The Making Money Story

1955

A true story of how I outsmarted a cigarette machine

Written 3/3/2014and rewritten 02/2016 * 1,131 Words

#109 By Howard Yasgar

Back in 1955, I had just received my driver’s license, I was 16 and I thought I was the luckiest guy in the whole world.

But I had no money.

I was living in the suburb of New Haven Connecticut called Westville, and I was going to Hillhouse high school in New Haven.

My cousin Allen, who was the son of my mom’s sister Adele, was about a year younger than I was.

One day Allen told me he had found a job at a local gas station, he said that they needed more part time help.

Since I had just gotten my license and I had just purchased a green 1940 Ford convertible, what could be better than a part-time job in a gas station.

The gas station was owned by Gulf Oil Company and located on the corner of Whalley Ave and Emerson Street in Westville. It was just about 10 blocks from my home.

At the time, the gas station was being managed by a fellow named Tony Navarro, Tony was a Korean War veteran, who had been at the battle of the Chosin Reservoir in

Korea, and he told us a terrible story.

Tony said he was returning from a patrol, and he watched from a hilltop as the North Korean soldiers climbed into the Red Cross trucks and killed every one of his buddies, and Tony was never quite the same after seeing that.

When I applied for the job, Tony said he needed me to help him pump gas and do odd jobs at the station.

Those were the days when attendants washed everyone’s car windows and checked your water, oil, and air in your tires.

Tony’s Whalley Avenue Gulf gas station had one desk office and two drive in bays.

The first bay had an air-operated lift so we could raise cars and change the oil or grease them.

The second bay had a workbench with a vice on it.

There was a manual tire changing machine fastened to the floor between the two bays, other than that, the second bay was usually used to do wash and wax jobs.

The office had a wood chair, a metal desk and a cigarette machine.

Tony’s Gulf station had two out-door gas pumps.

One pump was for high test gasoline, and one pump was for regular. which sold for about 18 cents a gallon at the time.

The outdoor concrete island with its two gas pumps also had a free air pump.

The gas station had a long hose that ran out to the island and when a car ran over it, it rang a bell so we knew there was a customer out there.

Other than that, there wasn’t a damn thing to do but sit in the office with your feet up on the metal desk. Tony, liked to do that a lot.

Some days half a dozen people would come by and not buy anything.

Tony would get upset, he called them “SWIA” customers, short for Shithouse, Water, Information and Air customers.

Usually there was so little for us to do, my only entertainment was watching all the neighborhood kids come in and blow out their bicycle tires.

Our gas station’s free air was just too powerful for a bike, and I always yelled for them to be careful but they never listened and I waited to hear the big bang noise when their tire blew out.

The station manager, Tony, always liked to take off to do things whenever my cousin Allen or I were there, that’s when we became the boss, and sat in Tony’s chair and put our feet up on the desk just like he did.

As I sat there, the cigarette machine stared at me from its position against the wall.

There was a row of about 8 brands of cigarettes in the machine and a push slot for putting money, and a place to receive change.

A pack of cigarettes was .25 cents. You put in a quarter or two dimes and a nickel, or three dimes, then you pulled a knob under the brand you wanted.

The cigarette machine was smart as it could also give you change.

Sometimes people came walking up Whalley Avenue and would come in and just ask me to make change for them so they could buy cigarettes. I watched carefully as the

cigarette machine did its job.

I smoked, and it was very convenient to have the machine right there in the office, but I usually didn’t have 25 cents to buy cigarettes.

One quiet day, as I sat at Tony’s desk, I took out the money box, and I was counting

the money.

The money box had a tray in it for small change, and I noticed that a silver dime was slightly smaller than a copper penny, how interesting.

I had a pocket full of pennies so I borrowed a dime from the box and went out to the work bench in the shop.

I put the dime tightly against the penny and locked them firmly in the benches vice, then I took down our file that was hanging on the wall, and I proceeded to file the copper penny down until it was the size of the dime.

As soon as I had three copper pennies filed down, I put them into the cigarette machine, pulled the handle and out came a pack of Camels and 5 cents change.

I really found a way of really making money, and getting cigarettes also. I highly suspected that what I was doing was illegal, but I wondered why no one else thought of this way of making money.

I spent the rest of the afternoon filing down all my pennies, then I gave all my friends that came by free packs of cigarettes.

Now it wasn’t easy filing down all those pennies, and I started sweating, but I always knew that making money was never easy.

By evening I had gotten about 6 packs of cigarettes of which I kept one, this was really making money.

The next day, the cigarette salesman came and opened the machine. His job was to collect the money and re fill the machine with cigarettes.

I watched his face as he dumped out all the money including my filed- down pennies into his hand.

He looked at me and the pack of cigarettes I had on the desk.

Do you know anything about this he asked ?

Absolutely not, I replied.

I followed him out to the work bench where he examined all the copper filings that were still on the vice and all over the floor.

I think at that point I knew the jig was up and my money-making days were over.