The API Story Part 1

1964 re written 12/2010* 2,442 Words

Howard Yasgar

It was in December of 1963 when my wife and I drove from New Haven to Florida.

I was going there to assist my friend Lou Gladstein in running ABC Auto Wrecking which was located on NW 46b Street in Miami.

Lou had been leasing the wrecking company for several years and he was losing money.

I was at Lou’s house in Bridgeport Connecticut; it was just a few days after my wedding.

That’s when Lou’s wife Gladys had an interesting proposition for me. She said I should take my wife to Florida like we were on a honeymoon, and while I was there, I could find out what was going on at Lou’s wrecking company.

It sounded interesting so I agreed to do it.

It didn’t take me long to find out that the manager Lou had hired was stealing all the money and he even had neglected to pay the rent for six months.

I called Lou who at the time was running my old used car lot in Stamford Connecticut, and he immediately took a night owl flight to Miami, and we closed the business down.

Now that I was an unemployed honeymooner living in a trailer park, my wife and I decided to stay

a while in Florida where it was nice and warm.

The trailer park rent was only $20.00 a week, and we had a black and white TV that I had bought for $50.00, and we were also driving around in a nice 1959 Plymouth that Lou had given me to use, what could be better.

Unfortunately, I soon found out that Plymouth was a stolen car.

To earn a living, I started driving around Miami buying used automotive parts and selling them to companies that were in the business of rebuilding. And

One of the companies I did business with was Automotive Parts Industries, also known as API.

The company was located at East 41 Street in Hialeah Florida and owned by Dave and Sadie Chait.

At the time the Chait’s were both 57 years old and were from New Jersey, I was 25.

I soon found that Dave was a difficult person to deal with, I thought for sure that he had several psychological problems.

Dave told me he had been in the Auto wrecking business in New Jersey and had moved to Florida in the 1950’s.

First, he opened an auto parts store in Hialeah, then he sold it around 1960 and then he opened API, a parts rebuilding company. He had opened it, even though he knew very little about rebuilding automotive parts.

However, from all appearances, API seemed to me to be a good solid company with customers coming in all day long.

One afternoon we were sitting in the front office talking when Dave and Sadie made the following offer to me. They said, why don’t you buy 10% of API for $3,500.00 and you can be the vice president and receive a salary of 125.00 weekly, we both feel the company needs someone like you.

They inferred that the company was doing very well and it was a solid investment for me, and I saw no reason to disbelieve them. The money sounded OK at the time, and it meant my wife and I could leave the trailer park where we were living and rent a nice apartment.

My parts selling business wasn’t bad business, but I was working hard at it, and it was a dirty business and the offer they made me just sounded better.

So, in 1964 I traded my car in for a 1961 Falcon station wagon, and I became the vice president of API as well as the head salesman, and shop manager.

I spent every morning on the road making sales calls and after lunch I worked in all the rebuilding departments. In the company.

It wasn’t long before I noticed that every day I was paying for my own lunch, but Dave and Sadie would pay for their lunch out of the company’s petty cash. That’s when I realized they were using all the cash that came in the business for their personal expenses, and this was causing the company to be cash poor and we were unable to buy used parts from local core suppliers.

What I didn’t know at the time was that API’s income was not enough to cover the company expenses, and it appeared that Dave and Sadie had lied to me.

Also, I found that among Dave’s psychological problems he also turned out to be a very argumentative guy, he was horrible when dealing with customers and he would argue with them to no end. The arguments sometimes got so bad that I had to hide in the restroom before one of the customers killed Dave.

That’s when I started to pay more attention to what was going on with the company.

I often listened while Dave tried to borrow money from lenders. I found out that he had even falsified the company books to show the banks, but the banks realized what he was doing and wouldn’t lend him anything.

Finally, I heard that he had found a company in New York that was connected to a company in Orlando called Canaveral Capital Corp, they had agreed to lend Dave $10,000.00, however they required Dave to give them 10% of API’s stock until the loan was paid.

In the loan business this is called vigorish. Dave had never told me about any of this.

Fortunately, due to the new customers I had brought in, the company was able to pay back the loan to Canaveral Capital in a year.

One day I was in the front office when Canaveral Capital called and said they were coming to Hialeah to see us. They said that they were still holding the 10 shares of API stock and they wanted Dave to buy it back for an additional $10,000.00. I thought Dave was going to have a stroke.

The following week, three Mafioso looking guys came to see us, I could see one of them was wearing a gun in a shoulder holster.

I introduced myself and they all shook my hand smiling because they knew I was the reason the company was now making money and able to pay them.

I could see Dave’s face turning red when they spoke with him, they wanted their $10,000.00 period.

But Dave said they were crazy and he never would give any money to them, that’s when they said they would make Dave pay them or they would sue him and kick him out of the company, Dave then stormed out of the office. It was the first time I had ever seen strong arm tactics being used.

The Canaveral Capital guys then asked me if I wanted to take over the company. I said no, I could never do that, so they asked me if I would run another company they had control over in Miami, and I again said no. They said that they then would cause Dave so many legal problems that he would be happy to leave the company.

I stepped out of the office to where Dave was sitting, he was talking to his wife Sadie, and his face was pale and he was sweating profusely, I thought he was having a heart attack.

I told them what Canaveral Capital had said about suing Dave, I suggested they let me buy the stock from Canaveral Capital.

Dave said no, and I told him these guys were not fooling around, they would sue him, and he would probably lose the company over it.

Eventually Dave and Sadie agreed, and the Canaveral Capital guys accepted my proposal. They told Dave and Sadie that I had probably saved Dave’s life by buying the stock.

I could see Dave was boiling mad, and I didn’t know if he was madder at the Canaveral Capital guys or me, but I knew Dave and Sadie didn’t like it at all, because I now owned 20% of API’s stock.

From that point on, among Dave’s multitude of psychological problems he now became a very argumentative person and he would never listen to me whenever a problem occurred.

It now became important to Dave to show everyone he was the boss.

I did eventually receive papers from Canaveral Capital, and I eventually paid them off, but when I asked them for the API stock certificates, they couldn’t find them and I never heard from them again.

About 6 months went by when Dave suddenly introduced me to his son Don.

He said Don was coming to work for API.

I must admit it was a bit of a shock to me, as I knew that whenever an owner’s son enters his father’s business, things were going to change, and usually not for the better.

My knowing that with Dave I was dealing with a psychologically impaired person didn’t make this news any easier for me.

Whenever Dave stood up and was talking to someone, he would sway back and forth, the trouble was that his son Don also did the exact same thing, so now I had to deal with two off balance people.

Turns out Don and I were both 25 years old. Don said he was a traveling salesman selling candy.

Don said he had just married a girl from Greensboro North Carolina, named Carrie, however he couldn’t earn a living, so his father decided to bring them both to Miami and Don could come to work in API.

I eventually met Don’s wife Carrie, and I found her to be both good-looking and extremely intelligent, much more so than Don was.

It appeared to me that Don had just been Carries ticket out of Greensboro.

I think I was right because Carrie eventually divorced Don.

Because Don really had no experience in the rebuilding business, we decided that he should take over my sales route, and I started spending more time working in our rebuilding shop.

Don told me he was the youngest of three brothers, and he felt his birth was a mistake and he always had a poor relationship with his mother and father. He said all his life his mother called him Ducky, which he hated.

Don said that after his high school graduation, he immediately left Miami for the country of Colombia where he stayed for several years and he learned to speak Spanish fluently.

One day I was sitting in our front office, and I saw what appeared to be an automobile insurance policy. I looked it over and found that Dave was paying his son Dons Auto Insurance with API funds.

When I confronted Dave, he became flustered and didn’t know what to say, I had caught him doing

what I knew he was doing all along. I knew Dave was stealing all the cash and now his son also knew what a bastard his father was.

It was 1968 when we were sitting in the front office and Dave received a phone call. It was the son of the owner of the building we were in. He said he was an attorney and his father had just passed away so he was liquidating his father’s estate.

Not only was he an attorney but he knew the real estate business. The attorney told Dave he wanted to sell our building as soon as possible, and he offered Dave the building for $10,000.00.

I calculated that at the time, the building was worth about $22,000.00.

I told Dave to accept the offer immediately; it was a bargain.

Dave told the lawyer he would pay $7,000.00 for the building and not a penny more.

The lawyer, who obviously knew the value of the building, said the price of the building was now $14,000.00. and I could hear him hang up the phone on Dave.

Dave was so mad his face turned pure red.

I asked Dave if he was crazy, I told him that he should call the lawyer back and apologize and he should accept the $14,000.00 offer it was a bargain.

I knew Dave was stupid but I thought this time he would listen to me.

Dave then called the attorney back and he said that he had reconsidered and would take the building for $10,000.00.

The lawyer by now was very mad and he said the price was now $20,000.00, take it or leave it.

Dave was mad as hell and slammed the phone down.

Three weeks later we received a letter stating that the building had been sold and API had 30 days to leave. I don’t think I ever saw a bigger nitwit than Dave.

Dave never acted as if he had never done anything wrong. The next day he just started to look for another building.

Eventually Dave did find us another building to rent. It was 5000 square feet and had 3 bays.

It was located at 4500 NW 36 Ave, and it cost us $10,0000.00 just to move.

During the entire move Dave remained bitter, he thought he would get back at the owner of our old building by not cleaning up after we left the old building. I begged him to let me clean the building interior but he felt he was getting back at the owner.

Many months later we were sued by the owner for not cleaning the building, and we lost the suite.

Dave met a clutch rebuilder named Wayne Henson, and Dave made a deal to split the profits

Wayne was a nice Alabama country boy, and he made sure there never any profits. Dave eventually sold Wayne the clutch dept.

The third bay was rented by a lamp manufacturing company who eventually moved to a larger location, API then took over the entire building.

Don Chait, Dave’s son, kept up his end calling on customers, I kept up my end running our rebuilding operation, and Dave kept up his end by arguing with me and customers.

One day in 1970, Don was on the road and Dave and Sadie came to see me.

They both said Dave wasn’t feeling well and Sadie was taking him to Hialeah Hospital.

Dave looked terrible so I wished him good luck and they both left.

The next day the hospital told Sadie to take Dave’s clothes home, they said Dave had died of a massive heart attack, Dave was 63 years old.

Now Don and I had to decide what to do with API.