Chapter 17   "I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR IT EVERYWHERE!"

 

When I was around 12 years old, I realised that the spoon in my mouth I was born with was not silver but plastic. My father and his business partner were forced to give up the premises of their shop at 69 Main Street, where Liberty now trades from. The owners, the Mifsud family, decided they either wanted a much higher rent or the premises for themselves. Business was not booming so my father and his business partner, Momi Benady, decided to end the partnership and each go on his way separately.
At the time I really hated the Mifsuds with a passion of a 12-year-old whose father had found himself without a livelihood. I'm talking about the late Mario and his brother Julius and their sister who had married Mr Culatto who had an ironmongery shop in the corner of Main Street and John Mackintosh Square. There is a chocolate shop there now. Years later I had reason to deal with them again, as an equal, and realised they were actually very nice guys, if hard businessmen. They were, in fact, always very courteous to me, totally correct and even very friendly, especially Julio’s son Paul who left us far too young in his life.

I was not aware of all the details but I remember seeing my Dad very preoccupied and having quiet and private conversations with Mum. At the time I was studying for my bar mitzvah, the biggest event for Jewish boys of that age. This was 1958, the year I learnt a very valuable lesson about family. Mum and Dad called me to the sitting room, both looking quite serious.

"David, Daddy wants to ask a favour of you"

"What is it Dad?"

"David in a couple of months’ time it will be your bar mitzvah and Mum and I wanted to give you a big party."

" Yes, I am looking forward to it; all my friends will be coming!"

"The problem is that we have no business right now and any money that Mummy and I have needs to go to making a new shop downstairs"

Old TEO at 138 Main street was created out of a street entrance with a 50-foot long, bleak corridor. At the end of this were the stairs to the three floors of dwellings above. We lived on the first floor and the second and third were the family home of Sir Joshua Hassan. He was born there in fact. It was the Hassan family home and at that time, living there was Sir Josh’s mother (Tia Lola to me), her divorced daughter Fanny, and Fanny’s son Tito, who had the most spectacular and complete collections of comics EVER!
Immediately past the main stairs was a dingy door dropping underground, leading to a small cellar. At ground level after the corridor and the stairs was a patio with a barely functional toilet and two store rooms. Lacking finance and not finding vacant commercial Main Street premises he could afford, Dad designed what later became TEO. But more of this later, back to family funds or lack thereof.

This conversation with my parents was the first time I realised that without a shop and Dad in fact being unemployed, we were ... poor, to a certain extent.

"David, as you know Mummy has been saving money aside for you in your own account at the Post Office Savings Bank.

"Yeeeess....?" Where was this going?

"Yes, David, you have £800 in your savings account which I have been putting money towards for a few years now" confirmed Mum.

"And... what?"

"Well we cannot give you a big party using the money we have because that has to go who the Architects and the builders of the shop downstairs. We would like your permission to use the money in your savings account for your Barmitzvah party and when things are better, we will put it back into your account"

QUE ? ? ?

This did not make sense to me even at that age. We were a family. Whatever we had belonged to all of us not to any one of us in particular. Mum had been saving money from her household amounts and teaching me the value of putting money aside for a rainy day ..... and now it is pouring!

"Of course, you use that money" I replied…. "and you don't have to pay me back. This is family money not mine I didn't work for it. You did, so just take it and don't ever pay me back"

That sentiment became a conviction throughout my working life. Everything belongs to all of us, the family, and each of us has to contribute in our own individual ways towards the family coffers.

In fact, I had as wonderful a Barmitzvah celebration, as good as all the rest of the Barmitzvahs my friends had in those days. Sadly, in the times we live in, ostentation has grown to the point of a competition in Barmitzvahs, in weddings and similar, forcing less well-off family to feel belittled if they cannot match the luxury of the well-to-do families in our community. But this is not particular to my community, it is very much the trend in all Gibraltar if not all the Western world.

Back to how TEO began.

My father had no properties that he could put up as guarantees for a bank loan, something that was accessible only to a choice few in those days. He went to his cousin Salvador (later Sir Joshua Hassan) who was his lawyer and asked if there were any private investors willing to risk their capital in this less than choice venture, a shop with no frontage, 100-ft long, half of which to be show cases and didn't even exist yet.

"Dejalo conmigo, Pepe" was Salvador's reply.

In the meantime, Dad had managed to get an architect/engineer, Manolo Suetta,who lived in City Mill Lane, and known for his love of challenging and impossible projects, as well as for his love of Scottish culture, the bottled kind. Between them they carved out alcoves in the massive, thick and old load-bearing walls of the corridor in which to place showcase windows. The construction was done by Serra Brothers who had their premises in Horse Barrack Lane, the patio where the old Prince of Wales Football Club used to be. But while all this was going on Mr Suetta had to get paid and so had Mr Serra.


What I remember of those days was my mother running a “shop” at home in the lounge, selling Jansen swimwear to her lady friends. The brand was the top one in the world at the time, with a big demand which my mother took advantage of. I remember coming back from school and my mother saying:

"No, you can't come in now!" as one lady after another arrived to try on swimsuits and even matching bathing caps. Actually, with the material of those swimsuits then you could easily make a dozen bikinis nowadays!

And then Dad disappeared!

At first he would take the place of one of the construction workers to save one wage, but that was not enough. Somehow or other he met a German by the name of Henry Stahl. Mr Stahl was a quiet man, so quiet I don't think he spoke to me! Mind you, in those days, grown-ups did not have to talk much to kids, did they?
He was an ex-employee of Mercedes-Benz in Germany. He was convinced that there was money to be made buying all the spare parts of models Mercedes was no longer manufacturing, and then selling these to the small garage workshops all the way from Germany down to Algeciras. But Dad had no money to invest!
Just then Salvador Hassan called Dad on the phone.

"Pepe, vente que tengo buenas noticias!"
("Pepe, come over I have some good news!")

Salvador had contacted one of his clients who wanted to invest money, Stephen Wall (later of "Palomo" fame).

"Who is the money for, Salvador?"

"Pepe Bentata, who is trying to open up his own shop."

"Para Pepe? Here is a cheque for £4000. Do not ask him to sign anything. If it's for Pepe I don't need any written contracts or guarantees!"

Frankly, even when I remember this, I feel so proud of my Dad that people had that much confidence in him. Today's equivalent would be about £35,000. So, no matter what Mr Wall did politically, we were always very grateful for the confidence he showed in my Dad when it was most needed.

With that money in hand, Dad and Henry went to Germany. There they bought a second-hand Merc lorry and loaded it with spare parts at virtually giveaway prices since Mercedes-Benz had categorised that stock as obsolete. The new models were far more advanced and did not need those spares. They then drove all the way down from Germany, stopping in every town, seeking out every workshop and garage in each town, and selling a few spares here a few spares there, getting the best price they could for them. Once they reached Algeciras, they had sold all the stock and even the lorry they came in. This took them approximately a month, the month when Dad had disappeared.

With money in hand Dad paid an amount to Mr Suetta and another to Mr Serra and the works continued. Three or four weeks later, after my Barmitzvah, they did the trip again and I believe they did it a third and fourth time too. By then the shop was almost finished.....
But there was no stock to sell. Nor, for that matter, any money left to buy stock. That was when a very good friend of my father's, John Welsh, he of St.Michael's/YORK in the Main Street came home.

" Hello, is Pepe in?" he always pronounced it the English way 'Pep-E'

"John, come on in!"

"Here you are Pepe, I am sure this will come in handy" he gave her father an envelope and left.
John was a man of few words and a huge heart.
In the envelope was a cheque for another £4000, a loan to a friend with no contract or guarantees required.

Those were the days when a gentleman's word was worth something tangible.

I wonder these days how many people would loan the equivalent of £35,000 without a couple of Lawyers present, a contract and several guarantees signed in blood.

By the time we were ready to open, we had run out of money and were living on credit. We needed to paint the backs of all the Showcases in the entrance corridor, the ceiling of the shop, which was of stretched canvas to hide the rotten beams and brackish water down-pipes, the back store room, made up from discarded wooden crates Dad had salvaged, a couple of second-hand chairs and even the toilet in the corner.
The cheapest paint my Dad found were a few tins in baby pink and a few in sky blue. Yes, you guessed it. Dad divided the Showcases into men's and women's, blue and pink, then the pink chair, also a blue chair, the ceiling was blue. And the store room in a mixture of blue and pink dictated by the level of paint left in the cans. Oh yes, the toilet walls had two pink and two blue ones ....and the old wood toilet seat was painted pink too!

To fill in the gaps in the corridor showcases my mother steamed and ironed my father's best suits. He dressed them up in the mannequins and stuck a sign saying "SOLD-more arriving next month"!

Those first years hectic.
Mum doubled as housewife and cashier. We had 2 employees from Spain, Carmela and Francisco. Work days were Monday to Friday, 9am till 8pm.. The shop also opened on Saturday nights after sundown, when our Sabbath was over. And every Sunday morning from 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. to refresh the window displays. Later on, I remember one of my heroes of those days, Isaac Attias, joining us. He was an intrepid salesman and the kind of hard worker that never appears to be working hard yet did all the work seemingly little effort. He was a significant other to me in those days and you'll probably read more about him in other chapters. I well remember Kitty, a lovely, polite and very neat shop assistant, so kind! And Dolly, she was the full time cashier later on, younger than the others and very pretty, now Mrs Hanglin and always still a pleasure to see her.

In those first years TEO sold both Men's and Ladies wear. The lady’s dresses were called frocks then. And we also sold ladies underwear, a very good German brand called Naturana. The rep was Cristobal Montegriffo, who doubled as a fantastic photographer of that era.

By the time I joined the business, at 15 years old, I was not a bad salesman if I say so myself. Obviously, women clients preferred to be attended by a female attendant. But even so, I was quite adept and cool, even serving any lady who wanted underwear.......
Any lady except one!

She was a few years older than me, late teens or early 20s. She had the knack then, and even for many years after, of making me blush from my toes to my head whenever she asked me for an item of lingerie! I remember distinctly it started with her asking for a pink gingham bra, size 36B .... or was it C?... She would look me in the eyes and gesture with her hands the type of bra she wanted. If the normal blood pressure for a healthy 15-year-old boy is 139, every time she came to the shop to ask for this my blood pressure soared to 190 at least! (come to think of it I cannot remember her actually buying the bra!)
Don't tell her, but actually I loved it when she came into the shop!

We also used to have a strong clientele of American tourists then. We used to stock the world-famous Borsalino hats which they loved. Nice people generally, the Amerucans, but occasionally we would get one who was not exactly obnoxious, but definitely "un enterao", knowing it all and having the Almighty Dollar which had an exchange rate of 7/6 (seven shillings & six pence) each. Dad was serving him:

"Do ya’ have suede ties?"

Did we have suede ties? We most certainly did. An Indian firm with several shops in Gib, belonging to the Dialdas family, almost like the aristocracy of the Indian community in Gibraltar then, had a suede skirts & ties factory down in Devils' Tower Road. We used to sell quite a lot of those ties at 10 shillings and sixpence each; 52p in today's money.

"Yes sir," replied my Dad, and opened one of the 3 or 4 drawers we had of them.

"We have them in various colours and...."

"How much are they in American dollars?"

"That's 10 shillings and 6 pence, ...$1.50 " replied Dad.

"Nah, nah ... I want better quality than that. I want the best quality suede ties you have in your shop!" insisted the American.

Dad, coolly placed the ties back in the drawer and moved to another drawer bringing out the same ties with a lot of fancy gesturing of the hands.

"We have these …..but these are very expensive ….they are the best ties in the market and cost $10 each! They are real coño-skin suede!"

Yes you read it right that is what Dad said.

Mum at the cashier’s desk was so embarrassed she turned around not to look.

Isaac held back a laugh and went into the store.

And me? I could not believe that my father had used the "C" word so glibly and so emphatically.

On hearing this the Americans replied (not to be outdone):

"Coño-skin! I've been looking for this everywhere! I'll take 6 in different colours!"

We had several incidents over the years that were very funny but this one became the classic and in my memory; it is still there and it still that.