The Lou and the Banana Boat Story

1189 Words* This is a true story told to me in 1962 by my friend Lou “Red” Gladstein.

I was in Tampa Florida, and I was planning on changing my airline ticket to go to Miami and see my mother.

My Mom was leasing a small 24 room hotel on Miami beach.

In my hotel room, I was bored with the hotel’s TV programs so I decided to give my friend Lou Gladstein a call.

At the time, Lou was operating a used car lot on West Main Street in Stamford Connecticut.

When I reached Lou, I told him I was in Tampa and going to fly to Miami the next day.

Lou said, stay in Tampa, I was just coming to Tampa myself, I have some things to check up on there.

He said, “Tell me where your hotel is, and I will see you in 24 hours”.

I said, that’s impossible, Stamford to Tampa takes more than 24 hours.

Lou replied you just wait I’ll be there.

After about 25 hours had past, I told the front desk clerk that I was expecting someone.

He said, if it’s a Mr. Gladstein he is in room 222.

When Lou woke up, we both checked out of the hotel together.

Lou said he wanted to go to the Tampa commercial docks to check on a ship, after that he said, we could drive to Miami where he knew my mother was leasing the hotel.

Lou said he needed to talk to his attorney in Miami.

When we reached the Tampa docks Lou started looking for a ship, he said, he didn’t know the ships name.

Lou said it was a refrigerated ship and he would recognize it when he saw it.

Sure enough the last ship unloading was named “Johnny Boy”, it was the ship Lou was looking for.

Lou parked the car and he just sat there staring at it.

I got out of the car to see what the cargo was.

As they lowered a pallet to the ground, the boxes said, “Argentinian dried beef”.

I got back in the car, and Lou said he had seen enough, and we could head for Miami now.

I was curious as hell, and I asked Lou what it was all about.

On our drive across Florida to Miami, Lou told me the following story, and what a story it was.

Several years ago, Lou said that he was in a meeting with his insurance company when they mentioned a refrigerated ship that they insured that was in financial trouble because the owner had passed away.

Lou looked into it, but he said the money required to buy the ship was way more than what Lou could afford.

Lou had always considered getting into the Banana business.

He knew that green Bananas could be bought cheap in Panama and Costa Rica and finding a buyer in Miami was easy.

Having a refrigerated ship would be ideal, the bananas wouldn’t ripen on the voyage to Miami.

Lou had once done some business with a shipping company in New York, so he thought about talking to them about it.

But Lou was concerned that once he spoke to them and gave them his idea, they didn’t need him, they would do the banana business themselves.

He went to see them anyway, and they liked his idea.

They agreed to go in partners with Lou and buy the ship, they would provide the captain and crew, and they would handle all the paperwork involved.

Lou would be financially responsible for his share of the ship; he would be responsible for buying the bananas and selling them in Miami.

They signed the deal and Lou flew to Panama to arrange for a shipload of Bananas.

Finding a broker with bananas willing to sell for cash was easy.

The first wholesaler he approached in Miami agreed to take the entire lot.

Lou called his partners in New York with the details and they told him the ship was now registered and a captain and crew had been obtained.

The ship had been registered in Liberia; the Captain was from Guiana.

The ship was fueled up and sent to Panama.

About two weeks later Lou received a call from his partners in New York.

The ship was in Miami, but there was a problem, the Captain had called to tell them the refrigeration on the ship was broken and the entire cargo of bananas had ripened.

Lou immediately flew to Miami.

Once in Miami, Lou boarded the ship and met the captain who he didn’t like. Lou said he could smell the liquor on the captain’s breath.

According to Lou his options were few, he would have to pay the stevedores to unload the ship in Miami, and he would then have to pay a trucking company to haul tons and tons of bananas to the dump.

All of this would cost a small fortune.

Lou weighed his options and with out consulting his partners he ordered the captain to take the ship out to sea.

When they were 20 or 30 miles out, Lou ordered the ships crew to dump the ripe Bananas into the ocean.

The Captain and the crew refused.

Lou didn’t tell me everything that happened, there was obviously a big fight and the Bananas were illegally dumped into the ocean.

Lou then questioned the Engineer, as to why the refrigeration had quit?

He said the engineer spoke little English and he got no satisfactory explanation from him.

Lou found a circuit breaker for the refrigeration compressor had tripped. He reset it and the refrigeration started right up. Why the engineer had not done this, he didn’t know.

Lou said his only option to recover some of his costs was to return to Panama and get another load of bananas, but this time Lou would remain aboard the ship himself to make sure the refrigeration was always working.

Lou’s cabin was right next to the Captains, and that night he could hear what sounded like a party going on.

He checked below deck and the refrigeration was working.

Lou tried to sleep but the noise from the partying in the Captains cabin was too much noise.

Lou took a water glass and put it to the cabin wall to listen what they were saying.

He heard the Captain say, “Wait until later tonight I will kill that Red headed bastard”.

Lou said he didn’t know what to do, it was now about 2 AM in the morning.

He went back down below deck, he was looking for the Engineers cabin, as he hoped the engineer might have a gun on board.

This time, he found the ships refrigeration circuit breaker was off, and the Engineer was probably in the Captains cabin drinking.

Lou restarted the compressor, and he picked up a three-foot length of pipe.

He said, the Captain and most of the crew members were now very drunk, he just walked into the Captains cabin and struck the Captain on the head with the piece of pipe.

One of the crew members ran out of the cabin and radioed the Coast Guard.

They arrived in the morning and arrested Lou.

I waited for Lou to tell me, what had happened between him and the Coast Guard, but he didn’t tell me.

But he said he received no help from the partners in New York, and because of it, he lost his share of the ship.

Lou said his New York partners had conspired against him and the ship was eventually auctioned off on the Miami Court House steps, and they bought it for nearly nothing, Lou was left out of the picture.

Lou said, his former partners had now renamed the ship “Johnny Boy”.

That was the reason we went to the Tampa port, to confirm it.

Once we were in Miami Lou invited me to go to his attorney’s office with him, I decided not to go, so I never learned the outcome.