How My 80-Year-Old Business Started
Yesterday, March 5, was my father Leonard’s birthday. He was born in 1917, the youngest of four–a younger brother had died at four years old.
From everything he told me, it was a malfunctioning household. His dad, Louis, who I never met, told him often that his wedding day was the worst day of his life.
Leonard’s mother, Ethel, suffered from mental illness and was in various institutions during his youth. But my dad told me his youth wasn’t that bad because he had a close-nit extended family that lived in the same neighborhood. He often had dinner with them and slept at their houses.
My father was the only member of the Graff family who finished college–The University of Chicago, where graduated in 1938. Unfortunately there were no jobs available, especially for Jews, so he went to work for my grandfather Louis in the “junk” business. The two of them were extremely close, so it was not a difficult choice for him during the Great Depression.
Louis had a few customers in the screw machine business and he delighted in buying their scrap. They would often negotiate by guessing the weight of the chips. He always won because he knew how to manipulate the scale in his favor. My dad did not like this, but it was the Depression so it was “part of the game.” It was one of the reasons for him liquidating the business after Louis died in 1941.
My grandfather had the Goldberg-Emerman Redbook, published periodically by Goldberg-Emerman, the biggest machinery dealer in Chicago. My father kept it as a precious possession, and it enabled him to start up in the used machinery business because it had pictures of machines with prices under the descriptions. It was a precious Bible that enabled him to know what he was looking at as he set off on weekly trips throughout the Midwest to search for used machinery.
He had made a connection with the Blumberg brothers, who owned Adams Machinery, while in the scrap business. His strategy was to bring the machines to their door after buying them and haggle to make a deal.
After World War II began, he decided to start a screw machine plant, which his cousin Aaron Pinkert helped run while he went out searching for used machinery. It turned out that running Brown and Sharpes was a better business than used machinery, and it also kept him and Aaron out of uniform.
He ran the screw machine business until 1949 with the help of Paul Carlson, a farm boy from South Dakota who was a mechanical genius. My dad, Aaron, and Paul were exhausted by the end of the 1940s. My father took some time off to build our first house, along with one for Aaron and one on speculation. He also invested in apartment buildings.
In 1951, the Korean War broke out and he figured if the Blumbergs could become very rich in the used machinery business, he could try it with Aaron as his partner and Paul in the shop. They specialized in screw machines, which they were all familiar with.
I worked for my father starting at 17 during school breaks and drove around the Midwest looking for used machinery with Danny Pinkert, Aaron’s younger son.
I ended up doing it for seven summers and ultimately made the decision to go to work for the company after getting a graduate degree in journalism.
My dad was not always easy to work with. He had big mood swings and tough daily bouts with headaches. He also took it upon himself to take care of his mother, which took up considerable time and emotional energy.
But he was very smart, dedicated to the family, and I loved him deeply. I think of him everyday and I love to see his and Aaron’s name on the door every day.
Question: How did your business start?
