Veteran of Economic Ups and Downs Hangs On

In the late 1960s, when Earnest (Jeff) Jefferson Jr. headed a minority-business development company in Venice, he learned what it was like to steer small firms through lean times.

A decade later, while working at various California poker clubs, he saw fortunes made and lost at the flick of a card.

Today, the 50-year-old Jefferson, a fleet leasing manager at a Carson auto dealership, is again rolling the dice, hoping the worst of the recession is past.

Working strictly on commission, Jefferson has seen his income drop 40% since 1989. As a result, the Carson resident has shelved plans to buy a new home, cut back on evenings out at fancy restaurants and is mowing his own lawn. Yet, even though he has had to significantly curb spending, he remains optimistic.

“It can’t get any worse,” he said. “I’m sure it’s going to get better.”

Two years ago, when he began as a salesman at the Don Kott auto complex, Jefferson earned about $60,000. This year, Jefferson estimates his annual income at $30,000 to $40,000.

He’s had to absorb the cut despite working longer hours, sometimes up to seven days a week, he said.

“Some of the buyers feel the pinch, too, and they are working longer hours,” Jefferson said.

Jefferson has weathered trying times in other fields. When he headed Action Industries Inc., the economic development arm of a now-defunct Venice community organization, he learned the hard way about budgeting with fewer resources.

At its height, Action Industries had 96 employees and operated 16 businesses in the then mostly black neighborhood of Oakwood in Venice. Its enterprises included food markets, gas stations, various kinds of service businesses, a malt shop and a property management department. Eventually it folded, partly due to a recession in the early 1970s and also because “we didn’t know enough about business, to tell you the truth,” Jefferson said.

Jefferson later worked as a dealer in a Gardena card club, where he sometimes played.

Dealing proved lucrative, and he made up to $100,000 in a good year, he said. In an effort to train others for casino work, Jefferson founded a school for prospective dealers. He gave that up after three years when he “just got tired of it.”

In the late 1980s, he opened a string of ice cream parlors called the Sweet Shop. They lost money and so did Jefferson, and in 1988 he shut the six stores at a loss of $1 million, he said.

After his experiences over the past 25 years, Jefferson has no fear of the current economic downturn.

“It’s only money, right?” he said on a recent afternoon as he sat in his office at the car dealership. “If you lose it, you’ve still got your health, you’ve still got your life, you can always go back and make some more.”

In the meantime, though, his plans to buy a new car and home are on hold. And, as his pocketbook has been pinched, so has his appetite for dining out.

“I used to be a big fanatic on restaurants,” Jefferson said. “I don’t do that no more. I remember days when I couldn’t care less what (meals) cost. . . . But now you take a second thought. You find out peanut butter and jelly taste very good these days.”

Jefferson, who has four grown children and is divorced, has also given up his credit cards.

“You can’t use them if you can’t pay them,” he said, between intermittent phone calls from customers.

When the end of the month comes, he often finds himself sorting through bills to determine which ones he can pay late.

“I might receive a telephone call now and then saying, ‘Hey, what happened?’. . . You might end up with a TRW (credit report) with a lot of late payments, (but) they finally get paid,” Jefferson said.

Increasingly, though, it has become harder for him to make ends meet. Last month, Jefferson faced having his electricity cut off. To pay the bill, he skipped a scheduled fishing trip to Mexico.

“Your whole makeup changes, your whole routine changes,” Jefferson said of his financial troubles. “A lot of things you enjoyed before, now you don’t do.”

A devout Baptist, Jefferson said his faith helps him cope with the financial juggling act he faces.

“That’s it, man, just prayer and faith and hard, hard work,” he said.