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 Egg. Of [...]
Category Archives: Anecdotes
I Really Was the Eggman — Part 1
March 17, 2008 – 12:22 am
“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 them up and [...]
Japanese Lessons-Part 3
March 10, 2008 – 8:18 am
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. Ko mean [...]
Japanese Lessons-Part 2
March 9, 2008 – 9:20 am
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.
Japanese Lessons-Part 1
March 8, 2008 – 5:45 am
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 [...]
Smallness
March 5, 2008 – 9:31 am
When Richard Feynman came back to Ojai’s Summer Science Program in 1960 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 [...]
At the Feet of Richard Feynman
March 4, 2008 – 6:22 am
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 that Feynman, [...]
A Singular Eating Experience
February 26, 2008 – 4:09 pm
Several years ago my brothers (Lanny and Doug) and I were on Long Island where Doug, a well-known performer of modern Jewish music, had a concert scheduled. The show was set for 7:30 p.m., with a sound check an hour earlier, but it was just 4:45 and Doug was hungry. Because a full stomach does [...]
Flowers Bugged Me
February 24, 2008 – 6:41 am
Everything grew easily where I grew up. In the long Southern California seasons of sun and moderate warmth, there was no challenge. I suspect, looking back, that such gardening ease actually produced a glory of flowering plants, but there are only two in my childhood memory: zinnias and nasturiums. When I was eight, I planted [...]
Ellis Island Vignette
February 23, 2008 – 8:12 am
Freedom-and-a-New-Life So here’s how the story goes, as told to me by my Uncle Max (long-deceased). Somewhere in the late 1890s (I could be off by ten years), a man by the name of Tudrus Zlutchin (another branch of the family claims that the surname was Dudek) landed at Ellis Island from Russia with his [...]
