An old friend recently lured me into the lair of one Mr. Ernie Cassetta. A living legend at the celebrated intersection where First and Second streets collide and transform into Monterey Highway, Ernie has operated car lots in San Jose longer than I’ve been alive. As he and I sit in his makeshift command center, decades-old furniture surrounds us, each piece oozing with character.
His desk is an original, he tells me, dating back to the ’50s. The four-drawer filing cabinet, aged like a fine Cabernet and jammed with years of paperwork, seems straight out of Raymond Chandler. I’m expecting Marlowe to emerge any second and slip his fedora hat onto the rack. It’s fantastic. The point of all this? Ernie is a fountain of history. All I can do is slump down into a comfy old couch and let the conversation sail.
At the ripe young age of 94, Ernie still puts in long hours and even repossesses cars, but he’s a lot more congenial than Harry Dean Stanton in Repo Man. A fixture at this property, Ernie schools me on life’s lessons with the soft-spoken repartee of someone whose decades have taught him it’s better to give than to receive. People seem to forget the virtues of modesty and humility, he tells me. Now that I’m thinking about it, I never knew either of my grandfathers, but they’d probably be Ernie’s age if they were alive.
As I become one with the cozy couch, Ernie’s life story unfolds. His dad emigrated from Italy, entering the USA through Ellis Island with $2.50 to his name. Ernie was born in San Jose, on George Street, in 1921, when hard-working Italians ruled the landscape. Growing up with many siblings, dinner felt like an army mess hall. They didn’t have much money. For fun, he hitchhiked to Santa Cruz, long before Highway 17 existed. Traveling over the tiny mountain road took all day. Around the same time, he remembers when trolleys ran all over San Jose, before the idiots in charge ripped them out and sent the resulting metal off to Japan.
“The metal returned to us via torpedos,” he laughs, referring to Pearl Harbor, but with no animosity.
Ernie participated in WWII and tells me war is garbage. Killing more people over and over again doesn’t accomplish anything, yet politicians never learn. But I sense no hostility in his voice. Again, his genial, humble nature is infectious. Humility just oozes out of him. I’m almost at peace just contemplating the scene here in the command center: the ancient furniture, the box of VHS tapes on the floor, the decades-old bulletin board with car keys hanging on it, and even some 1950s-era photos of when he used to operate three different car lots.
I seem to wind up in these scenarios all the time. It happens automatically. I guess natives of a feather yak together. Call it luck. Or fate. Or simply being sentenced to life in San Jose with no parole. I jest, of course, but when Ernie starts mentioning the old pop songs he regularly sings at Vahl’s in Alviso, I feel an odd sense of camaraderie. All I can possibly offer in response is that I grew up playing many of those same tunes on a beat-up Lowrey Genie organ from Stevens Music in Willow Glen. I fumbled through Sinatra stuff at age 12, using dorky viola and trombone sounds on that organ, so in a strange way I know the songs Ernie talks about. We both laugh out loud.
“We have music in our hearts,” he tells me.
Except for his army stint, all of Ernie’s 94 years have unfolded in San Jose. Here, on this comfortable couch, I am only experiencing a few moments’ worth of his life story. And what a yarn it is. There aren’t many people left in this town from his generation, let alone those who can go out and repossesses cars, work 12-hour days and then sing at Vahl’s every other weekend. I hope I can still remember the chords for “My Way” when I arrive at his age. How does he manage such a variety of interests?
“I keep busy,” Ernie says. “It’s occupational therapy.”
