The Haiti Generator Repair Story

1971

A True Story

Written 12/20/2013* 729 Words*

By Howard Yasgar

In the 1970’s I had a company called Rebuilders Supply located in Miami Florida.

Because of our location in South Florida, we did quite a bit of business with customers in Central and South America as well as the Caribbean.

Many of our foreign customers would stop by to see us when they came to Miami,

and that’s how I met Hermon Francois from Haiti.

Herman would come to Miami twice a year and make the rounds of auto wrecking yards. He bought all their “ used ” alternators and starters.

Herman was a sharp operator; he would ship everything to Haiti as scrap metal.

Once the units were in Haiti he washed, painted and tested them, and sold them as rebuilt.

In 1971 I was on a sales trip to Port Au Prince Haiti along with one of my good friends Paul Sherlock, Paul was also one of my main used core suppliers in Miami.

We happened to be in Haiti on the day when the dictator Papa Doc Duvalier was holding a phony election to appoint his son Jean Claude Duvalier as his successor.

Whenever I was in Haiti, I had a regular cab driver named Toni Richmond, Toni drove a nice 1956 Dodge sedan, it was like new.

On the day of the phony election, the city of Port Au Prince was loaded with hundreds of peasants all being brought in from distant villages.

Our driver Toni was very excited and he drove us right up to the palace, he did it by blowing his horn, and everyone jumped out of the way thinking we were dignitaries.

After the ceremony was over, Toni started his Dodge up, and right away I smelled rubber burning.

Sure enough, the car’s generator was frozen solid and the fanbelt had burned.

Not to worry, Toni, said he had a friend with an electrical repair shop right up the street.

When we arrived at the repair shop, it wasn’t exactly a shop, it was an alley between two buildings with a wooden work bench close to the street.

There were two fellows behind the bench, both sound asleep.

Tony woke them up, and explained our problem.

Paul and I got out of the car, we were curious to see what was going to happen as we both were in the starter generator business ourselves in Miami.

On the bench was a carpenters hammer with one claw missing, a big screwdriver with a broken yellow plastic handle, a pair of rusty pliers and a 10 inch long knife also with a broken handle.

Paul and I assumed they would simply change the generator, so we took a walk up the street.

When we came back, the generator was off, and one of the fellows had taken the armature somewhere.

He returned with the generator all apart, and a frozen and burned out 6203 ball bearing in his hand.

The armature was completely burned to a crisp, and the bearing he had was blue and missing some of its parts.

Paul and I assumed they would soon have a good used armature and a new bearing.

But we were in for a surprise.

They started removing the copper wire from the armature with the knife.

I asked Toni what the hell they were doing. He said they were going to rewind the armature.

I asked Toni where they would get the new wire, and he showed me an old electric motor they had under the work bench; they were going to take the wire out of it.

That’s when another young boy showed up with a ball bearing that was almost as bad as the one they took out.

I told Toni to hold up, what they were attempting was impossible, I had a better idea.

I would go to see my friend Herman Francois and get a good used generator.

Herman’s store was loaded with Chrysler product generators, but he wouldn’t sell me one.

He said he would have to sell it to me too cheap and once my cab driver Toni found out how cheap I bought it, he would tell everyone in Haiti, and Herman would never be able to sell one again at his regular price.

I made a deal with Herman, I said, give me a generator for free, I will give you 10 of them the next time you are in Miami.

We walked all the way back to Toni’s car taking turns carrying the used generator.

When we got there the hood was shut and the car was running.

Paul and I just had to see what these guys had done.

They had somehow bolted on a Ford generator, on the 6-cylinder Chrysler engine, and between the engine block and the generator, to keep the fanbelt tension was a big rock.