To begin this interview Aaron Morgan and I sat at a cluttered kitchen table. Being a regular in the household, I was shocked to find that National Public Radio did not continue to blare over my interview. I was privileged enough to have it turned off for my sake. As we sit down he tells me how much he loves repairing old tools to like-new condition. So, throughout the interview Aaron is tinkering with old sparkplugs, compasses, and a rusty level-ruler. Once he finishes sanding these, he reorganizes the table multiple times, moving the recorder all over the table while talking. He answers questions with his head down staring at the digital recorder in the center of the table as though it were interviewing him.
Growing up, my father was concerned mainly with my mother. He did the fatherly things that you were supposed to do with kids, but he didn’t really know how to show affection or anything like that. He just had expectations and you didn’t do something if you were supposed to do something else. You did what you were supposed to do. My father was an ex-marine from WWII. He was a Cleveland police officer for 26 years after that and retired after 30 years with it. He was a strong disciplinarian. I have 2 older brothers and my mother was a housewife but she would take on part-time jobs. We had a religious Catholic background. I went to Catholic schools for 8 years and then I went to public high school.
I wanted to fly from the time I was probably 6 years old. Well, my Dad liked airplanes and he had taken flying lessons after he was in the service but he never got his pilots license. In fact my senior year of high school I rearranged all my classes so that I only had classes in morning and then I cut out in the afternoon, literally. It took them almost half a year to catch me finally. The reason I cut out was so I could work at a gas station for a buck and a quarter an hour and earn money to take flying lessons. I had to forge my father’s signature on the permission slip because between he and my mother they had issues with…. Well, for my dad it was more like me being able to do something that he couldn’t do. So, when I flew an airplane alone for the first time I couldn’t tell anyone because I had cut out of school doing it. My main drive in life at the time was to get a pilots license and fly airplanes.
I went out and got jobs and I earned money and supported myself. I supported my interests and I was able to do what I wanted to do through my own sweat and working and earning my own way. I started out by working at gas stations when I was 15 years old, which was illegal. I had to work illegally but I managed to work on Friday nights and Saturday nights to give other guys off at a $1 an hour. I got $1.25 an hour when I moved to another gas station when I turned 16. I rebuilt my own Voltswagon engines and stuff and that’s how I learned about aircraft and car engines. Then I got a job at the Penn Central Railroad and I drove trains. I was a railroad fireman for 2 years. I drove trains on the extra board so I drove trains all over the city of Cleveland driving freight trains and moving freight. I would go anywhere as far as Erie PA and west of the west side of Cleveland but I did most of my work in the rail yards in Cleveland. I had my own Voltswagon shop for a while when I did that. I never lost money on a car for the first 15-20 years I was driving cars. I always made money on the cars and that kept me financially sound. I could buy a car and repair it and sell it for more money then I paid for it years later. I primarily did that with Voltswagons and then Porsches. During this time is where I met an engineer, I don’t recall his name, but he gave me the best advice I ever got. “Don’t ever be too busy to make money. When you take a job and you only get paid so much money that’s all the money you are going to make unless you get another job. But if you keep yourself free and look for opportunities you can find opportunities to make legal money and being smart and investing smart to manage your financial stability.”
Then I joined the Air Force. The air force sent me to Lacklan for basic training and then I went to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi for tech training. What I ended up doing was monitoring international circuits and keeping them running well. I got an electronics background and also did work for security. I was issued a top-secret security clearance with crypto clearance through the Air Force. Then, when I got out of the Air Force, my tour of duty was up after 3 ½ years. Since I got accepted to college, they let me out 6 months early.
I got out of the Air Force and got my college degree in 3 years flat with a 3.7 GPA. I used the GI bill to pay for it. I became a certified public accountant with Delout Haskins and Sells, at the time one of the big 8 accounting firms. By doing that I learned how to keep score and how the tax system worked.
Then I became a financial analyst for Crown Zellar paper company, which is a paper manufacturer in Baltimore Ohio. After 2 years of that, I became their purchasing manager and I managed the purchasing department for 4 or 5 years. After that I started my own construction company. Then after 12 years of trying my wife finally got pregnant but she was doing international research and wanted to keep doing that. So, I tried to run the construction company for 1 year after my daughter was born and was unable to do that so I closed the construction company and started a few other small business while I stayed home with my daughter. With the help of a high school girl who had some mental problems, not bad ones but she was just was not 100%. She nannied my daughter until she got in 1st grade and then we ended that. My daughter would go to school and I would stay home and work the various businesses that I had started. Before I started the construction company I was a paper broker for a couple of years. I brokered scrap paper, bought and sold scrap paper, with another paper company. Being a paper broker, that’s a real tough business, and I had a hard time with the way that business is run and the way you have to deal with it. In that business you have to tell people you can do whatever they need or want and when the time comes to do it, if the market is not right you are unable to do it, it just doesn’t happen. It’s just the way the business is. I am a man totally of my word and if I can’t back up my word I have a hard time telling people I can when I know I can’t.
Today I have a patented aircraft instrument that I sell over the Internet. I take orders by phone and fill orders for that. A couple of pilots have told me that the instrument saved their lives. And that’s basically why I got in it, because of the way some people don’t realize what their attitude is or the airplane’s attitude, and they stall the airplane and fall out of the sky and this instrument helps prevent that.
Recently Aarons community has decided to switch from a cheap private garbage service to the Rumpke company. He wasn’t pleased.
Well, the powers that be in the township that we live in, decided that we can pay about 33% more for our trash pick up. So, the ploy that the trash company uses is that the reason you are paying more is because they have recyclables. You put these recyclables in a separate trash can so you can feel good. It’s all about feeling good. You are saving the environment. The reality is, having been in the waste paper business and the recycling business, having actually been there and seeing that; they take that stuff, they pull that aluminum out because they can actually make money off of it, they take the paper and they bale that for recycling. They take the glass and the steel and unless the prices are right they trash it. It goes in the landfills anyhow. You’re suckered into believing that you are actually doing something, when in essence you are being robbed of all the valuables and they are putting the rest of it in the landfills. So, they take money from you and then they make money off of what you give them. It’s like you giving someone all your extra spare change everyday because its too heavy to keep in your pockets. Now you feel good because you don’t have all the weight in your pockets yet they are charging you to take it.
I also have never had or paid for cable television. My daughter has gone to parochial school for 13 years and I have found that by not paying for cable TV I have been able to pay for 9 of those years saving the amount that you pay for cable TV every month and all the other expenses incurred by it. Not to mention the crap that you are bringing into your house that your kid is sitting there watching. You have to constantly correct it.
My American Dream is for the government to just let people alone and let commerce work its own magic. People will make things that other people need and people will buy services that they can’t do for themselves. I have found that it is more beneficial to take care of everything that my family needs and find ways to make money by buying things cheap and selling them for more. If the government would just stay out of that and just let people alone and do it and quit taking part of it for nothing to give it to people who don’t do that and giving it to people who are quote down on their luck. When in reality they make their own luck. You don’t need to have government assistance to pay you money while you are looking for another job and the harder-up you are the harder you will work for a job. You remove that incentive. The government is basically deincentivizing people from doing what they are capable of doing.
I don’t know what I want to do with my future. I don’t plan it either. I’m just going to live it. Dealing with it anymore then that is just crazy.
“Aaron Morgan” is a completely fictional name. While discussing the interview Aaron requested that I use an alias to keep him anonymous. He is very strong willed person and explained it as: If I do this then how is it going to help me? If I tick someone off I end up in worse shape then if I don’t do it. Also, the government has got itself so deeply fixed into our colleges and that is where they look for people that they think could be threatening to them. He seems to think that he is one of these dangerous people. So, this was a compromise. While stationed in Japan the locals called him Aaron and well, Morgan is just a name he liked I suppose.
Growing up, my father was concerned mainly with my mother. He did the fatherly things that you were supposed to do with kids, but he didn’t really know how to show affection or anything like that. He just had expectations and you didn’t do something if you were supposed to do something else. You did what you were supposed to do. My father was an ex-marine from WWII. He was a Cleveland police officer for 26 years after that and retired after 30 years with it. He was a strong disciplinarian. I have 2 older brothers and my mother was a housewife but she would take on part-time jobs. We had a religious Catholic background. I went to Catholic schools for 8 years and then I went to public high school.
I wanted to fly from the time I was probably 6 years old. Well, my Dad liked airplanes and he had taken flying lessons after he was in the service but he never got his pilots license. In fact my senior year of high school I rearranged all my classes so that I only had classes in morning and then I cut out in the afternoon, literally. It took them almost half a year to catch me finally. The reason I cut out was so I could work at a gas station for a buck and a quarter an hour and earn money to take flying lessons. I had to forge my father’s signature on the permission slip because between he and my mother they had issues with…. Well, for my dad it was more like me being able to do something that he couldn’t do. So, when I flew an airplane alone for the first time I couldn’t tell anyone because I had cut out of school doing it. My main drive in life at the time was to get a pilots license and fly airplanes.
I went out and got jobs and I earned money and supported myself. I supported my interests and I was able to do what I wanted to do through my own sweat and working and earning my own way. I started out by working at gas stations when I was 15 years old, which was illegal. I had to work illegally but I managed to work on Friday nights and Saturday nights to give other guys off at a $1 an hour. I got $1.25 an hour when I moved to another gas station when I turned 16. I rebuilt my own Voltswagon engines and stuff and that’s how I learned about aircraft and car engines. Then I got a job at the Penn Central Railroad and I drove trains. I was a railroad fireman for 2 years. I drove trains on the extra board so I drove trains all over the city of Cleveland driving freight trains and moving freight. I would go anywhere as far as Erie PA and west of the west side of Cleveland but I did most of my work in the rail yards in Cleveland. I had my own Voltswagon shop for a while when I did that. I never lost money on a car for the first 15-20 years I was driving cars. I always made money on the cars and that kept me financially sound. I could buy a car and repair it and sell it for more money then I paid for it years later. I primarily did that with Voltswagons and then Porsches. During this time is where I met an engineer, I don’t recall his name, but he gave me the best advice I ever got. “Don’t ever be too busy to make money. When you take a job and you only get paid so much money that’s all the money you are going to make unless you get another job. But if you keep yourself free and look for opportunities you can find opportunities to make legal money and being smart and investing smart to manage your financial stability.”
Then I joined the Air Force. The air force sent me to Lacklan for basic training and then I went to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi for tech training. What I ended up doing was monitoring international circuits and keeping them running well. I got an electronics background and also did work for security. I was issued a top-secret security clearance with crypto clearance through the Air Force. Then, when I got out of the Air Force, my tour of duty was up after 3 ½ years. Since I got accepted to college, they let me out 6 months early.
I got out of the Air Force and got my college degree in 3 years flat with a 3.7 GPA. I used the GI bill to pay for it. I became a certified public accountant with Delout Haskins and Sells, at the time one of the big 8 accounting firms. By doing that I learned how to keep score and how the tax system worked.
Then I became a financial analyst for Crown Zellar paper company, which is a paper manufacturer in Baltimore Ohio. After 2 years of that, I became their purchasing manager and I managed the purchasing department for 4 or 5 years. After that I started my own construction company. Then after 12 years of trying my wife finally got pregnant but she was doing international research and wanted to keep doing that. So, I tried to run the construction company for 1 year after my daughter was born and was unable to do that so I closed the construction company and started a few other small business while I stayed home with my daughter. With the help of a high school girl who had some mental problems, not bad ones but she was just was not 100%. She nannied my daughter until she got in 1st grade and then we ended that. My daughter would go to school and I would stay home and work the various businesses that I had started. Before I started the construction company I was a paper broker for a couple of years. I brokered scrap paper, bought and sold scrap paper, with another paper company. Being a paper broker, that’s a real tough business, and I had a hard time with the way that business is run and the way you have to deal with it. In that business you have to tell people you can do whatever they need or want and when the time comes to do it, if the market is not right you are unable to do it, it just doesn’t happen. It’s just the way the business is. I am a man totally of my word and if I can’t back up my word I have a hard time telling people I can when I know I can’t.
Today I have a patented aircraft instrument that I sell over the Internet. I take orders by phone and fill orders for that. A couple of pilots have told me that the instrument saved their lives. And that’s basically why I got in it, because of the way some people don’t realize what their attitude is or the airplane’s attitude, and they stall the airplane and fall out of the sky and this instrument helps prevent that.
Recently Aarons community has decided to switch from a cheap private garbage service to the Rumpke company. He wasn’t pleased.
Well, the powers that be in the township that we live in, decided that we can pay about 33% more for our trash pick up. So, the ploy that the trash company uses is that the reason you are paying more is because they have recyclables. You put these recyclables in a separate trash can so you can feel good. It’s all about feeling good. You are saving the environment. The reality is, having been in the waste paper business and the recycling business, having actually been there and seeing that; they take that stuff, they pull that aluminum out because they can actually make money off of it, they take the paper and they bale that for recycling. They take the glass and the steel and unless the prices are right they trash it. It goes in the landfills anyhow. You’re suckered into believing that you are actually doing something, when in essence you are being robbed of all the valuables and they are putting the rest of it in the landfills. So, they take money from you and then they make money off of what you give them. It’s like you giving someone all your extra spare change everyday because its too heavy to keep in your pockets. Now you feel good because you don’t have all the weight in your pockets yet they are charging you to take it.
I also have never had or paid for cable television. My daughter has gone to parochial school for 13 years and I have found that by not paying for cable TV I have been able to pay for 9 of those years saving the amount that you pay for cable TV every month and all the other expenses incurred by it. Not to mention the crap that you are bringing into your house that your kid is sitting there watching. You have to constantly correct it.
My American Dream is for the government to just let people alone and let commerce work its own magic. People will make things that other people need and people will buy services that they can’t do for themselves. I have found that it is more beneficial to take care of everything that my family needs and find ways to make money by buying things cheap and selling them for more. If the government would just stay out of that and just let people alone and do it and quit taking part of it for nothing to give it to people who don’t do that and giving it to people who are quote down on their luck. When in reality they make their own luck. You don’t need to have government assistance to pay you money while you are looking for another job and the harder-up you are the harder you will work for a job. You remove that incentive. The government is basically deincentivizing people from doing what they are capable of doing.
I don’t know what I want to do with my future. I don’t plan it either. I’m just going to live it. Dealing with it anymore then that is just crazy.
“Aaron Morgan” is a completely fictional name. While discussing the interview Aaron requested that I use an alias to keep him anonymous. He is very strong willed person and explained it as: If I do this then how is it going to help me? If I tick someone off I end up in worse shape then if I don’t do it. Also, the government has got itself so deeply fixed into our colleges and that is where they look for people that they think could be threatening to them. He seems to think that he is one of these dangerous people. So, this was a compromise. While stationed in Japan the locals called him Aaron and well, Morgan is just a name he liked I suppose.
great
ReplyDeletenice.
ReplyDeleteThis guy sounds amazing...i wish i could meet him
ReplyDelete