• Heart Of A Landlord: John Gialuco

    Camden, New Jersey 2010

    Camden, New Jersey 2010

    Posted By John Gialuco

    Well Happy New Year everyone! Good news! On the last week of 2009 the Camden Courier Post announced that the murder rate in Camden was down 40%. This is wonderful news.

    However on January 2, 2010, I received a phone call from Shorty at 5 am that someone broke into High Voltage Al’s house and tried to beat him up. Well Voltage, who is 73 years young, was forced to defend himself, in his own home, by beating up the perpetrator, who I will call Puffer, with a channel lock pliers.

    Mr. John’s tip #1 for the New Year is that you don’t need to have a a gun in your house but a well prepared tool box… a 14 inch pipe wrench (preferably made of aluminum which is lighter for the ladies to swing), a 12 ounce claw hammer, a couple of long screw drivers (12 inches for children and 20 inches for adults) for those challenging dueling moments, a small first aid kit and a power stapler which should be plugged in at all times in your dining room. It’s a very accurate tool for those sprinters who are circling around the dining room table. Not to mention clipping the childrens drawings from school around the house. You might also want to get a small tape recorder or mp3 player. And just to keep the police on their toes, an oven timer so as to show the cops, if and when they arrive, that they took a little to long coming to your rescue.

    To continue. So someone had called the cops and fortunately for Voltage, who carries a small tape recorder in his pocket, recorded the whole tussle so that when the cops arrived, in a timely fashion, he just played the recording to the police. The police told Voltage that he legally defended his life and home and so the cops proceeded to take the Puffer to jail, where he presently is (now 7 am or so on Saturday). Puffer will have to pay Voltage back all the monies for the damages, a broken window, door damage, lock replacement and some furnishings inside. The funny thing is that Puffer was staying there. You see Voltage doesn’t tolerate anyone using drugs in his home and when Voltage found a crack pipe in Puffer’s room he told Puffer to leave and Voltage changed the front door locks. This subsequently led to the break in and assault upon Voltage. Since I haven’t gone into Camden as of yet I will get a clearer story later on today. BTW thanks to Dizzy, who Amy and I celebrated New Years day with at a wonderful dinner in Chinatown, told me there was a money dispute between Voltage and Puffer brewing in the wind.

    I have learned a lesson today and that is that we often get advanced notice of trouble in the air but we tend to dismiss it or not want to get involved, as I chose to do. But it came to me anyway. I didn’t feel it was my business to interfere and rightly or wrongly this event had its repercussions. I might have been able to mitigate Puffer’s anger beforehand, he certainly expressed his anger to me earlier last week…who knows? Puffer, despite his present situation, has shown me that he is a very good mechanic ( he always wanted to learn something he didn’t understand), he can repair almost anything and he always returned anything he borrowed from me. Puffer can be very responsible and direct. We all become very complex as we grow older, a mixed bag for sure. Whatever you take from this story be aware that most people, whatever their station in life, are willing to learn and make up for their wrong decisions. But it can be a tiresome process.

    Live long and Prosper in our new year. Mr. John

    …….To learn more about the chronicles of a Camden, New Jersey landlord, log on to www.camdenchronicles.com…………..

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