“Hallo, Michael, Moeller hier – wie geht es Ihnen?”
“Thank you, Herr Moeller, just fine,” I responded laconically.
“We now have another opening in our customs brokerage department. Might you be interested?”
“I’d like to discuss it with you, sure.”
Anything sounded better than yellow and white cards in a giant green tub. I wondered what my boss, Herr Reiner, would say about being lured away. After all, his firm was Moeller’s customer. Moeller appeared to have read my thoughts.
“Good. I have talked to Herr Reiner, he’s o.k. with it.”
I was hardly surprised that Moeller was covering his ass with the manager of one of his largest customers before waving the straw.
A week later, I started as the Customs department’s gofer, running documents up to the Customs House on Front and King and taking the stamped papers back to the office near Pier 9.
Two years later I was heading up the small department and others were doing the running. It was then Moeller called me to his office again.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work for Standard Wire & Cable. Both on the forwarding and customs side of the business. You’re pretty familiar with their business.”
“Yes, Sir, I think I am.”
“Now Karl Fuchs, the owner, has asked me, whether I know of someone, who could start an operation for him in the West. Probably based in Winnipeg, handling all sales west from there. Most of the product would be shipped from the plant in Cobourg. But the person would also manage some local inventory.”
“Sounds like a pretty big job.”
“Yes, it is, but though I hate losing you, I think you are up to it, and deserve a crack at it.”
I thought of hundreds of equal length straws filling Moeller’s desk drawers and smiled.
“Do I take that as an expression of interest, Michael?”
“Yes, I would like to talk to Mr. Fuchs about it.”
Chapter 6
Winnipeg, April 1963
A few weeks later, I arrived in Winnipeg and rented a basement apartment in a sprawling Georgian house on the banks of the Red River. The owners, the Krazkovksy family had come from the Ukraine during the early fifties, worked hard and saved even harder. They were caring people. Their oldest child, Alan, was a couple of years younger and we hit it off well.
I rented warehouse space in the old Johnson terminal building near the railway shunt yards. The rental package included a modest office in the same building with ancient heavy furniture, creaky floor boards and perpetually dusty windows. Seventy hour work weeks left little time for anything else. Karl was a tough task master, but there was something else about him, something that began to concern me. It started when the giant MacLeod hardware chain, the first big customer after months of solicitation, complained about the shipment of garden hose they had received from the East. The cardboard label, affixed to the coiled hose with twist ties, clearly stated the length as fifty feet. After getting some consumer complaints, MacLeods had done some random checks and come up with lengths anywhere from forty-seven and a half to forty-nine feet. Then I heard from Marshall’s, MacLeod’s main competitor, about chain link fence that was supposed to have been twelve gauge thick, but was thinner at only thirteen.
I picked Karl up at the airport, who had flown in to face the music. Given the circumstances, it was strange to see him brimming with confidence and not at all concerned with the eventual outcome.
“Leave it to me, boy. Just leave it to me. You will keep your customers.”
He spoke fast with a heavy German accent.
The ‘boy’ and ‘you will’ sounded like bellowed German army commands. Karl had been one of the star ‘Fallschirmjaegers’, an elite troop of parachute specialists. He had led his men in the first airborne infantry assault over Crete.
A couple of hours later, we were facing a stern looking panel of MacLeod managers licking their chops for ‘make-good’ money to compensate for the product deficiencies. To my utter disbelief, Karl proceeded to lecture the group – damned, my best customer – on the vagaries of raw material suppliers and crooked people on the production line. His production manager had been bribed by one of his competitors – Karl wouldn’t say who – to make and ship faulty product so as to ruin him. Him, of all people, the exemplary model of integrity, discipline and bravery as former ‘Fallschirmjaeger’. Before anyone could intervene, and right in front of his bewildered audience, Karl jumped on top of the meeting room table, from where he dropped himself onto the mercifully carpeted floor. Though well into his forties, his agile body executed a flawless parachute roll swinging right back onto his feet. The room was full of half-opened jaws, mine included.
“And, of course, you shall have a full refund for your trouble. And to show my gratitude to you, this line of product shall now be offered exclusively to your company.”
If the MacLeod group had a script they were going to read him, it had long vanished. Less than an hour after our arrival, Karl shook hands with everyone and we were out the door with a replacement order. The drama at Marshall’s office over the thinner fence played out like a well rehearsed theatre play with solid actors, exactly like the day before at MacLeods. Everyone knew their lines. Karl certainly knew his. But unlike theatre, these audiences would never wish to see the play a second time.
I was torn what to do about the situation. I couldn’t control things at the plant back East, only my own life. So I started working a bit less and playing a little more.
And a young German woman named Heike entered my life. I had gone to one of the Saturday night carnival festivities at the German-Canadian Club near the Canadian Pacific railway terminal on the North Side of the city. Not having taken time until then to explore the city’s night life it seemed like the easiest thing to do. Some people were in customes, my imagination had not made it past executive grey flannel. I had asked her to dance repeatedly and she had accepted willingly. At the conclusion of the evening, I dropped her off at her parent’s house on Oak St., in the upscale River Heights area of the city.
Shortly after meeting Heike, I decided it was time for an emotional farewell from my Ukrainian landlord. A friend had vacated a small one-bedroom on the ground floor of an older, but attractive building close to the downtown core. The fact that all of the walls, even the ceiling were painted pitch black added a peculiar attraction to the place.
Our first night together at the place consisted of Vermouth and Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken, lots of candles and strange shadows bouncing off the walls. The lovemaking had held emotions in reserve. I surmised that we both probably had wondered what was expected of us given the unusual setting. I told her so the following morning.
Heike laughed and poked gently into my rib cage.
“Serves you right and yes – I was feeling more than just a bit strange here last night.”
“I only have three months left on my friends’ lease. Perhaps this was an experiment. I’m beginning to see why he moved out.”
A sly smile was curling her lips.
“Thank God, there is hope.”
“I’ll even promise to wear a costume next time we go to a masquerade ball.”
“Things are looking up – what are you going to be?”