#bernard olcott

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AFTERMATH, OR GINGER'S RIDE

AFTERMATH, OR GINGER'S RIDE A wrap up of the blog equating Mustangs with life.

This is Ginger, a peppy, lively 1966 Ford Mustang.

Ginger was a present I bought myself in April 1992 for less than $7,000. A corn farmer in Minnesota had bought the car disassembled and completed a loving restoration, using the original color, navy blue metallic. He trailered the car from the Midwest to Weehawken and unloaded it in front of the office one Saturday morning.

She had a grippy 3…

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[plusplusjames]

THE FINEST ESCAPE, PART 2

THE FINEST ESCAPE, PART 2 A most unexpected escape route presented itself. And I took it!

I guess solutions to problems make themselves known in the strangest and the most unexpected of circumstances. Like flying mouses.

Take my Dad, for example (or Please!). He had made his greatest escape from his under-privileged origins as a Merchant Marine.  Sailor that he was, though, he was not able to elude the imprisonment of old age infirmities. In later life, as my prison warden, I, too,…

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[plusplusjames]

THE FINEST ESCAPE, PART 1

THE FINEST ESCAPE, PART 1

Yup, this is a repeat. But it sets the stage for my new story THE FINEST ESCAPE, PART 2 due next week.

The Bernard Olcott Story started off 2016 with a rewrite of my post “THE LOST WEEKEND” focusing on the Academy Award (and Cannes!) winning movie of the same name from 1946.  That post promised the following stories to come:

• the biggest movie of 1946 (THE LOST WEEKEND), • the 3rd Avenue El(incl…

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[plusplusjames]

PANOPLY OF SWAGGER, PART 2

On October 19, 1987, while the stock market was tanking, I called my deadbeat stock broker to place a trade. "I want to short you guys 100 shares" I said to his trading assistant. I was annoyed. I had good reason to be.

THE CALL will be ready to go next week.  In the the meantime, please enjoy this continuation of the PANOPLY series.  This part 2 elaborates on my post, “SCRATCH ON THE POOL TABLE OF LIFE,” and goes on from there.

People who marched to Dad’s doorstep with investment ideas, at first, were either extraordinarily interesting or entertaining.

Take Huntington Hartford, for instance. Though unknown to…

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[plusplusjames]

PANOPLY OF SWAGGER, PART 1

PANOPLY OF SWAGGER, PART 1

A big task just fell on my desk, which will take up all of my spare time for the next few weeks.  So it’s back to the repeats.  My next story, THE CALL, is in my head, I just need to find the time to write it.  in the meantime, I will rerun THE PANOPLY OF SWAGGER stories as a sequential series. They are important to The Bernard Olcott Story.

Pictured above, beautiful Stockholm.

Last week in my…

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[plusplusjames]

MESSAGES FROM THE UNIVERSE

MESSAGES FROM THE UNIVERSE From the worst of times...  The universe sends a lifeline.  A potential way out. I was just aware enough to grab the message.

Life goes on. Several months later, on May 18th, 1995, I was in my Ford Escort wagon with Peter Fennel, Chief Patent Counsel of Robinson Proprietary Limited, a new potential client based in Sydney, Australia. He was one of the many leads I had developed from the annual International Trade Mark Association (“INTA”) meeting held every Spring.

Robinson had a medium-sized portfolio of patents to…

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PAIR OF DEUCES, PART 4

PAIR OF DEUCES, PART 4 Working in #familybusiness can lead to all kinds of curious circumstances. What if you care more about the #product than the #boss?

Nine months after the botched installations at Mark Chapman’s Trade Mark Office and Molecules R Us, Inc., it was a chilly late February morning in 1995. I was sitting at my desk on the second floor back at the Weehawken office. During this period, I was responsible for marketing with no, as in zero, authority to actually get much done.

Suddenly, I had developed a new-found interest in curing our…

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[plusplusjames]

FIVE SELECTIONS FROM DAD'S IPOD, PART DEUX!

FIVE SELECTIONS FROM DAD'S IPOD, PART DEUX! Dad's favorite song, apparently to be played in tribute to him this coming Thursday on the radio!

The main point from part one is that Dad’s favorite song, of all time, is…

wait for it…

“You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine” by Lou Rawls.  It’s a rich piece of music.  There’s a wall of sound and verve that just swirls behind the track.  Love oozing out, dripping on the floor underneath your speaker.  Soaring vocals.  Subtle piano to build up the tension…

I really don’t know why this song…

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