This was the mid eighties, the roaring eighties. I now spent as much time on the phone with brokers as I did reading bird magazines. Half of the brokerage industry trained by cold calling me. I kept all the certificates in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator in the bird store. I also put a little sum aside in a Swiss Franc denominated annuity, just in case.
Jersey City has a quaint custom, a rite of passage, so to speak.
Adolescents roam about, nearly indiscriminately, committing crimes with abandon. A mob of these malefactors, under cover of darkness, attacked the brick wall of my bird store. Since the owner of the building had collapsed in a drunken stupor, the police were not summoned. With crude burglar tools, the thieves managed to break a small hole in the wall. A thin child squeezed through and, after packing the birds in pillow cases, passed them out to his waiting accomplices.