Fahrenheit 1600 (Victor Kozol) (21 page)

Chapter 43

Starting Over

Vic finally has a way forward, giving him new
energy and resolve. First, he shows Bob Postupack around and orients him to the
funeral home he is buying from Vic’s dad. Here, Vic notices that this guy has
no personality and the people skills of a robot. While not surly, Bob is clipped
and almost military-like in his responses. Vic tells him that all the embalming
chemicals are in the closet next to the morgue. Bob’s response was, “roger
that, copy.” This is just something to file away for future reference as Bob
will be dealing with the Kozol families. Vic has his own future to deal with.

Karen and Vic are living in her apartment in
Scranton, eight miles from Duryea. Vic is commuting back and forth setting up
his new business. He gets all the approvals and has the 10 ton retort relocated
one mile away to Mike’s garage. Carpenters build a small office up front and
electricians are busy hooking up the retort. Next, Vic forms a Pennsylvania
Corporation. The Duryea Crematory, LLC is now ready to commence operations.

Since Vic is not in the funeral business, it is now
much easier promote it to the area funeral directors. But, the big news is that
the nearby and closest crematory, Evergreen Cemetery, is going to discontinue
cremations because the owners are old and want to retire. Their obsolete
equipment needs expensive fire brick relining. Also, it won’t pass the EPA’s
more stringent pollution requirements.

Here are two hundred cases only five miles away. If
Vic can capture most of this business he will be a success from day one. He can
charge the directors, $300 per case and do it for about $100 including costs.
He could then clear $40,000 a year. He never made that much in his failing
little funeral home. Vic and Karen have a reception for the area funeral
directors. (Vic knows how to provide beer, wine, and snacks to party
attendees.)

That evening, they welcome nearly fifty guests with
their wives. Karen and Vic meet and schmooze the people like pros. Most are
interested in the new service and the ones that are only there to be on the ‘find
out committee’ won’t matter anyway. Vic, with Karen’s and her family’s help, is
on his way to his first successful venture in his life.

Chapter 44

Success

If you don’t count the time that Vic was earning
thousands for mob cremations, this was the first time in his life that he is
finally successful financially. He is easily making the rent and lease payments
on his crematory. Because the funeral directors pay Vic up-front for each case
as he does them, he has a ready and steady cash flow. He now can finally focus
on his and Karen’s personal needs. They want to get out of Karen’s small
apartment in Scranton and find a more suitable home for a family to live in.
They are looking around Duryea at some larger apartments and even some homes
that they might be able to afford.

Karen again seems to be in the right place at the
right time. Duryea has an old time drugstore/pharmacy in the downtown district.
Dating back to the early nineteen hundreds it is a well-known area landmark. It
has large windows with awnings that roll out on the outside, and inside there
is a marble soda fountain with the old stainless steel dispensing equipment
still in use. There even is a wooden barrel standing on the counter that
dispenses draft birch beer. They make Cokes by putting syrup in a glass and
then adding carbonated water. The large globe incandescent lights hang from a
metal embossed ceiling. This place is right out of central casting for an old
movie. Karen is there to pick up some allergy medications. So, she goes to the
back of the store where the pharmacy window is and gets in line. She is
standing behind two older women waiting for their turn with the pharmacist.

After eavesdropping, inadvertently, on the
conversation her ears perk up when she hears that the speaker is a Mrs.
Borovich. She is relating a story to her friend about her husband Jake
Borovich. Jake is a longtime Polish Funeral Director in Duryea, and a
competitor to Vic’s old family funeral home. It seems that Jake had a severe
paralyzing stroke earlier in the year. Unable to conduct funerals, it was the
family’s duty to notify the State Board of Funeral Directors.

To continue, they would have to hire a licensed
Funeral Director to serve as supervisor to operate Jake’s business. After a
couple of attempts, Maria Borovich, can’t find anybody interested in being a
supervisor. However, Jake did have a handyman that he trained to embalm bodies,
direct funerals, and do much of the other technical and professional work when
Jake was away or indisposed. All of this is illegal under State law, but as in
many small funeral operations, no one is going to complain unless something
goes wrong. Jake’s wife was lulled into complacency because old Ned the
handyman was carrying on with the funerals quite well. He was even forging
Jake’s signature on the death certificates.

Being a small town, the third funeral director a Joe
Jaresky knows exactly what is going on. Joe files a written complaint with the
State Board of Funeral Directors in Harrisburg spelling out these violations.
After sending in an investigator, the State Board has a hearing two weeks later
they notify Mrs. Borovich to cease and desist from operating the funeral home
unless she can find a supervisor immediately. She is also fined for the
violations.

After three weeks, she is unable to hire anyone and
notifies the State Board. This results in an immediate order to close the
funeral home, delist the phone number, and take in the outside sign. In one fell
swoop the Borovich Funeral Home, after forty years of operations, is out of
business.

Joe Jaresky hopes to capitalize on this and get some
of Borovich’s business. However, Borovich’s friends were outraged upon learning
that Jaresky caused all of this just when the Borovich’s were up against it.

Karen can’t help but take all of this in with
increased interest. She sees a possible opportunity for her and Vic in all of
this. Karen rushes home and relates all of this to Vic.

Vic says, “Yeh, I feel sorry for Jake, but not Joe
Jaresky. He was an opportunist in all of this.”

Karen comes back with, “Vic what if we offer to buy
the place from Maria Borovich and reactivate it using your license and name?”

“Well, the Borovich name is over, but I could call
it the Victor Kozol Funeral Home.”

Karen responds, “And what is wrong with your name in
this town after all of the heroic publicity you got? Plus we need a place to
live. This could double as our new home.”

“Okay Karen, issue settled, I will make an overture
to Mrs. Borovich.”

Vic made an appointment to see Mrs. Borovich at the
funeral home. Things have not improved for the Borovichs. Jake had to be placed
in a nursing home and Maria lives in a place far too big for her alone. They
agree that after getting the property appraised, Vic could buy the property and
the funeral home equipment would go along with the deal.

Vic observes that the place is old and needs
remodeling; however it is bigger and better laid out with more land around the
house than his old funeral home. There is a three car garage in the back lot
and enough room to put in a twenty car parking lot right behind the funeral
home. These were both things that the old Kozol Funeral Home lacked.

Vic is now on his way to a second deal in one year
with no help from his parents. He secures a $150,000 loan from a local bank on
the strength of his cash flow from his now very profitable crematory. He knows
a couple of in-town funeral directors might not use his crematory when he goes
into the funeral business, but the out-of-town directors won’t care. The
tradeoff should be more than worth it.

After studying Jake’s books he sees that the place
was doing about thirty-five funeral per year. Not great, but a base to expand
from. The apartment is out of the 1950s, but it is large with three bedrooms.
Karen thinks it is great, because it is twice the size of the old funeral home
apartment above his father’s place. For the second time a very positive thing
is happening for Vic and Karen.

Epilogue

Vic and Karen have never been busier. Karen has
quit her nursing job in Scranton and is now the number one assistant to Vic
around the funeral home. She is also the secretary for the business. Vic is
finally that PR person his father always wanted him to be. He is involved in
the community and his church. You can actually see him and Karen attending the
10:00 A.M. Mass every Sunday at Holy Rosary. Fred Schmidt, Karen’s father, has
taken an early retirement from the plastics plant and is running the crematory
for Vic. His mechanical skills fit in perfectly to operate and maintain a
sophisticated piece of equipment like a retort.

Vic is so busy with funerals that he needed help on
all fronts. He has hired an intern from the Northampton Funeral Service School
to serve his one-year residency at the funeral home. This doesn’t count the
three part timer retirees who drive and help with the business. For the first
time, Vic is fully involved with the funeral business. His client families are
being given the service and attention they deserve, and they are responding
positively to Vic’s new funeral business.

Word on the street is try Vic, he is doing a great
job and is a caring and compassionate operator. Not to mention that the bodies
now look like they should at viewings and the place is clean and neat. The
funeral volume, just the first year, climbed to sixty-five and the crematory
did over 250 cases in addition. Where did this nearly doubling of the business
come from? Well Vic calls his place Victor Kozol Funeral Home successor to Jake
Borovich.

He not only kept all of Jake’s old clients, but took
a big chunk of work from Joe Jaresky, since Jake’s widow recommended Vic
everywhere she went telling her story of Joe’s disloyalty in taking down her
husband. The third piece of business came from his old place now run by Bob
Postupack. Bob seems to not be able to relate to his client families with his
robotic, clinical personality. Vic, with the family name, is right there to
take in the disgruntled client families.

Karen is now pregnant with her first child due in
five months. Vic feels that he can grow to over one hundred funerals in the
near future as Joe Jaresky has put his place up for sale and poor Bob Postupack
has filed for bankruptcy. He feels sorry that his father was caught holding a
second mortgage on the place and stands to lose $50,000.

However, Vic is letting no moss grow under his feet.
He has bought a lot on the outskirts of Duryea and is planning on building a
new funeral home with no steps for the elderly and an adequately sized chapel
that will seat up to one hundred fifty people. There will be parking for over
fifty cars and it will be the only one designed to be a funeral home in the
area. In three years, Vic has gone from the bad boy in the town to a success
story no one would have predicted. The unsung hero in all of this is Karen who
made Vic the person he is now. Even Aunt Sophie tends the front door for Vic at
Lithuanian viewings.

Acknowledgements

The idea for this novel is mine, but it never
would have gotten to you without the help of many other people. First, my
loving wife of forty-six years told me, after I let the project drop for three
years, to revive it. She saw it as a good tale that should be published. Thank
you Cynthia.

Secondly, my two daughters have each given me help
and input into the finished product. Natalie helped me shape it and provided
the 80s culture and music input along with streamlining clumsy syntax and added
ideas and a character like Sophie. She has a mind more fertile than mine and
has spent much time helping from Berlin, Germany where she and her family
reside.

Annette, my older daughter from Baltimore, helped me
navigate the inscrutable menus of a computer word processor. She tried her best
to bring me into the twenty first century with digital formats.  All of
you have cheered me on and forced me to see this thing through. I can’t say
thank you enough.

Patti Knoles, how can I begin to thank you for your
patience and talent in bringing my book to life with your extraordinary cover
design? You are true jewel. I’ll be back with book two.

To Philip and Ginger Marks editor and publisher; I
had no experience in this field and you two have made it easy and possible for
me to complete this work. Thank you.