Submarine 1

“I always carried at least 10 grand in my pocket, see.  If somebody held me up on the street the guy’d walk away with 10 grand.  I always had to pay people for something.  In the rag business I didn’t walk into the flea market and sell shirt hoping to make 2 dollars a shirt.  I always made money when I bought.  I walked into the factory.

“You see the guy loading the shirts onto my truck.  That wasn’t his job.  Everybody had their hand out.  They always loved it when Sammy walked in because I gave money to everybody; Ten, twenty, fifty dollars.  I gave money to everybody and I bought everything they had if I liked it.  I bought sportswear.  I sold to kids and I sold to women.”

“A guy like you, see; you might have a wife, two kids, a mistress and a girlfriend, a couple of horses.  Your wife is living the good life.  She’s got everything she wants.  The house, the cars, the jewelry, all the clothes.  Both kids are in private school  The mistress.  She’s got a nice apartment, a fur coat, a piano.  She’s ready to go to bed every time you knock on the door.  The girlfriend, she’s young, she’s working and it’s exciting for both of you because a little gift means something to her.  Everything’s great but the horses are running you down a bit so you need to save money.  You come to a guy that’s going to give you dresses and clothes for a dollar or two dollars a piece.  Name brand and not any knock off bullshit.

“You see this shirt?  It cost 2 dollars and I got it at Dillards.  I used to by 20 dozen of these things for 25 cents a piece.”  Sammy turned into an abacus that talked at this point.  He could take 20 dozen, and 200 dozen and do insane mathematical calculations multiplying a dollar seventy 6000 times adding 4 dollars and giving me his profit and tell me that’s what he made in one or two days in 1969.

“I was in the flea market and I had this gorgeous broad standing there naked in front of everybody.”

“She didn’t care?”

“No.  She wanted to make sure it fit!  What are you wearing?”

“I don’t know, Nordstrom.”

“What that shirt cost you, 85 dollars?”

“150.”

“Nice shirt.  I’d get that shirt for seventy-five cents and sell 20 dozen of them for 25 dollars.  The guys couldn’t ever believe where I got my stuff but I never handled hot merchandise.  Never!”

“I used to do business with these two Jewish guys.”

“You’re Jewish.”

“I’m like you, I’m a sinner, I observe just because of tradition, these guys were the real Jews.  You know, the hat and the beards hanging down the sides of their heads.  They gave me credit because I always paid and they knew my deals were “kosher” at least that’s what they always told me.

“Well anyway, nobody could get credit from these guys and they ran a big inventory and they were brothers and the one brother who handled the inventory, he couldn’t count.  He one time tried to give me 400 dozen and I only was being charged for three.  I told the guy loading to bill me for 4 and told the brother and he said, “What do I care, Sam, you always pay!””. 

“I’ll tell you how I got access to him.  I took him out to lunch and I had this girl, beautiful broad, Swedish.  Her skin was as white as your shirt.  When she walked through a hotel or a restaurant the whole place just stopped.  I tell you she didn’t even where a bra or nothing and this was a long time ago!

“Well, we went to lunch and during lunch she was all over him and then she took him upstairs to the hotel and did she BALL HIM!  Fifty dollars was all it used to cost back then.  It went up to a hundred and a hundred fifty soon after but when he came downstairs he said that I was kosher.

“See.  You can’t do business like that now.  Not these days.  Not the way that you do business.”

“No, you’re right, Sammy.  Not that way anyway.  I give money out all the time but I can’t really expect that much in return.”