After many months of deliveries, most neighbors became accustomed to seeing the Cotler brothers on bicycles, towing their Radio Flyer egg wagon. A few unimaginative churls thought it insanely humorous to yell, “Hey, Eggman! Gimme two dozen!” every time we rode by, but the unpredictable wagon-chasing dog was our bête noir.
The worst crack-up [...]
With its motto “We Sit Securely on Our Assets,” the Outhouse National Bank strove to offer the finest service to its only depositor, my 10-year-old brother Doug. It was open 24/7 for deposits, almost all of which were imprest as a result of the superior judgment of the 15-year-old employer of said brother. [...]
Three weeks after beginning my egg route, my weekly delivery had increased to nearly 150 dozen. It only took two after-schools to deliver the eggs, and I was netting over $30 each week, more than $4.25/hour. With the minimum wage at $1.55/hour, I, only 15, had found the chicken that laid the Golden [...]
“Hello. My name is Steve Cotler. Each week I go out to a ranch in the country and pick up fresh eggs and deliver them in this area at a price within a penny or two of store prices. Of course, these eggs are much fresher than store eggs because I pick [...]
At Tokyo’s Narita Airport, Mr. Mizutani shook my hand, bowed slightly and said, “Kotora-san, you have safe trip home.”
“Why,” I asked Mr. Mizutani, “do you pronounce my name Kotora? My name isn’t COAT-ler. It’s COT-ler. Why don’t you call me Katora?”
Mizutani took a deep breath and smiled broadly. “Kotora good name. [...]
Near the end of my stay, to thank me for my efforts, six Japanese executives took me to dinner at a very upscale Tokyo restaurant. I had read guidebooks that highlighted cultural differences and how Americans abroad should behave, but nothing had prepared me for this.
In the early 70’s, as assistant to the president and product manager for a small, NYSE-listed business machines company, I traveled to Tokyo to teach our Japanese affiliate how to sell our new product, the world’s first high-speed, commercial fax machine. I was 27.
My introductory talk was to 60 men, all of whom leaned [...]
Benny Silverstein and Marty Stein operated shoe stores in Oxnard, my California childhood’s small town. Marty’s store was on A Street’s east side, right next to my father’s men’s & boys’ clothing store. Benny’s store was directly across the street. Marty carried a marginally higher-priced line, but in a town that lived [...]
When Richard Feynman came back to Ojai’s Summer Science Program for a second, unscheduled visit, his topic was what he called “smallness.” Today that field, in which he was a visionary, is called Nanotechnology.
Having been mesmerized by Feynman’s brilliance and wit during his talk on Relativity a couple of weeks earlier, we 36 science/math nerds [...]
Richard Feynman at Summer Science Program
In 1960, I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, my feet thrust out, listening to Caltech’s Richard Feynman explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Einstein, dead for only five years, was an icon and a Nobel Laureate. I was too young and unread then to know [...]
