needed spare parts, instead of waiting weeks or months for the normal supply channels, Kimbrough would take a case of beer to the base junk yard, and the Sergeant there would let him take whatever parts he wanted.

Of course, Kimbrough would take way more parts than he actually needed.

Little by little our motor pool became overloaded with unauthorized extra tools and spare parts.

One day, Kimbrough called me into his office. He said that he had received a tip that there was going to be an IG inspection. (IG meant Inspector General).       

If the inspector found extra tools or parts at the motor pool, and Kimbrough could not account for them, it meant they were probably stolen, and Kimbrough could be court marshalled.

Kimbrough said, I need you to hand pick five drivers, guys you can trust, then I need you to bring me these five trucks, he gave me a list of serial numbers.

I want you to load up four of the five trucks with all the extra parts we have in the motor pool, and I want you to go hide somewhere for a week until the inspection was over.

I had to ask, won’t the inspector see five trucks missing? No he said, they were part of his excess hoard.

I did exactly as Kimbrough asked and we filled four of the trucks up with excess parts, keeping one truck empty.

He gave me a map of Fort Dix and I found there were several deactivated infantry training areas where we could hide the trucks. One truck we would use to ferry everyone to the mess hall for meals. The Infantry training area I chose was a really strange place, there were fox holes dug everywhere and all kinds of different colorful metal markings nailed to the trees.

The entire area was set up like it was a simulated combat zone.  

On the second day, I heard one of my drivers running back to the trucks, he was hollering, “You are not going to believe what I found”.

I followed behind him as we went deeper into the woods, it was dangerous, as there were infantry foxholes dug all over the place.

About a half mile into the woods, we came onto a large clearing, and there was a mountain of wooden crates.

The pile was so big, I couldn’t see over it, it was about forty feet long and twenty five feet high.

The wood crates had been there so long they were already turning gray, and some were starting to rot and fall apart.

It was pretty obvious that no one had touched this stuff for many years.

I lifted one wood crate, and purposely dropped it on its edge, it broke open and waterproof sealed boxes fell out of it.

We opened the cardboard boxes and they were full of aluminum flare gun cartridges and they all looked like brand new.

So then we started breaking open the other crates and we found 30.06 blank ammunition, red and green smoke bombs, tear gas, and hundreds of packages of M80 exploding trip wire kits.

The bigger wooden crates, all had five sealed metal canisters in them, each canister filled with bandoliers of blank ammunition.

My driver, the soldier that had found the stash, went absolutely crazy, he started breaking open all the watertight ammo containers and dumping the blank ammunition on the ground.

He said he was going to return with his car the next day, and fill it up with the waterproof metal bullet containers.

He said they would make beautiful tool boxes that could easily be sold for five dollars each.

I reminded him that we could all go to Leavenworth prison if they ever caught us with any of this stuff, but he didn’t seem to care.

Once we went back to the trucks and told the other guys, about what we had found, every one of them made several trips back and forth, carrying back as many of the items as they could.

It was all very exciting, we were all so fascinated by the stuff we soon forgot all about the serious trouble we could get into by taking it.

By the end of the day, I had made two trips to the pile and I had brought back two big wooden crates of the blank ammunition.

After we all rested for a while, I wondered what in the world would I do with two huge crates of blank ammunition.

The next day we heard at the mess hall that the IG inspection was over and we could return to the motor pool.

But I was still concerned about my getting caught with all the blank ammunition

So as we were driving out of the woods, I saw there were several small, colorful metal triangles nailed to the trees.

I stopped my truck by a tree that had a small green triangle sign on it.

I walked about ten paces into the woods, and there I found an old foxhole. so I put the two wooden ammo crates into the hole and I covered it up with whatever dirt I was able to kick over it.

That was in 1960, and it was several years later, in 1963, when I was back with my army reserve unit in New Haven, it was summer and we were getting ready to do our two weeks of summer training.

That year our Company was to do a convoy to Fort Eustis Virginia, and we would be spending one night at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

We arrived at Fort Dix around 9:30 PM, and were assigned to an empty barrack to get some sleep.

As we all sat on our bunks talking, I mentioned the story about finding all the ammunition several years before.

I knew that no one believed me, so that’s when I told them where I had buried two crates of blank ammunition.

Several of my fellow reservists were gun collectors, and they were really interested as to where the blank ammunition was buried.

I told them it was too dangerous to go so far into the woods, where the big pile was, but we could possibly get to where I buried the two wooden ammunition crates.

Thirty minutes later, our sergeant and two other fellows, shook me awake. “Let’s go”, they said, “We got a Jeep”.

I quickly dressed and, we all piled into the Jeep.

It was pretty late and it was very dark, and I was starting to worry about ever finding the place in the woods.

But luck was with me, there was enough moonlight, and I found the abandoned road.

We drove in very slowly I hoped that the Jeeps headlights would reflect on the green sign that  was still on the tree.

We found the tree, it was the same one with the green triangle nailed to it.

I told the guys to go in ten paces and dig in the foxhole, it was just like we were looking for pirate treasure.

They were thrilled when they dug up the crates, and threw them into the jeep.

     

      

            

The Mountain Lion Story

                                                           The Mountain Lion Story

                                                                          1959

                       A true story about my driving while having a mountain lion sleep on my lap 

                                             Written 1/12011 Re-written 04/22/2016

                                                                   Howard Yasgar

    One summer evening, in 1959, I was parked at an outdoor restaurant and I noticed  this guy looking my car over.

     His name was Tommy and we have now been best of friends for nearly 60 years now.

     Tommy was about five foot six inches tall with light blond hair and a cherubic face, he had a short stubby mini cigar rolling around in his mouth.

     Tommy always liked to talk like he was a tough guy but it was all just an act.

     One day, a few weeks after I met him, Tommy showed up at my home in Westville, he came with a friend of his named Bobby.

     I lived on the second floor, so as they walked up the stairs in my front hallway, I saw that Tommy had a big mountain lion on a leash, I had never seen anything like that before.

     The big cat was gingerly walking up the stairs in front of Tommy.

     I thought the cat had to weigh around two hundred pounds and he was about eight feet long from head to tail.

    Now I had seen plenty of mountain lions before on television, and I knew they were capable of attacking and killing people, but this one, well he was acting like a big pussy cat.

      I asked Tommy if the lion was dangerous, he said “No”, he said, “Go ahead and pet her, her name is Brandy”.

    As they reached the top of the hallway stairs, I reached out and nervously patted the top of brandy’s head, and nothing happened.

      Actually I thought the lion liked it, her eyes closed and she started purring.

      When the lion reached our living room, she was walking in front of Tommy.

      My mother took one look and I heard her bedroom door close.                                         

      Now, I think my mom was pretty used to me and my friends doing crazy things, but I don’t think she ever expected to see a mountain lion in her house.

      I asked Tommy, where the hell did you get ever get this cat? He said, “The she belonged to a friend of his that lived in Branford Connecticut”.   

      Tommy just kept walking through my house, he was heading for my bedroom, with the mountain lion following him. Bobby and I  just followed behind them.

      I could see that the big cat was very docile and appeared to be completely disinterested in her surroundings.

      Once we all reached my bedroom, which was in the rear of the house, I could see that Brandy started sniffing the air, so I knew something was up.

      Then suddenly without warning she pounced over five feet, and onto my bed pulling Tommy right along with her as he was still holding on to her leash.

      I realized immediately what the lion wanted, it was my down pillow.

      Brandy was now on my bed in a crouched attack-like position, she had my pillow firmly clamped in

 her jaws, and her two front paws with claws extended were tightly grasping the pillows sides.

     Tommy let go of the leash, and reached over the lions head, putting his hands right into the lion’s  mouth as he attempted to pry it open to get her to release the pillow.

     I watched as the lion was now growling fiercely.

     That didn’t seem to stop Tommy, and he said to me, “Grab and pull away her paws”,

     Because I didn’t know any better, I reached over Tommy and tried to get the cat to release the pressure her two paws had on the pillow.

     I saw that her paws with the claws extended, were larger than my hands were.

     Tommy’s friend Bobby just sat in my bedroom desk chair watching us and laughing.

     I wondered, wasn’t Tommy afraid, I know I was.  

     But Tommy appeared not to be concerned at all that the lion might all of a sudden decide to bite him, or possibly bite me for that matter.

     I couldn’t help but see how hard Tommy was trying to get the lions mouth open, so I reached over and tried getting both of Brandy’s paws to release the pillow. That’s was when I could feel every muscle in the lion’s body was tightening her grip.

     In the back if my mind, I was just waiting for her to release the pillow and sink her teeth into Tommy.

     I looked as Tommy now had both his hands in the big cats mouth trying to pry it open, I could see the cats lips and saliva on his hands, Tommy’s fingers were in the cats mouth right in between her pointy teeth.

     Suddenly after a couple of minutes of us tugging on him, the cat just released its pressure on the pillow and seemed to lose interest in it.

     It was then that I turned to see my mother watching from my bedroom doorway, I could see the fear in her eyes.

     I took the torn feather pillow out of my bedroom, and the lion just curled up on my bed, laying there just snoozing away and purring as if  nothing happened.

     She just lay there for about two hours as Tommy, Bobby and I talked.

     Soon Tommy looked at my clock and he said, “It getting close to Brandy’s  feeding time, lets head down to Jimmies restaurant and I can buy her a couple of steaks, or a few hamburgers to eat”.

     Jimmies was the big outdoor restaurant where I had met Tommy.

     So now Tommy led the big lion down my front hallway stairs and out of the house onto the sidewalk.

     I just knew all my neighbors were watching.

     My 1959 Chevrolet convertible was parked across the street and the convertible top was already down.

     Bobby got in the back seat, Tommy sat in the passenger seat and I got in the driver’s side.

     After we all sat down Tommy tugged the leash and Brandy, climbed right in, on top of us.

     She calmly wiggled around until she found a comfortable position laying across Tommy’s and my laps in the front seat.

     The cat was too long for the front seat, so with her head on my lap and her right paw sticking through my steering wheel, Tommy was able to hold the cats tail up and close the cars door.

     Brandy had her rear legs comfortably folded on Tommy’s lap and with Tommy holding her tail in  the air.   
     Now the lion with its head on my lap, and her eyes closed, began purring which vibrated the entire front seat of the car.

     Every time I needed to turn a corner, I had to gently hold up the cats paw so I could turn the steering wheel without disturbing her.      

     Because we had the convertible top down, and it was quite a sight to for anyone that could see us just driving along with a mountain lion lying across our laps.

     At Jimmie's restaurant that evening, Tommy and the cat were the center of attention, and as he walked her up to the front counter, as he did everything stopped as Jimmy the owner and everyone else  leaned over the counter to look at Brandy.

     Then they started to feed her every kind of raw meat they had in the house. I saw Jimmy the owner open the fridge and take out a handful of minute steaks for the cat.

     There was no question but that cat was a real crowd pleaser, and from then on Tommy started taking Brandy everywhere we went on the weekends.

     But one weekend there was no Lion, and Tommy sadly said that Brandy had accidently choked herself on some straw in her cage.

       I have to admit, I missed that big purring mountain lion lying on our laps while we drove around New Haven. We just never thought for a moment that one bite could have ended it all.