Timetable’s acquisition and its subsequent growth generated so much work that I started to get overwhelmed. I now had to deliver brochures not only in New York, but in Philadelphia and Washington as well. I would drive two hundred and fifty miles to Washington, work twenty-four hours delivering all my brochures, detour fifty miles to spend twelve hours delivering in Philadelphia, and then return to New York. I’d work all day and into the night in the office talking to airlines and tourist attractions and then spend the whole late night and early morning for three days delivering in the city. Fridays I’d work a full day and then drive two hundred miles to Boston to see Debbie, making sure to return by three a.m. Sunday morning so I could get in a full day’s work on Monday before leaving for Washington again.

I know I said I love to drive, but this was getting to be too much, even for me. I was on the way to putting a hundred thousand miles a year on my car. Half the time I was on the road. I was so tired I kept seeing spooks running across the highway. I’d slap myself to stay awake. One time a state trooper pulled up as I was stopped along Interstate 95 in Delaware.

“Why,” he wanted to know, “are you doing push-ups on the shoulder of the road at two a.m. in the middle of a blizzard?”

“I’m just trying to stay awake, Officer, so I can finish my deliveries.”

“Son, I think maybe you’re working just a little too hard,” he said, laughing, before driving off.

I was. Maximizing profits by doing the work myself was one thing, but I could barely function anymore. Instead of pumping out sales calls, I’d sometimes slump over my desk and just fall asleep for an hour or more. I hired some deliverymen to help me. Father Eric signed back on. I still had to go out and supervise, but at least I wasn’t so tired that I slept on my desk. Now I could make sales calls all day. As more clients now started to sign, I could again no longer keep up with things. I needed someone to share the management burdens.

At just that time a little Kosher dairy restaurant on Pelham Parkway in the Bronx, where I used to eat lunch every day, was going out of business. A few years before this, the owner had given up managing a chain of nursing homes to pursue the dream of owning his own business. For a while he had prospered till demographic changes in the neighborhood left him without clients. Wow, I thought, someone who could manage a chain of nursing homes and run his own restaurant for years was a versatile manager and could probably help me run my brochure business. I was right. Jerry Kleinman streamlined our operations, sold accounts, and took some of the pressure off me. Soon I actually had some leisure time. At first I used this time to acquire my competitors, who were delivering brochures in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Soon, with a virtual monopoly on our service and Jerry signing every new prospect who might appear, I was looking for something to occupy my time.