Albert Nusbaum opened his first business at 16.

	Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Albert Nusbaum, 85, owned his own second-hand appliance business for 60 years. This year he sold the business and went to work for Appliance Warehouse, the company that bought it. In the background is Fred Landay, CEO of Appliance Warehouse. Click photo for larger image.

Sixty-nine years later, he has sold his last business, but he's back at work.

His new employer, Fred Landay, owner of Appliance Warehouse on the South Side, bought Nusbaum's used appliance store in Wilkinsburg with the stipulation that the older man had to start working for him.

When Landay asked Nusbaum, 85, of Wilkins, how much he wanted to work each week, his response was "six days if you'll let me."

Nusbaum started working out of necessity. Both of his parents were dead from cancer by the time he was 11.

He was living with his grandmother and attending Taylor Allderdice High School when he opened his own bicycle repair shop on Forward Avenue. His slogan was "See Al, your bicycle pal."

From bicycles he moved on to Westinghouse Electric as the nation moved toward World War II. At that company, he wound wire around the armature of motors.

He later served with the 104th Infantry Timberwolves and saw action in Germany, Holland and Belgium. He was awarded the Purple Heart after being knocked off a tank that was hit with panzer fire. He was struck by shrapnel in the head and chest. The guys on the other side of the tank were killed.

Nusbaum also was awarded the Bronze Star for valor after his unit was pinned down by enemy fire.

"I was behind the Germans that were shooting at us, and I just came around the back and I killed them. That's what they gave me that for," he said.

When he returned to the United States, Nusbaum didn't apply for any veteran's disability money, despite injuries that included some hearing loss. To do so would have meant sticking around a military base for a few days while the Army checked him out. He just wanted to get home.

Back in Pittsburgh, Nusbaum opened a secondhand appliance store at 218 E. Ohio St. on the North Side but was forced out by redevelopment. He relocated down the street and later opened a second store Downtown. Through the years he was repeatedly moved by development projects, but he continued to keep the business going.

"The city kept redeveloping. I was at 6264 Frankstown Ave. for five or six years, then they redeveloped again."

In all the moving, he never bought the buildings where his stores were housed. He identifies their locations like a prototypical Pittsburgher, describing where they were by what else used to be there.

For example, he said his Fourth Street store Downtown was near Frank & Seder's department store. In East Liberty he was next to the Liberty Rubber Co. building. The Seventh Avenue store was close to the Stanley Theater. At one time he had four stores open at once.

Nusbaum also had to raise his two children as a single father. His first wife died when his children were 5 and 3. Used appliances put both through college.

He remarried when they were grown.

His last store location was on Penn Avenue in Wilkinsburg. He was there for 15 years. That store was operating when Landay started the Appliance Warehouse.

Years in the appliance business have taken their toll physically on Nusbaum.

He injured both of his knees and needed seven stitches in his head after a service call in which a woman neglected to tell him that the top three stairs down to her dark basement were missing.

His hands are always cut up. His legs are scarred from the day his truck caught fire, coincidentally, the same day he sold the business.

Still, Nusbaum loves what he does.

"He outworks the younger guys, I'll tell you that," Landay said. "Since he's been here, productivity has risen."

Nusbaum has no plans to retire, and he's got a few reasons for that.

"What would I do? I don't golf."

He also needs an income, he said.

"It used to be, honey, when you were young, if you accumulated $50,000, that was your nest egg. You were set. Now it's a year's wages."

He may even have many years to go.

While his parents died young, Nusbaum had an uncle and an aunt who lived until they were 99 and 105, respectively.

And although he may have lost a step at 85, he is far from slowed. He still thinks of himself as 20 years old.

One day a couple of weeks ago, Nusbaum was head and shoulders into a refrigerator, determined that the fan that was broken would work again. And now, instead of worrying about running the business, loading and unloading appliances and going out on service calls, he can focus on the area of the used appliance business he likes the best.

"I like to fix things that people say can't be fixed. If I can't fix them, scrap them. Then they are no good. You get to a point where nothing is too hard."

Nusbaum is a legend to his new employer.

"He was the first guy. He started the industry here," Landay said. "I just picked up where he left off."

Landay has taken off with secondhand appliances. His Appliance Warehouse is loaded with old appliances. While the showroom has rows of refrigerators, freezers, stoves, washers and dryers, his warehouses have stacks of them. In one warehouse, Landay has 885 matching refrigerators that were replaced in a public housing community in Norfolk, Va. Another warehouse contains 650 identical stoves.

They are all there, ready to be repaired by Nusbaum and his crew then cleaned by other workers.

"I'm really proud I can give an elderly gentleman a job with dignity at 85," Landay said.

So, Nusbaum moves from appliance to appliance, fixing those that can be repaired. Those that can't be fixed are sold for scrap, and Nusbaum will move on to another.