Prologue

My Childhood & Early Years

When I decided to write my life story, I purposely left off everything between birth and when I started working in the world of business. Now I'm going to fill you in on what happened from the time I was born until the time I was working and then I will start talking about everything after I started working in Grand Junction.

I was born December 28, 1941 in Brooklyn, NY right after the start of World War 2. From that day forward my life had numerous adventures. Born in Brooklyn, I was a city slicker; however, because of the polio epidemic that took place every year, my parents—as well as numerous other parents with children of my generation—rented bungalows in the Catskill Mountains. I spent the first 14 years of my life every summer for three months in the Catskill mountains, so I was also a country towhead.

Growing up in the city, I was first watching the years you learned about city life; growing up every summer in the Catskills I learned about life in the country. City life to me was a drag. Yes, I went to school and yes, I played ball. I wasn’t the best student, and I was not the best ball player. I was pretty mediocre as a student and equally as mediocre as a ballplayer. However, my athleticism came to me as a skier. At the age of 18 I learned to ski, and it was glorious because I had freedom. I was on those boards and nobody bothered me and it was just like when I was up in the Catskills. Once I walked out of my bungalow I went into the bush and nobody bothered me and so for those years that I was in the Catskills it was a glorious time.

I made many trips to Colorado to ski, hence the reason I eventually relocated here. I did get to be a hot shot skier as a result, I just loved skiing mogul fields. If I played ball as well as I skied, I would have been chosen for more teams.

My folks rented bungalows in Ellenville NY, Loch Sheldrake NY, Monticello NY, Poughkeepsie NY, and maybe another city, but I can't remember. In the 40s and 50s traveling from New York City to any of these towns took about two hours to get to. Today, all of these towns are maybe an hour out, as far as I know they are bedroom towns for New York City. I could wander through the trees with my trusty BB gun hunting for snakes and frogs. I never shot squirrels, I never shot birds. I also did a lot of fishing, and my primary catch was sunfish, about the size of silver dollars. Made my mother cook them. My fishing rod was a long straight thin tree I cut down. My father then bought me a real rod and reel and I never caught a fish again, at least until I lived on my boat and later trout fishing here in Colorado.

Another thing I learned was picking blue berries when they came into season. But you had to be careful since a bear could be on the other side of the bush. Blueberry bushes are prolific in the Catskills. My mother who never baked, baked a blueberry pie.

I left the bungalow at 7:30 in the morning and didn't return until dinner time at about 5, I was not devoured by my mother trying to find me the way she was always wanting to keep in touch with me in the city. It was my first experience of freedom, and I was from the age of 6 to 14 free until we stopped going to the Catskills.

I did not feel that same freedom until I started skiing. Once I was skiing it was me the individual and the mountain and I felt free.

Years later when I learned how to sail, when I bought a boat I started experiencing that same freedom.

Thinking back about those years summering in the Catskills brings a smile to my face, They, are fond memories. I remember more about my time in the mountains during those years than I do about my years in the city going to school.

In retrospect my love of freedom developed when I was in the Catskill mountains not being bothered by anybody. Being on skis and on my boat was exactly the same thing “freedom.” That love of freedom has carried over into the way I run my business, I do what I want to do and there's no changing that and I feel free 100% of the time to do just that.

When I was 15 my parents bought a house so the summers away came to an end. I was stuck living in the summer in the city. Then relief, my brother was a farming student and was working on a farm. We knew the farmer and his family. They trusted my brother to run the farm when they took a three-week vacation, so my parents took my sister and me to stay on the farm. I was back in the Catskills outside of Ellenville, an area I was familiar with. So, I helped my brother on this chicken farm of 8000 birds.

My job was to feed them and collect eggs. About 5/6000 I could feed with an electrical system the rest by hand loading troughs. Then I would collect 5000 to 7000 eggs. Sometimes a hen would want to sit on then and I had to pull her off. I got pretty good at grabbing her head behind the beak and throwing her out before she could use her claws on my fore arms.

After collecting the eggs, we candled them to get the double yoke’s and then sorted them by size. they were then packaged and shipped to a pharmaceutical company making polio vaccine. These were unfertile eggs. We also sold them to the families staying in the bungalow colonies we used to stay at.

When we came home there wasn’t much summer left so I for the first time went to the beach, something I never did much in years past. The following summer after my sophomore year in high school I spent the whole summer on the beach in Brighton Beach, bay 3 the gathering place for the high school kids.

After my junior year ended again, I went to the beach, but it became boring, so I got lucky and got a job at Mrs. Stahl’s Knishes. The pay was $1.00 per hour, but at 16 that was a lot of money, I averaged $35.00 a week. Talking about freedom, I never had to ask my folks for money. I could now afford to buy my own clothes as well as doing what I wanted to do. I worked there not only all summer but during my senior year and was the envy of many guys because I was independently wealthy so to speak.

Mrs.Stahls was a famous knish bakery of sorts. To this day if you go on the internet and search for her, you will be able to buy some of her knishes made by some company in Brooklyn or New Jersey that sells them. You will also see the store where I worked.

I cannot stress enough how because I was earning money, I became not only free but independent. After graduation for the next year, I sold photography services, a dead-end job, for a few months worked at an insurance company also a dead-end job and finally a textile company where I could earn commissions, so earnings were up to me. You can read what followed in the first chapter of “my business life”.

What follows will be my life and how it dramatically changed on Sunday May 7, 2019. The sequence of events is lengthy and detailed so it will probably consume more than one chapter, I will see.