The Abe Zion Story

1960

A true story about the

smartest person I ever met.

Written 2011* 5,409 Words

By Howard Yasgar

When I look back at all the interesting and super intelligent people that I have been involved with, I must put Abe Zion at the top of the list.

I believe we all learn by observing others, we can then copy what we see they have done and then

We can utilize that in our own lives.

We can also watch what others have done incorrectly and we can do the opposite of what they did, either way, it all becomes a positive learning experience for us.

The story of my experiences with Abe Zion is a perfect example of exactly that type of learning experience.

I had the good fortune of meeting Abe Zion in the early 1960’s, and I was able to work with him, and I allowed him to mentor me for several years.

During that time, I was able to closely observe Abe and I watched closely the way he operated.

I saw both the good and the bad, and I was able to learn quite a few valuable lessons from both.

In 1960, I was operating a small auto wrecking yard in Stamford Connecticut, it was a business that I had leased from my former employer Lenny of Milford Auto Wrecking.

I had worked at Milford Auto Wrecking part time during my days at New Haven College.

The yard I leased in Stamford was called West Side Auto Trading, and it was located right off Stamford’s West Main Street exit on the Connecticut turnpike.

After attending New Haven College, I thought that I was smart enough to make that small Stamford auto wrecking yard into a successful business.

I had learned quite a bit about the auto wrecking business from working part time at Milford Auto Wrecking, and I had always thought Milford Auto Wrecking was a well-organized business, and I had learned a lot from them. But unfortunately, I also learned that they were stealing and stripping late model cars for parts, so I was happy to leave them when I did.

Once I graduated College, in 1960, I learned that Milford Auto Wrecking was no longer using the West Side Auto Wrecking yard in Stamford.

My old boss Lenny from Milford Auto Wrecking then happily agreed to lease the Stamford yard to me for a $1200.00 fee, and a rent of $200.00 a month.

I ran the business in Stamford, Connecticut for over a year, and it proved to be a disaster.

I didn’t have enough knowledge, or the finances, to run the operation, and then I found out that most of the customers living in Stamford were much smarter than I was.

On Saturday’s and Sundays when I was closed, the customers would climb over the fence and steal whatever parts they needed.

Then one day a wrecking yard inspector came by and he threatened to close me down, he said I was running the yard illegally, and he was going to put a stop to it.

So, after that, I was disgusted with the whole business, and I was planning on leaving.

That’s when a lucky break happened, I met Abe Zion.

One day, as I was getting ready to leave Stamford, I was approached by a short, mid-eastern-looking fellow.

The mid-eastern-looking fellow was about five foot seven inches tall, with a slight build.

He was wearing a dark pin striped business suit, black pointy shoes, and a long-sleeved white dress shirt, and a nice red striped necktie, he looked to be around forty years old.

His hair was jet black and combed back slick.

If it wasn’t for the fact that he looked somewhat like an Arab, I would have thought him to be an executive from a high-class office on Wall Street.

It was a hot day, and his suite jacket was folded over his left arm as he walked down the concrete ramp towards me with an outstretched hand, and a big smile.

He shook my hand and greeted me as if he had known me all his life.

“You are Howard he asked?” Yes, I replied.

“My name is Abe Zion he said, and what are you doing on my property’’.

At the time I really had no idea if this guy was telling me the truth or not.

After we shook hands, we walked back up the concrete ramp, to West Main Street, where there was an office building.

The building was small, about 10 feet wide and 25 feet deep, and it had two rooms.

The first room had an old very scratched wood desk and three well-worn wood chairs.

The second room was filled with crates of nails that someone had stored there.

As we both walked inside, I saw an elderly gentleman sitting in one of the chairs. Both his hands were folded together on his lap.

The older fellow looked to be around 85 years old and he was looking forlornly at the floor.

That’s when Abe Zion introduced me to Eichel Blumenstock who he said was his partner.

Eichel stood up, and with a big smile, he shook my hand with both of his.

Well, here I was, and I was certainly in a funny position, I didn’t know if I was going to be kicked off the property or what, so I just shook Eichel’s hand and gave him a big smile.

Abe said, “Well Howard, what are you going to do now”? Nothing, I said.

It was true, I really had nothing better to do.

In a way, I think I was kind of excited because I was hoping something interesting might happen.

It was clear that being in the auto wrecking business in Stamford was not for me.

Then as I sat down in one of the old worn-out chairs, it dawned on me, how in the world did Abe know my name?

At the time I was 21 years old, and my experience in Stamford had shown me that I needed to learn a lot more about how to do business.

So, at that very moment, I decided that any association with these two guys couldn't possibly hurt me, and perhaps I could learn something from them.

Abe was acting very business-like. He put his feet up on the desk like he was the CEO of a major corporation.

Abe ended our first conversation by saying, “OK let’s make some money Howard”.

Now, I thought that was a pretty good statement, it really was about time that I made some money.

So, over the next several weeks, we met every day at the Stamford office, as Abe started laying out plans for all sorts of future business ventures, and I became Abe’s new corporate vice president.

Then, when the meetings were finally over, we all got in Abe’s car and started traveling.

We drove everywhere with Abe driving a new 1960 Ford sedan.

I sat in the passenger seat as my new partner Eichel Blumenstock dozed in the back seat.

I soon learned that Abe was an idea man, as well as a teacher, and his partner Eichel was his “Yes” man.

As we drove along, Abe explained that as the vice president, I was going to be the organizations leg man, I was to be the person that would make all of Abe’s grand ideas happen, I must admit, it was an exciting prospect.

The first thing I noticed was that as we were driving, Abe would never stop and sit down to eat. He only stopped to get take-out food, and we all ate in the car as Abe drove with only one hand on the steering wheel and while eating with his other hand.

As we drove, Abe never stopped talking and never stopped teaching me.

He was constantly suggesting all kinds of new business ventures we were going to try, and he carefully laid out each new idea, and he mixed it in with history lessons, and lectures.

Abe became the teacher and entrepreneur, and I was his student, and he was now also to be my mentor.

Abe said that every two years he bought a new car.

Then he immediately sold cars new tires for cash, replacing them with good used junk yard tires.

He also said that he never changed the oil in his car, Abe said “why waste money when I trade in the car every two years anyway, let the next jerk pay for changing the oil”.

Sometimes, I wondered if I was listening to a brilliant person or a crazy person.

Every day Abe was tossing out new ideas, and he always wanted my immediate feedback.

I always gave Abe my best thoughts, as fast as I could.

Eichel always sat quietly in the car’s back seat, only speaking when he was asked a question by Abe.

The answer that always came from Eichel was the very one Abe wanted to hear.

I had never really known a “Yes man” before, but my new friend Eichel was a perfect “Yes Man”.

One of the first things Abe proposed to me was that we utilize West Side Auto Trading upper office to sell used cars.

Abe said this was a good business for me to learn, all I had to do was listen to him.

That morning, we drove to White Plains in New York, and we all walked into the first big car dealership we saw.

I could see that Abe was in fine form, like he was on a mission.

I listened as Abe quickly purchased all the back row of cars on their used car lot, and he only paid $50.00 per car.

Some of the cars didn’t start and Abe said it would have cost the dealerships a lot of money to tow them to the junk yards or auto auctions.

I now could see that doing business was very easy for Abe, because that morning, in a few minutes we owned twenty cars.

Abe said that it was my job to figure out how to get them all running and back to Stamford yard.

I loved the responsibility, and I did it.

Abe and Eichel made “For Sale” signs to put in the car windows.

We sold all the cars for between $99.00 to $125.00 each, and if a car didn't have a title, Abe said I should look through the hundreds of old titles from cars that had been cut up and junked years ago.

I looked until I found a title that was close in year and appearance.

Eichel was always left in the little office to deal with any customers. It was Eichel’s job to make out bills of sale, and he also collected the money.

After six months we sold over a hundred cars, and I sat down to do the books,

That’s when I noticed 6 or 7 cars were missing, so I mentioned it to Abe, and he became very

disturbed.

Abe asked me how many cars were missing. I told him there were at least 6 that I couldn’t account for.

Abe called in Eichel and sat him down. He said sternly, “Eichel, Howard says there are six cars missing, where are the cars?”

Eichel looked up with his blurry eyes and said to Abe, “They are on the highway in the Bronx.”

It appears that Eichel was a devote Jew, and when driving home to the Bronx on Friday evening, sometimes he got stuck in traffic. Since a devote Jew can’t do anything mechanical after sundown, so on Friday evenings, if Eichel was stuck in traffic, he would simply take the license plate off the car he was driving and walk home even if it took him all night.

It appears that Eichel was abandoning all our used cars on the highway to the Bronx.

Abe looked at me, and he said that it appeared that God was on Eichel’s side, so he then he arranged to get Eichel home earlier on Friday evenings.

The next week, Abe offered me a deal, it appears that he and Eichel had purchased a load of electroplating equipment at a Chase Brass and Copper Company auction in Naugatuck Connecticut.

They apparently had participated in this auction a long time before I had met them.

All the equipment and plating tanks that were not sold were then stored behind another electro plating company located in Waterbury Connecticut.

Now the plating company was complaining about the junk and Abe needed to clean up the mess.

Abe said I could earn 10% on everything that was sold, if I helped him clean the mess up.

I was eager to help, but I soon realized that Abe kind of suckered me into doing a lot of labor for him with little financial reward, but in retrospect I ended up learning quite a bit.

While we were removing some electroplating tanks, one of them was full of orange-colored mud, the mud was mixed with leaves and twigs after having sat outside for over a year.

I asked Abe what I should do with the mud, and Abe said, “Find me a five-gallon bucket and shovel I want to put some red mud into the bucket”.

I did as Abe said and as we were leaving, he showed the red mud to the manager of the plating company.

The manager looked and said it was just old Chromate mud from a tank that was in the yard, He said it was worthless.

Abe told me to put the bucket of Chromate mud in the trunk of his car.

Once we were back at our office in Stamford, Abe put a tarp out on the ground and had me spread the red mud on it.

It took several days in the sun but the mud eventually dried up.

Abe removed a window screen and had me sift the orange powder through it.

The resulting fine powder was now clean with no leaves in it.

Then Abe put some of the orange powder into a zip lock bag.

It was several months later when Abe again showed the now clean orange powder to the manager of the plating company.

The manager said, “That’s powdered Chromate, how much do you have? We can pay you $3.50 a lb. for all you can supply.

That was a powerful lesson I had learned; Abe had taught me that presentation is everything.

One day, while we were sitting in our office in Stamford, Abe suggested that we should try to melt the lead out of junk car batteries.

I didn’t know very much about doing it, so we went out to the local gas station and bought a load of junk car batteries.

I wish I knew then what I know today, because we melted the lead in the batteries and we collected less money for the lead than we had paid for the batteries.

That taught me that there was much more to learn about melting car batteries than meets the eye and it wasn’t good business for us to get into. But it was a good lesson that I learned while working with Abe, and there were many more lessons to come.

Abe always took our losing money in stride, because he was already thinking of the next project for us to make more money.

One day Abe said we had an order to supply good used car transmission gears to Israel. They were using the transmission gears to make some kind of farm tractor.

My job was to go to scrap yards all around New York and buy hundreds of used Chrysler automobile transmissions which I did, and I then brought the transmissions to our warehouse in Waterbury, Connecticut where Abe had hired several men to disassemble them.

The used transmission gears were then sent to the electroplating company that was also located in Waterbury. Thats where they were electroplated and came out looking like new. Then they were oiled, packaged and shipped off to Israel.

After that project was completed, Abe now had time to sit in our Stamford office and read the New York Herald Tribune.

The Tribune listed all the auctions going on in New York and New Jersey.

Abe said that our objective was to find something in an auction that we could buy and sell quickly.

I could see that Abe was very familiar with doing the auction business, so I just followed his every move.

The following week there was a big Auction in New York City.

That was where Abe introduced me to a whole bunch of New York Mafia guys.

Abe said the Mafia controlled all the big auctions in New York, and they were known to everyone as “The Band of 40 Thieves”.

When Abe introduced me to them, he said I was “A good kid from New Haven,” and by the end of the day the Mafia boss and his men were all my friends, calling me the kid from New Haven.

Abe said that the Mafia guys liked me, and I was now number 41 in the “Band of 40 Thieves”.

So that was how I learned the auction business, and don’t ask me how Abe had befriended this group of New York mobsters, I will never know, but now at every auction we went to the Mafia guys referred to me as “The kid from New Haven”.

Abe never ceased to amaze me, and I was always anxious to learn more from him, and about him.

As we drove from place to place, Abe eventually told me the story of his childhood.

He said he was born to poor parents in Palestine, which at the time, was ruled by the British.

He said that at a very young age he went to work in a British recycled rubber factory. In those days he was very lucky to have a job.

Abe said that at the rubber factory the British were reprocessing used tires and tubes making them into shoes.

Abe said that he worked twenty hours a day on a machine that stamped the soft rubber into shoe soles.

Abe said, for years the stamping machine had always made crooked shoe soles, so he invented a wooden fixture to help do the job better.

His jealous foreman took the fixture from him, wanting to claim credit for inventing it himself.

That evening someone slipped a bar of soap into Abe’s pocket, and he was arrested and fired from his job.

Fortunately, Abe’s parents had heard about a newly arrived German Jew that was looking for a man servant, and they urged Abe to apply for the job, and that's how Abe met, Eichel Blumenstock.

Eichel Blumenstock had come from an extremely wealthy family. They were the franchise holders for Michelin tires in all of Germany.

When the Nazi's took over Germany, one of the Blumenstock family's maids, saw them drinking red wine, so she testified that the family killed young German girls and drank their blood.

Because Eichel was Jewish, he and his Family were arrested immediately and imprisoned. But they were able to eventually bribe the Nazi guards and they escaped to Palestine.

Once in Palestine Eichel, started buying and selling real estate, it was real estate in a land that was soon to become Israel.

So as a youth, Abe became Eichel’s man servant, and he carried Eichel's briefcase, opened doors for him, and attended to Eichel’s every need.

Abe always watched and listened to how Eichel did his real estate business, and as time went on, Eichel began to trust Abe, and he started sending him on financial errands.

As Eichel got older, Abe ended up doing most of their business, with Eichel now treating Abe as a partner.

Abe said Eichel would come to Abe's parent’s house and leave a bag of money saying be sure to give it to Abe, it is Abe’s share of the profits.

It was months later when Eichel told me the exact same story, so it obviously was a true story.

Now in 1960 Abe and Eichel were in America, Abe had become the businessman and Eichel now carried Abe’s briefcase as Abe’s man servant.

One day Abe came up with a new project, he said that he had met a customer that was recapping automobile tires and he needed a lot of good used tire casings to recap.

I knew little or nothing about the inner workings of the recapping business, so off we all went to a big tire recapping factory located in Waterbury, Connecticut. Abe had arranged for a top-level meeting with the owners.

At the meeting, I listened as Abe promised to sell them thousands of prime, number 1 tire casings which at the time were almost impossible to get.

I didn’t know anything about the used tire casing business, but Abe said he would teach me.

We then drove to the outskirts of New Haven Connecticut, where there was a very large scrap tire company, it was one of the largest in New England, and it appears that Abe knew the owners.

Abe and the owners then taught me how to use a hand tire spreading tool, it was used to open a used tire allowing me to be able to inspect the insides.

Abe had a plan up his sleeve, he said I was to inspect thousands of #2 casings that had already been rejected, and if they looked good to me, I was to mark them as first class casings.

It was a very dishonest problem, but I did it.

We all knew what Abe was doing was bad business, but I did exactly what he told me to do

The owner of the used tire company said that I got so good at inspecting tires that he wanted me to quit working with Abe and come work with him.

Abe had promised the recapping company in Waterbury that he would deliver thousands of # 1 tire

casings, which we all thought to be an almost impossible task.

Soon after we delivered the first of several truckloads of the tires that I had handpicked, the recapping company inspected them and they kept about 50 percent.

Personally, I felt that it was a miracle, but it appears that Abe knew what he was doing.

Unfortunately, the re-capper wasn’t happy with only a 50% recovery rate and they physically ejected Abe and Eichel from their building, calling them every name in the book.

It was the first time that I knew that Abe hadn’t told someone the 100% truth, and I didn’t like what he did. But the results were that I became a pretty good tire inspector, and I had learned the recapping and tire casing business due to Abe teaching me.

Undaunted, Abe announced that he had just had a meeting with a trailer manufacturer in New York. They said they needed hundreds of used tires mounted on Ford wheels.

As the new trailers moved through the factory, they were being welded, and sometimes the welders

would accidentally burn the rubber on the new tires.

Abe had convinced them to put used tires on the trailers, and at the end of the production line they could replace them with new tires.

The story as told to me by Abe sounded more than a little strange, but Abe had the order in hand and he was determined to fill it.

Abe sent me to automotive wrecking yards to buy good used Ford wheels, and then he sent me to New York to buy hundreds of good used inner tubes.

Now we again needed to find tires, but this time the tires just needed to look good.

Where do you find lots of good used tires cheap, well the truth is you can’t find them.

Abe said I was not to worry, He said we could buy lots of tires worn out only on one side, and he would teach me how to re-groove the worn-out tires.

I thought Abe would get us in trouble again, by promising what he couldn’t deliver, but he taught me how to use a hot re-grooving tool, which when properly used would cut new grooves into a worn tire.

I was amazed to see how it was done, so now I learned from Abe how to cut the tires so they looked beautiful, and I did hundreds of them.

When we assembled the tires on the used Ford rims, Abe had the electroplating company in Waterbury clean, electroplate and paint the wheels just like new, and that gave Abe another new idea.

Several weeks later, we were having a meeting in the office at Stamford and Abe asked me to come up with a catchy name for our company. He wanted a business card with an impressive name on it so he could call on some big automotive parts companies in New York.

But the problem was, I had no Idea as to how to invent a name for a corporation, I had never done it before.

However, as we were doing several projects at the electroplating company in Waterbury and they were called “Southern New England electroplating”, I suggested that we call ourselves “Southern New England Automotive Rebuilders”.

Abe loved the idea, and off he went to the printer.

Two days later, a red-faced Abe Zion, was ready to kill me and everyone else.

He said he had the cards printed and he gave them out at a meeting with the board of directors of a large company in New York City.

He said that when he passed out his business cards everyone began laughing at him.

He said the printer abbreviated our company name. Instead of “Southern New England Automotive Rebuilders,” he had printed “SNEAR”, and Abe was embarrassed.

Abe was right, I had made a mistake, and I accepted responsibility. I now learned to watch what the abbreviated letters say when you invent a new company name.

Now Abe said that he had a high-level meeting with a group in New York, and he had a huge order for rebuilt car wheels.

Abe had shown them a sample of the Ford wheel we had made for the trailer company, and they loved it.

The electroplating and painting work that was done by Southern New England Electro Platers in Waterbury was beautiful.

Abe asked me what I thought about going into the rebuilt wheel business.

The idea was a good one, people could buy two rebuilt wheels and have their snow tires mounted on them. Then every winter they could have the wheels and tires in their garage ready to install.

Abe knew that all New York junk yards were just loaded with huge piles of used wheels that we could buy by the ton at scrap metal prices.

Then, once we fine-tuned the idea, Abe went to several bigger automotive parts buying agencies in New York and he came back with orders for thousands of rebuilt wheels.

Our first customers were the big discount tire stores that sold snow tires.

Abe told them all that we could supply all the wheels they wanted, which was not exactly true.

We could only buy wheels that came off cars that were in the auto junk yards, and those

wheels were all from cars at least ten years old.

I took our truck to several of the big tire junk yards in New York City, and there I hand-picked and bought tons of good used automobile wheels.

I ended up spending many days just sorting and inspecting thousands of wheels in the New York junk yards.

Then I hauled the wheels to our Waterbury Connecticut electroplater.

Once there I again closely inspected the wheels and removed all the minor dents and dings.

Once a wheel passed my inspection the electroplating company cleaned, electroplated and painted them.

So, all that summer, my days were spent removing the dents and dings from used wheels, and then we all had to spend time learning what wheels fit and what kind of car.

The rebuilt wheel business turned out to be a good business.

However, the orders were coming in much too fast, so Abe put Eichel in the warehouse boxing the wheels.

When we were running out of certain popular part numbers, Eichel simply changed the label on the boxes.

Then, that’s when the complaint phone calls started coming in.

They all were saying the same thing, they wanted more wheels, but they wanted the right ones, and

Soon it got to the point that Abe didn’t want to talk to them.

The pressure was now all on me, because every call was a complaint.

On one cold winter evening, before I left the Waterbury warehouse, an automotive chain store had called, they said they were running a snow tire sale, and they were out of wheels, could I make an emergency delivery, on my way home to New Haven.

I filled our delivery van with eighty rebuilt Chevrolet wheels, and I stopped at the chain store and unloaded the wheels outside their tire department.

It was freezing cold that night so I got a large coffee and parked the van where I could see what was happening to the wheels.

Within two hours all the wheels were sold.

Then after winter, suddenly the rebuilt wheel business came to a halt and we had nothing to do.

That’s when three large boxes from Israel arrived at our office in Stamford.

Abe carefully unpacked them as Eichel and I watched.

Inside the crates were pieces of hand cut lead crystal glass, some of them were ornate decanters, and some were cut glass bowls and ashtrays.

The entire shipment was an assortment of beautiful cut crystal glass items.

Abe said, “Tomorrow, I would like you and Eichel to go call on a few jewelry stores around Stamford and see if they are interested in buying this cut crystal glass from Israel.

So, the next day, we dressed up and made the rounds of several jewelry stores and gift shops around the Stamford area.

We received positive responses from everyone.

The next day, as we told our findings to Abe, he said the Israeli’s wanted to enter the U.S. market, and we would have the first chance to do something with it.

Later that day, after Abe and Eichel had left the office, I saw what looked like a thick and very old report lying on the desk Abe was using.

I opened the report, and I read it.

It was a proposal to the Government of Israel; it was written a just a few years after Israel became an independent country.

The proposal was written by a group of men of which Abe Zion was one. Another name I recognized was Moshe Dyan, who was once the Defense Minister of Israel.

The report was titled “Making Lead Glass, using the Sands of the Negev Desert”.

The report was so interesting that I sat down and read the entire proposal.

Besides from using the sand from the Negev desert, it proposed to train Israeli women in the art of cutting lead glass, they would do it in their homes, and once they learned how to do it, their children would learn the art of glass cutting by watching their mother, thus developing a home industry for Israel.

It was fascinating, my friend Abe Zion had made the proposal to Israel many years ago, and here sitting in our office were the results, beautiful lead crystal glass from Israel.

In January of 1961, my father unexpectedly died, and my entire life was about to change as well.

At the same time, I was also engaged to be married.

So, while my education with Abe had been extremely rewarding in many ways, I was always left with the burden of straightening out the problems Abe left behind.

I was just worn out managing all of Abe’s ventures and listening to all the complaints.

So, reluctantly I drew up an official letter of resignation, and I sent it to Abe.

I must admit I enjoyed the craziness of working with Abe, and learning from him, I was his student, and he was a great teacher.

My mother once said to me, you could never get an education like that in any university, and she was right.