Waco History Podcast

Pawnbroking—or lending money on portable security—is one of the world's oldest professions. It can be traced back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire in the West and to China three thousand years ago in the East. Hank Josephs of Corpus Christi remembers he got the idea to change his family's dry goods store into a pawn shop during WWII: "Our sergeant would lend the guys five bucks on their watches, their service watches, and when they got paid two weeks later, they'd pay him back ten dollars. I said, ‘That's a hell of a deal. I want in on that deal.'" Josephs recalls one of the more bizarre stories that came out of the shop: "The one in which a guy walked in and said, ‘I want to borrow five bucks on my eye.' Had a prosthetic eye. Pulled it out of his head. He had gotten it in the service. He says, ‘I want five dollars; I need a—need a bottle of wine.' I loaned him five dollars on the wine. Some people came in later—he never did come back. People came in later and said, What's the strangest thing you ever t