Part 3 1/2, life lessons, business lessons, the gun store is still in the future.

One of my best deals was out next to the Salton sea. I put ads in the local recycler paper, like the Thrifty Nickle. It would say wanted, looking for a WW2 jeep and or jeep parts. I would receive a call from people saying they had this part or Jeep. I would take photos of them, and if I did not have the cash to buy them, I would ask them if they were willing to hold the items for a month or so until I could get the money together. The sellers never had an issue because they were not advertising the parts; they called me to help me. I would go home with or without the Jeep or parts, post the photos on eBay, and sell them. Once paid, I would go back and buy the item if I had left it there. It was almost free money. Back to the deal in the Salton Sea, A guy called me to let me know he had an old willie jeep. I drove out there with Adam to take a look. We went to his house on the lake shoreline. The young lady who answered the door was from Russia. She was a gorgeous woman with a child. It was like 107 outside, and the smell of saltwater and dead fish abounded. She asked us in and called her husband, who was out picking up the dead fish. His job was to keep the shoreline clean of dead fish. The house was one of the smallest places I have ever seen. I think it was a weekend rental back in the heyday when this place was a tourist trap. The husband was a nice man, but he did not look like he belonged with the girl. He told us about how he went to Russia to get a wife. I imagined this place could have been an upgrade, but again she was kind of tuck out there and no place to run. There was nothing around for miles. We left and drove to a place even more out in the middle of no place. When I walked up to the Jeep, I was expecting a willies jeep. I was confused as it did not look like one, and it did not look like a ford jeep either. Yes, Ford made the Jeep too. Rather they made them first. I was getting excited as the grill resembled the style of the prototypes of Ford. It had a willy jeep windscreen, and that was throwing me off. the tailgate was smooth, and Ford had a script ford pressed into the metal. I kept looking at it, trying to figure it out, and then I saw the tailgate from the backside. It said drof or ford backward.

Now I am excited as this was the oldest Jeep I have ever found. I did not know the value, but I expected it to be around two thousand in parts. It was not complete, but it had the major parts still. It was in poor condition and not running. If the Carberator was correct, the carb was worth one thousand its self. The seller wanted $600.00. I only had $450.00, so he took it. The Jeep sold for $6000.00 in one week. It turned out to be a 1941 ford GP. There are only 250 known to exist, and I have one in front of me. The person who bought it from me had a FedEx semi-truck come and wrap it in cotton, load it up and ship it to Maine. The inside of the trailer was filled with other exotic cars worth well over 200k each.

I kind of thought I was also losing money in this deal. Oh well, $5,550.00 profit for one day's work. I later asked the guy what it was worth. He said he sold it for $25,000 to a collector with a second restored 1941 Ford MB for another $65,000.00. I asked him how he did that? I know they are not worth that much; the cost is about $35,000.00 restored. He explained that the serial numbers were consecutive and the only set in the world. I often thought about the couple on the lake. Thinking I bet they needed that money a lot more than myself. Then I figured He could have done some homework to see what it would have been worth too.

The crash in 07 ended the jeep deals. It caused many people to lose their homes and jobs, so people were not spending on toys and hobbies. I also did construction jobs. I was no longer interested in building and construction like in my younger years. I now wanted to make fast cash, easy cash. I hooked up with a great friend, Adam. He was a businessman and one of the hardest workers I knew then.

Adam and I started doing business together, and the crashing economy was causing homes all over to be reposed. Banks wanted to know the home conditions, was there junk that needed to be removed? Did the house need repairing? I would drive to the houses, take photos of the outside, look inside to see if anyone still lived there. If it appeared empty of people, I would break into the home. I try to find an open door or window to get in. About half the time, the houses are locked up. If I had to, I would get in the house through a lock. I never knew how easy it was to break into a home without doing any damage. Well, the lock was no longer usable. Part of my job was to replace all the locks. Most of the time, there were 3 to 5 doors. At $35.00 per door, it was easy money. It would take me 5 minutes per door, take photos and write any damage and or conditions down for the bank.

I would get around five houses a day. Mostly in the same area. I did this until Adam felt I was making too much money. I then started to paint and clean carpets for the banks. The work was still through my friend Adam. I would wash carpets at night and make about 200.00 an hour. Sometimes we would make over a thousand dollars a night after my day job. Some homes had new carpet inside already. I thought, why am I here to clean the new carpet? Oh well, it would be the fastest wash in history. I figured out there were other people out there doing what I did. When they inspected the homes, they would write them up as bad or needed washing or needed new carpet and paint. They were hoping to get the jobs for the repairs, so they lied on the reports. When the repair work came in, they did not have to do anything or very little. It was easy money and dishonest. What the appraisers didn't know was, the work was assigned to a different contractor. The banks were trying to prevent this unethical practice. I was just the lucky person. I could walk inside a home listed to be completely repainted, but the house was almost perfect. I could wash the walls or do a paint touch-up. I'd call the home builder and get the original paint color. Then I would make a run to the paint store and buy 1 gallon of paint. In the end, I invested 4 hours of time and made $3500.00. I started getting 1 to 3 homes a day at one point. I hired some Mexicans from Home Depot to paint for me, and my friend Jeff would come work with me every night. Now let me share on all my construction sites the painters were always Mexican. I always enjoyed working with them, but My standards and theirs were not the same. I bought the best paint on the market and told them not to water down my paint. I paid for the paint and wanted it to look good. I would assign them a home to paint. I would return in 2 days to inspect and pay them. Every time I would find everything unacceptable. They watered the paint down. They would put on one coat, and the old color or stains would bleed through. It would take them three coats to complete the job. They were always upset as the job paid one price. I would tell them every time. It takes one coat of paint with this high-quality paint if you don't water it down. It turned out they wanted half the paint to do side jobs. After a while, I started deducting the value of the missing paint from the job. It never worked out, so I painted every home from that point forward with my friend Jeff.

I loved carpet jobs as it was the fast cash. I would get a job to replace all of the home's carpet. When I got there, the carpet was new and sometimes upgraded. I'd have the contractor pull the very nice carpet out and put in new cheap carpet, or I would replace a section because the original carpet was better than new. When possible, the like-new carpet was washed and re-used in other homes, or I would give it away. Even though this job was essential to me, My friend's wife and her friend were looking at my checks and seeing I was making a lot of money. They decided I had to go. They wanted the money and hired an employee to do the work. While I needed the job, I was not able to get along with the woman working in his office; what a pile of crap she was. The other woman living there was her good friend. Both are evil people, and this trend of lousy business dealing did not end. Many people warned me not to do business with them. I refused to believe it as they were such good people. I had seen how Adam would take care of people when it was clearly not his responsibility to do so. Service of your fellow man is a great thing. He was a great example of how people should be. When it came to business, I have learned to avoid people who were Mormon. Not to say that all or even a tiny percentage of them are bad, not at all. The Issue I had and have when doing business with people in the LDS faith is, I expect them to do what is right and be honest. Let's face it; successful business owners are not nice first. Doing right seems to become second to making money. I feel people in my faith should be above the norm. When dealing with non-LDS people, I expect people to have lower standards. This does not say they do. I just expect it.

I did my last job in California with my friend Wess Tapanna who was now doing the work I used to do. Wes is a great guy. Funny and easy to work with. He worked harder than the Mexicans that worked for him. He was darker too. Wes called me up asking if I wanted to paint a home in BFE. I don't remember where it was, but there were only two white guys in town; Wes and me. Let me say this; I have lived in some S-hole places. Im talking nasty ass places in the world, but this house took the cake. We walked into the home to find the floor covered in dead roaches. Im not talking hundreds but thousands. We used a push broom to pile up the roaches. We filled large trash bags full of them. At one point, I said we got them all. I moved the stove out of the way. I wanted to paint behind it. As soon as I touched the stove, the floor turned black and was moving.

The walls had thousands of holes. Most of them were from throwing darts, some were slightly larger, but the wall was a mess. We decided to take tubes of caulking and spread them on the walls. We smeared it all over, covering up every hole. After washing the excess caulking off, we could begin spraying the paint. What could go wrong, right? Well, the roaches did not like their holes getting covered up. They started pouring out and walking up the walls. At first, we would knock them off and keep painting, but it was endless. In the end, we just painted over them. They would get stuck to the wall and blend in. It was a new style of wall texture. What I didn't notice right away was the roaches on the floor. The overspray from the paint was landing on them, and I was walking on them, causing a build-up of dead insects under my feet. The build-up was over half an inch thick.

We decided to get lunch. We went to a Mexican restaurant, walked into the bathroom right away, and took 10 minutes to wash up. Wes was sitting at the bar ordering some chips when I joined him. I was starving and ready to eat. We talked, the lady gave us a bowl of chips with salsa to enjoy while waiting for our food to arrive. I had grabbed a chip to eat. As I placed the crunchy shell in my mouth, I noticed a roach stuck to my forearm. At that very moment, my brain said the crunching of the chip was the same as crunching on the roaches' body. I jumped up. Wes started laughing at me as he saw it too. I was about to become sick! I ran to the bathroom, trying not to puke. After rewashing my arms, I was no longer hungry. I spent a good 10 minutes looking over my body, checking for the crunchy buggers. In the end, we left our shoes at that home, went to Walmart, and got new clothing. Good times.