Month: August 2023

If you’ve ever watched the Trailer Park Boys TV show on Netflix, the wild antics and wacko characters portrayed could very well have been based on a trailer park I was quite familiar with in my high school days.

I’m not sure if it was an official “park.” In a dry creek bed north of Livermore, CA, it had little grass and a few desperate trees, but it was “home” to about a dozen families. Or something like families. The well-used, single-wide trailers were not lined up in neat rows like on the TV show. Some were oriented east/west, some were north/south, and some were just…there. Were they ever hooked up to water & sewer? Who knows? Electric power was, I think, by generator. A small overgrown burial ground nearby gave it the nickname “Boot Hill trailer park.”

My pal Bob and I– see our earlier post, Learning Life’s Lessons Playing Pool–had befriended two of the park’s residents. Dave and Ray were southern boys who came to the Golden State with their parents after fleeing the dust bowl. Such folks were often referred to as California Improved Okies. Now in their mid 30’s, and not used to having much, the Boot Hill park suited them just fine. We’ll talk about how culturally insensitive the 60’s were in a moment.

When the characters on the TV show saw the roof off a car with a Sawzall, or start a fire by siphoning gas while smoking, that seems just like my buddies Dave and Ray.

Now before you go thinking these were a couple of no-class losers that college-bound honor students shouldn’t be hanging around, you need to know that Dave and Ray were absolute experts on 1952 to ‘55 Lincolns! They always had 2 or 3 in various stages of (dis)assembly lying around their trailer. Generator went junk on the 2-door? No problem. “I think the one on the four door is good.”

Introduced in response to the 1949 Cadillac and Oldsmobile, the “ALL  NEW” 1952 Lincoln featured an overhead valve ( OHV) V-8 motor. A  big-ish motor in a small-ish body, they were the Original Hot Rod Lincolns.  

In 1954, a Southern Cal grocer named Ray Crawford entered a bone stock 1954 Lincoln in La Carrera Pan Americana. The “Mexican Road Race” was a 2,100 mile race run the length of Mexico on the Pan American Highway, which, theoretically, ran from the southern tip of Argentina to Prudhoe Bay Alaska (theoretically). Some of it was paved, some was dirt, but all of it was open public road. Run from 1950 to 1954, it ended in 1955 due to the high number of driver, spectator, and animal casualties. Duh!

Ray was an Ace P-38 Lightning fighter pilot in The War, and soundly trounced a team of “specially prepared” Lincoln factory cars, plus a handful of Ferraris and other exotics, several driven by big name drivers.

The factory cars were scheduled to make a triumphant tour of Lincoln Mercury dealers to celebrate their victory. “No problem. Just paint ‘em to look like the Crawford car and send ‘em all out as Race Winners. No one will know the difference.” Apparently, it worked.

The original Henry Ford did the same thing when publicizing the 10 MILLIONTH MODEL T. He had several painted in 10 MILLIONTH livery and sent them out to dealers as The Car to promote show room traffic.

If there’s a Trailer Park Hall of Fame somewhere, I’m sure Dave & Ray occupy a special spot. Dave was working on the steering column of one of his beloved Lincolns when he felt the need to go into town (probably out of beer).  Rather than waste time reinstalling the steering wheel, he just clamped a pair of Vise Grips onto the splined shaft and trundled off to town.  When a passing cop noticed Dave steering with Vice Grips(!) he lit up his roof mounted Gum Ball and took off after him.

Livermore in them days was a farm town surrounded by vineyards and fields, with a patchwork of public and private roads, some paved and some not. Some went thru and some were dead ends.  When Dave got into that warren of back roads, he easily outran John Law, Vice Grips and all, thus enshrining himself into teenage hearts as Our Hero!

Back in the day, if you were the wrong color, the wrong class, or just looked funny, and you didn’t have 10 or 20 dollars cash on you (it varied) you could be arrested for VAGRANCY. Our boys were frequently brought up on charges of “VAG” and given 10 days, probably to pay for past, present, and future sins. Everyone knew everyone, everyone knew the game, and somehow it all worked.

The Lincoln romance wasn’t all roses, however.  After several days of trying, and several cases of brew, one of our heroes couldn’t get his Lincoln to start, so in a fury took a hammer and busted off all the spark plugs. “Thet’ll teach ya!”   

Like I said, the script for Trailer Park Boys was written long ago.

After I’d been in college a couple of years, I stopped by the Park to admire the current selection of Lincolns. Or maybe it was just for old time’s sake.  I found Ray had married a gal who could have been Aunt Jemima’s sister, and moved her into the trailer. In many places, interracial marriage, miscegenation, was against the law. Ray introduced her as Hawaiian, which I guess was a little more acceptable.

Thus, Dave and Ray, the Trailer Park Boys, without a hint of advanced education or sensitivity training, turned out to understand Diversity, Equity and Inclusion better than most of today’s “Progressives.” And they were good guys too.

To be continued …

You can order a nice color DVD produced by Mobil Oil of the 1954 race at this site.

Until next time, thanks for listening.

Duane  

Today, we’ll take another trip in the Wayback Machine. This is a story I wrote for UTAH magazine in May of 1993.  Wow, how time flies.

“Know Thine Enemy”
— Sun Tzu “The Art of War”
China, circa 300 BCE.

Knowing as much as possible about the products and problems of your competition may save your company time, money and effort solving problems on your own. Welcome to the world of espionage, think and counter think.

The Society of Computer Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) based in Washington D. C. makes a science of finding out everything about the competition. “Every business has a spy.” Says a P. I. (private investigator) who is a member of SCIP. They don’t use the word ‘spy.’ They prefer to be called Business Librarians, Strategic Planners, or some other euphemism, but what they really do is spy on the competition. They know where the C.E.O. of your company went to school, what he/she likes and what direction he will take given a particular set of circumstances.

Competitive intelligence is the underbelly of an otherwise legitimate business discipline. “Let’s say a client hires me to find out all I can about a new disc drive being developed in Silicon Valley,” says the SCIP guy. “Do I get hired as a janitor or place someone as a receptionist? No, I spend a week or two going to every bar within 5 miles of the plant. Get to know the bartenders. Find out who drinks there. Every company has a hangout. People like to be with people they know and talk about things they have in common. When I find out where the company or department drinks, I start going there. I join the softball team. I guarantee within 30 days they will tell me anything, because they are excited about what they’re doing. Of course they’ll say it’s confidential, but engineers have inquiring minds, and they’re not capable of not talking about their work. The European idea of putting a woman in bed is passe’. Just buy him a drink and ask what he’s working on.”

LOOSE LIPS

It seems Americans are much more open with information than their European or Asian counterparts. Kellogg in Battle Creek, Michigan used to give plant tours to school children and serve Froot Loops on ice cream at the end of the tour. Before long kids were being crowded out by heavily accented European and Asian men taking notes. Kellogg tried to ban note taking, but the men started coming on every tour memorizing model numbers of machines and plant layouts. Finally, the company stopped all tours.

“In other countries, it’s part of the culture that no one talks,” says the P.I.
“If you go to a party at the Bulgarian embassy, it’s taken for granted that everything is bugged. Once you leave Foggy Bottom though, no one believes it’s done here. A company in Silicon Valley used to throw lavish parties for the hottest engineers and software writers in the industry. It was an honor to be invited. You get 150 hot shots drinking in a room, and of course they’re going to impress each other with what they’re working on. The morning after the party the host is happily editing the tapes of every conversation. The human voice operates in a very narrow range, and it’s very easy to eliminate carpet scrub, glasses clinking, and the sound of the band. Whatever the parties cost (and it was a lot!) it was paid back easily in information. The ‘Embassy Party’ is the oldest trick in the book, and it worked like a charm!”

The Europeans aren’t immune to competitive thrusts however (don’t ya love that phrase!). A classic case is a placement firm that specializes in putting high level executive spies in the board rooms of their client’s competition. If firm A wanted to bug firm B, it would arrange to have the placement firm find a job for one of A’s “unhappy executives” extolling the value of all the knowledge of A he would bring with him. B would pay a high price for the “turncoat” who would then siphon information from B and deliver it in exchange for a second salary to firm A.

Neat deal.

If you think this sounds like something the C.I.A. would be interested in, you would be right. Atlanta based Business Risk International is a worldwide organization peopled with ex-CIA, FBI and Secret Service agents. They are tasked with finding leaks in firms doing business with the US Government, particularly the Defense Department. “Almost anything is available if you know where to look,” says an agent who prefers to remain anonymous.

Some tips for the first-time spy / counter spy.

Knowledge is power. The more you know about your target and the person in the company likely to help you the easier your job will be. If he/she is an engineer, be an engineer. If he’s ex-military, be ex-military. Americans really do like to be helpful, and you are about to play on that admirable trait. Be prepared to explain how you got their name, and make your contact the solution to your problem.

You need him!

VERY IMPORTANT…You must be able to distill your quest into one pivotal question. Once you have that pivotal question, and the lowest person on the organizational chart who is likely to have your answer, you are ready for the kill shot.

My first job out of college was with a chemical company that made ABS plastic. Management wanted to know about how much ABS plastic our chief competitor was selling … VERY closely guarded information. In an extended coffee drinking session one morning, myself and a couple of other no goods came up with a plan to find out.

One of our female cohorts called the rail yard supervisor of our target company, pretending to be the editor of a material handling magazine, and asked him how he safely handled the highly flammable, explosive and carcinogenic rail cars of butadiene in his rail yard. He couldn’t wait to tell her what a great job he was doing, including how many cars a week he unloaded and how he stored and handled the material. Since we made the same A.B.S. (acrylonitrile, butadiene, styrene) compound, we easily deduced their monthly volume in finished product, and also picked up some valuable manufacturing tips.

Well, good luck in your new role as an industrial spy… but to paraphrase Sun Tzu, “When you bend over to look up your enemies’ skirt, be aware of your own skirt.”

Until next time, thanks for listening.
Duane