Saturday Story - new - Max Zinn

 MAX1 - SATURDAY STORY - PART I

I’m starting a new story. There is excitement about starting something new. This story has been floating around in my head for a while. Before me is a blank slate. I hope my story will be interesting - maybe even entertaining.

Robert Frost: “I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering”. (And writing a book - is the same)

*****

Max Zinn finished his dual master’s degree in law and business (really a joint JD/MBA degree.  

Max (short for Maximillion) was the heir apparent to the Camposi import business. His father, (Robert Zinn) had married into the family by marrying Graziela Camposi.  Since Max was about five years old, he had been tutored in Italian foods and business. He spent every other summer in Italy with his grandparents.  

The imported Italian foods were at high-end Italian restaurants in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The Camposi brand was the top brand in Olive Oils, olives, and Italian pasta. Grocery stores put the Camposi brands at eye level.  

The headquarters for the American branch of Camposi Foods was in Greenwich, Connecticut. Products were shipped from Italy to New York and then trucked the few miles to the Camposi Warehouse.  

Max attended Catholic schools, including college at Fairfield University and a dual JD/MBA program at Fordham in New York City.  

The Zinn (and Camposi) families were Catholic in a part of the country where Catholics were a majority. And when dealing with Italian foods, being Catholic was an asset. They donated to various Catholic works and advertised in Catholic parish bulletins. 

Like many Catholics in the area, Max attended Mass - some of the time. He didn’t flaunt his faith and generally lived his faith, such as avoiding meat on Fridays during Lent.   It wasn’t that Max didn’t have faith, but it had been so beaten into him growing up that it was part of his life. If there was an accident on I-95, he automatically made the sign of the cross and prayed a Hail Mary for the people involved in the accident.

Now, his Mom was a little more religious, with various icons of the Blessed Mother and crucifixes around their home in Greenwich. She had grown up in Italy, came to the United States for her education, and married Robert Zinn from a good Catholic family in Fairfield, Connecticut.  

Robert Zinn had been a business student and had worked in the Camposi office in Greenwich. His father ran an import business - wines, pasta, meats, and related items.  

The wedding of Robert and Graziela had been in Naples, Italy, at the Cathedral there, but with a reception at St. Catherine of Siena parish in Greenwich.  

Max was the eldest of their four children, followed by Maria, Alfonzo, and Mario. And it was apparent that he was going into the Camposi family business.

Max was fluent in English and Italian and acquired a reasonable knowledge of French, Spanish, and German from his summers in Italy.  

He spent the year after graduation in Italy with his mother’s family - learning the production side of the company. He worked long hours in the olive groves, with the olive presses and the bottling of olive oil. Plus, he learned about tomatoes and tomato sauce, paste and purees, and every possible pasta form, from angel hair to ziti.  

This year, Max worked with cousin Lorenzo in the family olive groves outside of Materi, Italy. One day, Max picked up a subtle aroma. Max had noticed the smell before, but this was the first time it really made an impression. Olives emit a slight scent when ripening. He could tell that the olives were getting within a couple of days of being fully ripe.  

Camposi sells ripe (black) olives in unique jars and unripe (green) olives in a different-style jars. Their products have distinguished themselves by their quality and by their packaging.  

But, for Camposi, olive oil is a more significant part of their revenue. Olive oils come primarily from green (but close to ripening) olives.  

Max became “the nose” of the olive grove. It seems as if he could smell diseases and wilt before others could see and identify the issues. Likewise, he could sense when green olives started changing to black olives.  

When Max (or others say, “It is time to pick”), the olive grove becomes a hotbed of activity. Camposi uses the traditional rake method to pull the olives off the branches. Of course, it has been updated to use vibrating rakes to help shake the olives off the trees. Tarps are placed under the trees to catch the falling olives. The Camposi estate had traditional-looking buildings, but inside was some state-of-the-art processing. 

Max then mastered the processing of the olives into oil. They sold more (and got a higher return) on Extra Virgin Olive Oil - cold pressed and not refined, while regular olive oil is heated and refined. 

Max had an excellent introduction to olive growing over the years, but this summer was an intense internship. To be the company’s future, he needed to know everything.  

He worked from sunrise to sunset most days. And in between, he studied books, periodicals, and agricultural literature about olives. It was a combination of instruction and on-the-job learning. 

Traditionally, olive groves used animal manure for fertilizer, and some growers used artificial fertilizers. What was the trade-off? Every year, the University of Bari (or, in Italian, the University of Bari Aldo Moro) introduced new hybrid olives with better drought disease resistance and produced bigger and more profitable olives. The university had professors who the Olive Growers Guild endowed their salaries. (But the Guild also expected the University to help them).

Max attended the summer conferences (and Camposi was a major sponsor). There was an abundance of whispering behind the scenes.

Question: “Who is that young man who seems to be an American?”

Answer: “He is Adolfo Camposi’s grandson.  His mother was Graziela Camposi.”

And the older Italian olive growers plotted to have Max date their unmarried daughters. And his parents and grandparents wanted him to find a nice Italian girl during the year in Italy. Max dated some girls - some from fine families competing with the Camposi brand - other than Rosa Trella, but none seemed to fit into his life, not even Rosa, who he did like.

The daughters reported to their parents and grandparents that the dates were little more than Max’s probing about their family businesses.

Mario Lucci remarked, “A smart one, that boy. He is going to change the olive growing market.”

*****

Max also mastered raising hard durum wheat and then processing the grain into various paste shapes. Likewise, he learned about tomatoes and making pasta sauce.  

The final lessons were on packaging, shipping, finance, and business.

While he would return many times in the future, he returned to Greenwich, Connecticut, when the year was up.  

Max’s academic background with a Master’s in Business Administration and Law Degree would be coupled with practical in-the-field knowledge.

*****

Robert Zinn (and the rest of the Camposi board) want to start an American branch of the family. They had trained Max on the various components and given him the joint law and business master’s degree.  

The board (with Max as a junior board member) started looking for locations. California already had a good reputation as an olive production state. And most of the California locations also were ideal for the needed plum tomatoes. They acquired 2,000 acres of land near Durham, California, under American Olive Groves. Those in the know knew that American Olive Groves (AOG) was a subsidiary of Camposi Imports, but it wasn’t promoted as such.

The land already had olive groves on it. The Camposis didn’t start to change anything on the Durham estate. A dirty-looking, grubby young man applied to work in the olive groves and spoke reasonable Spanish and was hired. That grubby young man was Maximillion Zinn. Only the grove manager knew that the young man was Max Zinn, heir to the Camposi business.

*****

Max fit in. He had a one-bedroom apartment in Durham. The furniture came from a thrift shop. He had a twenty-year-old pickup truck. Max didn’t talk about himself much to the others. He was a gringo - but an odd one. Max seemed to be primarily American but also Italian and could understand Spanish enough. He could communicate in a broken Spanish-English-Italian style. The others at the grove soon called him “Max” and accepted him.  

Max had a background story. He was from Lampasas, Texas. His father and mother divorced when he was thirteen. He lived with his mother, graduated from High School in Pampasas, and then worked odd jobs. He had worked on a struggling olive farm in Texas but had some trouble and had moved on. He alluded to a fight and too much beer without any actual details. If the crew went into Durham for a beer after work, Max would join them infrequently and then only order coke. He had a California driver’s license with a Barstow address. (Max had lived there for two months, mostly to get a driver’s license and to work on manual jobs.)

Max had seen “Undercover Boss” on television and tried acting as a migrant worker.    Within a month, he was accepted at the olive grove. At his apartment, he had a laptop computer and some exercise weights.  

He walked through the grove and practiced his aroma skills. Although the smells differed from the Italian groves, Max still could tell when the olives were ripe, and disease threatened the trees.  

Max also ‘heard’ the trees calling out for water during dry spells. He also heard the trees a few days later say ‘we’re good.” 

On the last day of the month, he sent an encrypted analysis to his father and the grove’s manager.  

In his report to his father, Max described the olive grove and ways of improving it - seeing the vision of making this olive farm into a real Camposi olive farm. 

In Max’s report to the manager, he mostly just reported on life and learning at the farm. After six months after the harvest was in, he noticed Juan Garza taking bags of olives home with him. Juan seemed to have extra money, so Max suspected that Juan was cheating on the olive farm. Sure, some of the others took a small bag of olives to eat, but the quantity of olives that Juan took was conspicuous. The manager checked out Juan and found that Juan was stealing olives and selling them to a buyer who took them to Chico, California, and they split the profit. Juan was fired. The other employees whispered that they knew that Juan had been cheating the farm and that he deserved to get fired.

Max took a trip during the summer months when little was done on the farm. He packed his truck with camping gear and said he was hiking in Oregon or Montana. He took off to Portland, where he got a flight back to Greenwich, Connecticut.  

Max’s father had one of his staff gather some pictures and information that Max downloaded on his phone so he’d have a real story when he returned.  

Max noticed the familiar aroma in the grove as the harvest season neared and reported that to the manager. The manager sneered, ‘Those olives won’t be ready for another two weeks.’ 

Max begged to differ and invited the manager to join him in the olive grove. Max grabbed a branch and shook it, and several olives fell to the ground.  

“Smell them,” Max commanded the boss.

The boss did smell the olives and said, “Max, you are right; these are ready to be picked.”

*****

Max was fed up after two years as a peon on the farm. He was ready to move on. Some of his co-workers had left the estate - some. were arrested for marijuana possession, others for drunk and disorderly conduct. A few older employees had worked hard, stayed with the company, and lived near the site in tiny houses and shacks. Max looked at these people - mostly men, but some women too. Working hard, getting a small paycheck, this wasn’t much of a life for them. Could he change this once he became the boss?

But being a spy only goes so far for a twenty-six-year-old. He was heir to a prosperous business, living in a shanty in rural California and working on an olive farm. He didn’t have a girlfriend, didn’t have much fun, and at times got fed up with his life!!!  

It was a tense conversation when Max called his father and said, “Dad, I’m about at my breaking point. I know the olive business - can I leave American Olive Groves? I’m twenty-six, and I’ve done my apprenticeship. Can I go now? It is six months until the olive harvest.”

But Robert Zinn was ready for this.  

“Come home, son. I think we are ready to move on”.

*****

So Max Zinn moved home. He told the others that he had saved some money and would hike the Pacific Coast Trail and camp out for a few months. And he may be back someday.

The co-workers and manager had a small party in one of the taverns in Durham, California, and toasted to Max’s future. Max smiled inwardly - ‘yes, I might be back - as your owner and manager!!!’

*****

There we are - the first episode in the Max Zinn story. Where will it go? Will Max be back? Will he take over the family business?  

LOVE WINS

LOVE TRANSFORMS

KAREN ANNE WHITE, SUMMER 2023