The Transmission Smuggling Story

The Transmission Smuggling Story and The Canadian Stink Bombs

1959

A true story

Written 01/2010 * 1,740 Words

#167 By Howard Yasgar

In 1957 my cousin Allen Nelson and I started driving from New Haven Connecticut to Montreal Canada on a regular basis.

Allen had relatives there from his father’s side of the family, living in Montreal.

At the time Allen and I were both working part-time at the Gulf gas station located on Whalley Ave and Harrison Street in Westville Connecticut.

My cousin Allen and I both enjoyed working on cars, so when we were not in school or not working at the station, you could usually find us in my backyard working on our cars.

One day Allen told me about his relatives living in Montreal and he wanted to go visit them.

It sounded exotic, so the both of us then made the trip driving 8 hours to Montreal, and I must admit that trip to Canada became a life changing experience for me.

Fortunately, my dad had just bought a 1955 Oldsmobile, so naturally I asked him to lend us his car to make the trip to Canada.

We found that driving from New Haven into Canada was interesting because we had to go through Canadian Customs and swear we weren’t smuggling anything. Then you had to do the same thing with U.S. Customs when you returned to the United States.

Because we weren’t smuggling anything, we thought going through all the Customs nonsense was just a big joke even though we had heard from friends that Customs could confiscate your car and put you in jail if they caught you smuggling anything.

Once we were in Canada, everything became a cultural shock for both of us.

They served French fries with vinegar, not ketchup, and many of the people we spoke to didn’t speak English, they spoke French, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that U.S. money was worth 25% more in Canada, which meant we could buy more beer.

When we met Allen’s cousins, there was his uncle and aunt and their four kids. The oldest kid was Billy and his sister Joyce who were both about our age and there was Gloria and Lorraine who were both a bit younger.

They were all wonderful people, and they always made room for us to stay in their home in Montreal North.

In 1957 the hot rod craze was in full swing throughout the United States, and my cousin Allen and I were not immune to it.

I had just started attending New Haven State Teachers College and I was driving my father’s 1955 Oldsmobile to and from school.

One day my dad said he was getting tired of me always using his car, so he went out and bought me a 1959 Chevrolet so I could have reliable transportation for college.

Allen and I started driving to Montreal about once a month.

I must admit that after meeting my cousin Allen’s cousin Joyce, she was the attraction for me making the trip.

Now back in 1957 and 1958, if you were building a Hot Rod, you needed a strong heavy duty three

speed transmission.

All hot rods with souped up engines needed a transmission that would hold up under the strain of the higher horsepower.

So, it was determined by the hot rod professionals that a three-speed transmission used in the old 1939 to 1941 Cadillacs would do the job perfectly.

So, suddenly everyone in America started going to junk yards and buying up all these old Cadillac transmissions.

It wasn’t long before the price of a used transmission was over $150.00 each, and that was only if you could find one.

$150.00 back then in 1959 was probably equal to $1500.00 or more today.

So, by 1959, anyone looking for a used old Cadillac transmission in a junk yard anywhere in the United States became an impossibility.

One day Allen and I were talking about it, and Allen suggested that probably no one was looking for these old transmissions in Canada, and if we looked there, we could probably find some.

We both thought we could drive around Montreal going to all the small junk yards and probably buy transmissions for about $20.00 each.

I told my cousin Allen that I thought it was a really good idea.

It was then that I got to thinking about how to bring a used Cadillac transmission back over the border into the United States. The Canadian and U.S. Customs were very strict about that kind of stuff. And it would probably require a lot of paperwork.

I thought long and hard on the subject, and finally I came up with an idea.

If we put a couple of junk transmissions in the trunk of my car, then, when we entered Canada, we could declare them as used transmissions. Then, when we were in Canada, we could throw them into the woods and replace them with two good used Cadillac transmissions that we would buy from the junkyards in Montreal.

Then when we returned to the States, we could declare to U.S. Customs that they were all the same parts and they wouldn’t charge us any duty, I thought it was a great idea.

The next time we headed for Montreal, it was in my new 1959 Chevrolet, and we had two old broken, junk transmissions in the trunk of the car.

In the interim, my cousin Allen had studied some French and had mastered an entire paragraph.

He had memorized how to ask a French speaking junk yard owner, if they had any 1939 to 1941 Cadillac transmissions, and that we buy them for twenty dollars. Each.

So now on our next trip to Montreal, we drove around the entire island stopping in every small backyard junk yard.

Some of the little junk yards had cars in them that were so old, trees were growing through them.

We would park in front of an old farmhouse, and Allen would knock on the door.

Then usually an Elderly French speaking husband or wife would answer the door and Allen would go into his prepared monolog in French.

I’m sure that listening to Allen speak French was so humorous that I the people didn’t know if they should laugh or cry, but they all listened to him, and we did find and buy two Cadilac transmissions.

We then threw the two old junk transmissions into the woods, and replaced them with the two used Cadillac transmissions we had bought.

Everything went as planned without a hitch, so we knew our smuggling system worked perfectly.

When it was time to make our next monthly trip back up to Montreal, I needed a junk transmission to put in the car’s trunk, but I didn’t have one

All we had was a beat up 1953 Buick differential, that someone had thrown in the trash, so we put it in the car’s trunk to show Canadian Customs.

At Canadian Customs, they made me open my trunk, and the young customs officer asked me what the hell the awful burnt and dented piece of junk was?

I said it’s a used transmission; he scrunched up his face and looked at me like I was some kind of nut, he knew it didn’t look like a transmission, but the part was so burned, dirty and greasy he didn’t even want to touch it.

Then he took me inside the Customs building and he had me fill out all kinds of papers.

I got very nervous as I thought he was going to confiscate my car.

I knew that he knew something was wrong, but he didn’t know exactly what.

He must have wondered what in hell we were up to, bringing a dirty piece of junk like that into Canada?

Then he hesitatingly closed my trunk and told us to move on.

I admit both Allen and I were more than a little shook up over the inspection, and as we left Customs, we somehow ended up heading to Montreal on a different road than we normally took.

It was late in the afternoon as we entered a small town, there was a big billboard, it said, Kupferberg Transmission Rebuilding, straight ahead.

We both thought it must have been an omen from God, possibly Kupferberg had the old 1939 Cadillac transmissions we wanted.

By the time we reached the Kupferberg Transmission Company, all the employees had already gone home, and the only person still there was Mr. Kupferberg himself.

We asked him if he had any 1939 Cadillac transmissions?

Mr. Kupferberg was about fifty years old and spoke with a heavy German accent, he said he couldn’t believe we two young American kids were looking for old transmissions.

He said he had never seen kids our age that knew anything about old transmissions.

Kupferberg was very curious, and he asked us how we smuggled the transmissions back into the United States.

I told him the whole story of how we brought junk parts in and smuggled the transmissions out.

Kupferberg said, “What kind of junk parts do you have in your car now”. I told him we had a beat up 1953 Buick differential.

His facial features changed, and he said let me see it.

I opened the trunk and there was the burned and banged up 1953 Buick differential sitting there.

Mr. Kupferberg rolled the dirty differential over and there were tears in his eyes, he was almost crying, and he said, “How much do you want for it. I have a customer that needs one right now and I don’t have one.”

I said, Mr. Kupferberg, you can have it in trade for a 1939 to 1941 used Cadilac transmission.

He couldn’t believe it, and he picked up the dirty differential like it was a baby and he carried it into his store.

From the ceiling were hanging hundreds of greasy burlap bags, and each had a used differential in it.

Kupferberg said he was the biggest rebuilder of U.S. differentials in Canada. He said he bought used transmissions and differentials in the United States, and he personally smuggled them into Canada by the truckload. Kupferberg was so proud of his business, he took the time to show us his entire transmission and differential rebuilding shop. It appears he now felt we were fellow smugglers.

While my cousin Allen and I were in Montreal, we stopped at a magic and trick shop just off Saint Catherine Street, the store sold all sorts of tricks and magic items.

I bought a box of stink bombs; they were small glass vials of liquid that when they were broken, they gave off a horrible stink like a fart.

On our way home we stopped at the Canadian customs office where the inspector gave us the hard time about bringing the 1953 Buick differential into Canada.

We asked if we could use their restroom, and they said yes.

Once we were inside the customs building, we taped with band aids a fart bomb in the corner of every door, then we left. Our transmission smuggling days were over.