Crisis to Crisis: Unto Thine Own Self – Be True

By G James Mohr

Its a rags to riches story told from the heart. Youll laugh and then you will cry.

Some parts might seem unbelievable but its all true.

Its a story about life, women, unions, Masonic Lodge, government, big business, improbable jobs and an incredible career.

But mostly its about survival of the fittest and the woman that followed his dreams and then made him a dreamer.

Today, I am worth a million dollars. A long journey from that day in Richmond, IN when Ann and I were a couple of dreamers and all the money we had in this world was $14.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781499007404

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by G James Mohr.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014907613

ISBN:      Hardcover            978-1-4990-0741-1

                Softcover             978-1-4990-0743-5

                eBook                  978-1-4990-0740-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

I mean no harm nor disrespect to any organization mentioned in this book. They were simply part of my journey from Crisis to Crisis.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/08/2016

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Contents

TODAY YOU ARE A MAN

SCARFACE

HALL

SUMMERTIME

AUNT GLENNA

DALLAS

HIGH SCHOOL

SANTA BARBARA

AIR FORCE

HOME AT LAST

GOING HOME

ANNA REDDEN MOHR

TELEPHONE INDUSTRY

CONTRACTING

T & I

MANAGEMENT

SAUDI ARABIA

I T T

LAMBIC TELCOM

ANN’S CANCERS

TARPON WOODS GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB

UNIONS

NINE MILE POINT

LAMBIC AGAIN

MASONIC LODGE

LUCENT

IT AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

GERAD

CONCLUSION

DEDICATED TO

ANN REDDEN MOHR

AND

ALL THE ENTREPRENEURS OF THIS WORLD

A successful entrepreneur is a person that

when times are tough and business is bad

they work day and night to make it a success.

Then when things get good it’s so damn

exciting that they don’t want to slow down.

TODAY YOU ARE A MAN

Life was a lot different in Detroit, Michigan in 1939 than it is today. We provided our own entertainment without supervision. In contrast, today adults are everywhere such as in Little League Baseball, Football, Basketball and Soccer. The teachers were in charge of the school system; today it is the government and politicians that run the schools. Wars were occasionally fought for the expansion of power or the elimination thereof; today it is over religion or ideology. Evil could be eliminated by Superman, Wonder Woman, or Gene Autry; now it is guns, rockets and soldiers. Things were really funny and you laughed a lot back then. Now there is a need for a laugh track. Agreements were consummated with a handshake; now you are presented with a multi-worded and confusing contract. There were few attorneys and now there are more than enough. The knowledge that was obtained with a high school diploma is more than most people learn after receiving a college degree today. We lived by the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In today’s world we are guided by the Golden Rule of Business, The guy with the gold makes the rules, which is usually the government. Television did not exist and censorship was extreme in the movies and on the radio. You were left on your own to learn about such things as life, death, sex and violence. Today we have an uncensored world of television, radio and movies. An eight year old has been exposed to birth itself, death by natural causes, murder, wars, famine, greed, power, poverty, drugs, sex, love and violence of every sort.

Back then most people were poor. By comparison most people today are pretty well off. Big Brother is everywhere. But remember, Any government that can give you anything you want can take-away everything you have.

On June 7th, 1939 my brother Rick turned 6; on July 13th, I turned 8. On August 19th my older brother Ray would be 13. Our mother died July 27th from stomach cancer at the age of 33. Rick and I weren’t even sure we knew what death meant. Death was something that happened to your buddy’s grandfather. We were at a friend of the family’s house when Dad came over and sat Rick and I each on one of his knees and told us that our mother had just died.

Not knowing what to do I went outside and saw a girl I knew playing on the porch across the street. I went over and told her that my mother had just died. She said, I know it. I asked if she was going to cry. She replied, Why should I? I said, I would cry if your mother died. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to playing with her girlfriend. I learned then that crying was not a good thing.

I remember at the funeral my grandmother wailing, crying and throwing herself on my mother’s casket.

My biggest memory of this tragic event was Rick, my father and myself leaving the services sitting in the back seat of a car. There had been so much sadness and crying that I surely felt that I too should cry. I remember softly crying and my father pulling me to him. He put his arm around me and ever so gently hit me on the chin and said, Take it on the chin son, today you are a man. Eight years old and I started my manhood.

SCARFACE

Dad told the story that about a year after I was born that my grandmother, my mother’s mother, came to visit us for about a week. She stayed for seven years. After mother died she told my Dad, I raised my kids, you raise yours. Then she moved elsewhere.

My grandfather on my father’s side came to this country from Berlin, Germany. He married and had 15 children. My father had 7 brothers and 7 sisters.

Dad left school after the sixth grade to seek gainful employment. From the time I remember my father’s first job until I was 13 years old, he was a milkman in Detroit, MI. He had an old horse named Tom, who pulled his milk wagon. I believe that Wayne Creamery was the biggest creamery in Detroit and my father had the biggest route in Wayne Creamery. They were forever having sales contests to increase your route size. They would present a suit to the winner. My father won 21 suits and they had to break his route up about 10 different times. He was working during the Depression, so we had it pretty good.

Somehow, while playing with matches, Rick set our parents’ closet on fire. The fire was extinguished before any damage to the house, but all of Dad’s suits were burnt. Dad never did wear the suits, but the insurance company gave him $10 for each ruined suit. The $210 check was one of the biggest and prettiest checks he had ever seen and he claimed that was the greatest closet fire in the history of Detroit.

Dad would tell the story of the time I wanted a regular sized bicycle instead of the kids bike that I then had. Dad told me that when Rick learned to ride my bike that I could have a bigger bike. When Dad came home from work the next day, Rick was scarred, scratched and bruised from head to toe, but by golly he could ride my bike.

One of my older brother Ray’s first memories was when he was 6 years old and I was about one years old. It seemed I was in my crib drinking from a glass milk bottle. The bottle fell from my hands to the floor and shattered. I climbed the side of my crib and fell head first on the broken glass. That little one year olds face would have five scars fanning out from my right eye with a total of 14 stitches. One of the scars barely missed my right eye. Ray remembers my mother pushing me aside through the blood and glass, telling Ray to help her look for my eye.

For too many years the girls would point and laugh and the boys would call me Scarface. This lasted until I was about 13 or 14. I was called Scarface many times and that’s when the fight would begin.

After mother died, Ray went to live permanently with my mother’s sister Aunt Glenna. Dad hired a maid for Rick and I while he got himself a second job in preparation of sending us to military school in Monroe, MI.

Our mother died at home and we were deathly afraid of her room. One day we apparently made the maid unhappy and she locked Rick and me in my mother’s room. To this day I can still see my brother beating on the door trying to get out. When Dad came home, I told him what had happened. He literally threw the maid and her clothes out into the street.

Since military school was only a week or so away, Dad decided that he would care for us himself. I never had so much milk and bologna sandwiches in all my life.

HALL

Hall of the Devine Child was a Catholic Military School and, except for the military instructor, it was run by nuns. The school went from first through eighth grade. There were four companies: A being 8-7 grade, B being 6-5 grade, C being 4-3 grade and D being 2-1 grade. Since I started in 3rd grade and Rick in 1st grade we were never in the same company. I was there for five years from 3rd thru 7th grade. I think I held the distinction of being the only kid to be a private for five consecutive years. I attribute this to being called Scarface too many times, which of course, lead to another fight.

Upon arriving at the Hall I was asked my name. I told them Jimmy. They said it couldn’t be Jimmy, it must be James. All right I said, It’s James. What was my middle name, they asked. I ain’t got no middle name, I said. Being a Catholic school I would receive confirmation and take the name of a patron saint. I chose Joseph and thus began the career of James Joseph Mohr.

After a month or so Dad wanted us both to play some musical instrument. I told a nun what Dad had said and she asked what instrument I wanted to play. I asked her what she had available and she started naming all these things I had never heard of before. We had a catechism class that morning and talked about Gabriel blowing his trumpet at the end of the world. Well now when that nun mentioned trumpet, I knew immediately that was my kind of instrument. A few times I even played Taps at night or Revelry in the morning. Not very good, but at least I played. Later when I was 13 years old a friend of mine played the trumpet. He wanted to be a professional trumpet player since his father played trumpet with the Detroit Philharmonic Orchestra. One day I asked him to play his trumpet for me. After listening to him I realized what a trumpet was supposed to sound like. I never played the instrument again.

I really only have a few memories of the Hall. The first was my father was one of the very few parents that came to visit during the hours between 12 noon and 5 p.m. every Sunday. In five years he may have missed a half dozen times. We would all assemble in a large room waiting for your name to be called that a visitor was there. I don’t know for sure, but I think we had more Sunday visits than any of the other boys. This second memory is rather sad. I guess that there were about 200 boys in the school. We slept in four dormitories, one for each of the companies. The first week of each school year, in each dormitory, the new kids, at bedtime, would begin to cry because they missed their family. We, the old-timers, would throw shoes or other items at them telling the babies to grow up. Talk about growing up and I was only 9-12 years old.

I was trained to be an altar boy. There are three types of Mass. Ordinary Mass, High Mass and Requiem High Mass; the latter is celebrated for the dead and is quite different than the Ordinary Mass that I was trained for. Wouldn’t you know that my first Mass as an altar boy was a Requiem High Mass. Boy was I confused. Somehow, I made it through without too many screw ups.

I was blessed with a good memory. My father used to tell of a Christmas play that I was in. Whenever one of the boys, no matter what part he had, would forget his line, I would whisper the line to him. I knew the whole play by heart.

I do remember that we ate with eight boys at an assigned table. The food would be passed from the boy at the head of the table to his right. The eighth boy to receive his food, of course, always had the smallest or the worst portion. Your position at the table was determined by how good a boy you were. For five years I was either eighth or seventh. I would always trade my dessert and usually my portion of meat for somebody else’s meat. I can never recall eating dessert at the Hall.

Life creates many strange turns. In the late 60’s my sister-in-law, Ray’s wife, was managing a project to convert the Hall of the Divine Child into a senior citizen’s complex. She met an elderly nun one day and asked her if she ever remembered a student named Jimmy Mohr. The nun thought for a few minutes and then asked if he had a younger brother. Kay replied that he did. The nun then remembered me. Kay asked what kind of a young man I was. The nun thought a moment then replied, He was a caution. It must have been the fights over the Scarface issue.

Whatever I am today I attribute to my teachings from the Hall. From the nuns I learned honesty, integrity and faithfulness. My bad habits must have come from someplace else.

SUMMERTIME

Summer vacation was about three months from June thru August. One year we spent the summer living and working on a farm near Holland, MI. It was here I went to my first county fair and saw a magician; was I ever impressed.

The hired hand on the farm would catch a black snake by the tail and snap it like a whip. The snake’s head would literally fly off. One time while snapping about a four foot long snake it came loose from his hand and flew about six feet and wrapped itself around my neck. I was so frightened I’m sure I had to change my underwear. To this day I would rather pet a lion than be in the same room with a six inch snake. This was the only summer we spent in Holland, MI, all of the others were spent with my father’s friends, The Schumacher’s in Tawas City, MI.

The Schumacher’s owned some rental units on Lake Huron called The Log Cabins.

Rick and I would obtain some nails and a hammer, find some driftwood on the beach, and make ourselves a raft. Just picture a couple of boys in a homemade raft fishing for perch about a mile or two offshore.

For a couple of years I caught poison ivy. I would not only have a bad rash, but the right side of my face, with the scars, would swell up for reasons unbeknown. It got to the point I looked like a circus freak.

One summer I was bitten by a dog and contracted hives. The only way to stop the itching was to soak sheets in starchy water and roll me in the sheets.

We did a lot of swimming and fishing in Lake Huron. We would turn over rocks in the lake and many times find leeches (bloodsuckers). We would pry them off the rock, put them in a jar and sell one leech to a fisherman for 25 cents. You can catch a lot of fish with one bloodsucker; also, 25 cents was quite a bit of money for a kid in the early 1940’s. Those summers were happy, carefree times.

In the summer of 1944 I turned 13 years old. My father married my first step-mother, Virginia Owen. He would be married a total of four times.

We left the Hall and went to Saint Gabriel’s Grammar School in Detroit. It was in the eighth grade, while attending my first party, I played spin the bottle and kissed my very first girl. I was hooked for life. I wanted to ask a girl for my first date. Having no experience whatsoever, I would practice my technique on Virginia. I would knock on our front door, Virginia would answer and she would help me with what I should say. I asked my first date to attend a party with me. She said okay. I did not know I was supposed to go to her house and bring her to the party. When I arrived and she was not there, I was informed that I was supposed to bring her to the party. I arrived at her