After the passing of our mother a few years ago, a tradition sort of arose between my two brothers and I whereby e-mails were circulated between us around Mother’s Day telling stories that honored mom and, at many times, teased at least one of us for some bonehead incident.
My mom didn’t know anything about auto glass. I was supposed to be a doctor. She gave up early on me as a candidate for the priesthood for good reason, but you have to understand that if your mom is Irish Catholic, that’s always a standard wish. However, she never foresaw the social upheaval that the 1960s would unleash and how much her middle son would ride that wave.
How I got into auto glass is a story like that of many others; it was one of accidents and incidents. I certainly was not born into it. In fact, being a tradesman was something almost looked down upon by my family. My father was a middle-tier office worker while my mother taught primary school. College was something expected with a professional job to follow.
I have several memories of times when my father would not accept my help when fix-it jobs came up around the house. Ironically, having a neighborhood full of sport-playing boys provided all too many opportunities for putty hack-outs due to errant kicks, throws or contacts with balls or pucks. I was directly responsible for several. I’m assuming my dad did not relish the opportunity to remove and then re-putty a few garage window panes that needed repair in the middle of an Upstate New York winter due to an inaccurate slap shot from our backyard makeshift rink. Who knows, if he had made me help him, maybe I would have become enamored with flat glass or hated any glass altogether.
Remember the maxim “Never lend to friends or family?” That is how I entered this business. In late 1979 I was running a car dealership when my used car manager came to me with a proposition. He had a vendor that possessed a Novus repair franchise and was impressed with the procedure. Jerry was always looking to go out on his own and had investigated many auto-related opportunities. But there was a drawback—he had no money; I did, and, after some investigation, we agreed to become partners and purchase a few available franchises in San Jose, Calif. (50 miles north of our homes but far more populated).
I had just gotten married within the year and had an instant family. Added to that, the car business had gotten much tougher due to a declining economy and rising interest rates. I also had grown weary of 12-hour shifts and only having Sundays off. Making a change seemed like the smart thing to do.
The windshield repair business was immediately successful. Entry into the dealership niche was easy for two reasons. I knew several general managers. Also the competition was simply dreadful; to them, a “repair” consisted of building a putty dam around a break, filling that reservoir with resin and flexing the material inside the crack with an ice pick. The Novus system provided excellent and consistent results, which made sales easy to make. A side business of windshield replacement grew as well. We were approached by a local mobile service that would gladly replace any windshield our company could not repair.
1981 was now known as an El Nino year in weather parlance. It rained the entire month of January. As anyone knows in the repair business, rain eliminates the chances for walking car lots and finding work. Dry-out kits were crude and, no matter what, one needed cover and far more time to conduct a valid repair. If memory serves me, I had two billable days in that month. In short, that one single month had a huge impact on my future in auto glass.
The direction turned to replacements. The company to which we used to outsource installs had gotten far too demanding. If we found work late in the week, the most common excuse became: “glass not in stock.” Also we shared some accounts in which they would install windshields at a flat rate price while we did the same for repairs. Several times I witnessed the owner taking a repair job and leaning an elbow on the break, making it an install for him. We were billing out 30 to 40 windshields a month through him and not getting any respect or enough control.
The dilemma became: how do you make that jump? I had little background in replacement, no tools and no truck. What do you do? I simply became an apprentice.
Sad to say, I learned at another’s feet for a month. I learned about rope-ins, reseals and butyl. The two shops that gave me an education both used the short-cut method when it came to glue-in windshields. I remember cutting out Chevy glass with a cable knife that seemed to have the dullest, widest blade imaginable. I learned the secrets of the double-headed clip tool and to always look around before you leave the job to make sure that you did not leave your hook tool in the car, because you could not function the rest of the day without it. In fact, a rule became to always possess a back up for both.
As you may see, my start was probably no better than most “cowboy” installers today. What I will say is that I knew right away that you usually are only as good as the teacher from whom you learn. At the start, I made mistakes and used practices that today are considered of the “hack” variety. However, I never stopped learning. I read up and asked questions and improved. As my school teacher mother had impressed on me, “if you can’t do something well, don’t do it.”
I believe too many in the trade today accept mediocrity as a standard to achieve and accept a much lower level of proficiency. As I hired installers, I learned hard lessons about aptitude and attitude. It became almost a maxim to find good installers and then hire them away as opposed to getting them off the unemployment line.
My mom never had an inkling of what I did for a living. She never visited my home or saw my operations. However, she was responsible for much of what I am today. She demanded that her sons never stop learning and to be the best we could be at what we chose in life. If I possess a conscience, it’s with her voice that I hear it.
