Johnnie's Western Auto Store

 

I heard that Johnnie and Evelyn wanted to buy the Western Auto store in Myrtle Point, OR, but when the seller cranked too much "blue sky" into the price, they said "No thanks," and in 1951,  bought the store in Florence, OR instead. They both worked it, and left Patty in the care of a housekeeper, Mandy.  I stayed there for a few days from time to time.  Patty and I were about 4. Patty explained to me that she had a temper because she was a redhead, and kicked Mandy in the shins.  Being a brat, I tattled on her. "Any kid of mine does that be swallowing teeth," Milly said.

            The business was so successful that they built a larger two-story building with a common wall and professional offices on the second story, and leased out the original space to a clothing store. For some time Gene Jennings worked there as a clerk.  He was married to Audrey (Eli and Sofia, Sylvia and Buck Goodman). He was a good clerk, but was let go, the story goes, because he got behind on his bill to the firm, even with his employee discount. He had Audrey and six kids to feed and clothe, and couldn't make ends meet.

            The upstairs offices were leased to physicians, including Dr. Ulman, who was our family doctor. Access to those offices was up a long, straight, steep staircase adjacent to the store. Requirements for access didn't exist then.

            Jon and Dean both worked in the store when they came of age. Dean expressed absolute disgust one day when a woman walked in carrying a used auto battery upside down and dripped acid from the very front of the store to the very back, leaving little bright spots on the floor, and holes in her own coat.  Years later when he was in college, Dean took a temporary job with a Western Auto in the Eugene area during its closing out sale. The way I heard it, a man made a low offer on a set of tires, and Dean refused his offer.  The man thanked him--he was the owner of the store and was just checking whether the sale was going reasonably.

            The store was probably the only place in town that Santa Claus, with help from Gene Smith, visited before Christmas. Unfortunately, there was a deer head mounted on the wall, and somebody hung a red bulb on it. A little boy saw "Rudolph" and started crying, so the bulb came down.

     Johnnie had an extensive collection of Winchester rifles mounted high on the wall near the rear of the store.  One night somebody broke in and cherry-picked the collectibles.  Jon's impression is that at least some were recovered.

            Jon recalls, affectionately, the dirt and tree smell of the loggers who would come in after work to buy  merchandise or hunting and fishing licenses. When I was in high school I worked there, too. I remember the odor of the women who picked shrimp down on the docks.  They were so odoriferous that Blair Sneddon, who was managing the store at the time, fumigated the store with an air cleaner as soon as they left.

            My job was clerking, but also to typing up  payment booklets for time payments, typing an entry for the month, the amount, and the declining balance. Every entry was done manually.  I also wrapped Christmas gifts for people who did their holiday shopping at the store. I was paid $1.10/hour. 

            Certain other tasks were reserved strictly for other people. Audrey Smith was a very long term employee, but who suffered hyperthyroidism. She wore a patch over one eye so that customers would not be alarmed by seeing her bulging eyeball.  She guarded her sole right to check in the inventory when it was delivered. That made her invaluable, but Johnnie would have kept her anyway.

             Only men sold tires .Molly Wilson clerked for years. Pat Larson worked there from time to time.  Pat was a big, perpetually cheerful woman.  She told me that when she was a school girl, she was squirming until the teacher asked her, "What's wrong with your feet?"  She answered, "I just washed them and I can't do a thing with them." Pat's son Kim, still in high school, worked there occasionally, too. At his home, he was busy brewing wine by fermenting fruit juice in jugs.  He stretched balloons over the neck of the jugs  and watched them inflate, then deflate again, as a measure of how the fermentation process was going.

            One aspect of the business was selling and repairing appliances.  When Milly's oven stopped working correctly, Johnnie and Vake were on their knees probing around in it when it sparked a blue flash.  "Bull! Shit!" two voices rang out of the kitchen simultaneously. It seemed that Milly had seen a wire that got in her way when she was cleaning, so she had taken wire cutters and removed it.  It was the thermostat.  That followed an unfortunate incident when she removed the window from the fireplace insert to get it good and clean, then re-installed it inside out.  Only one of the glass panes was tempered glass, and the untempered side cracked as soon as she started a fire. And that was on the tail of her accidentally pouring apple juice into the lawn mower, thinking it was gasoline. (She had a cold and couldn't smell anything, she said.) That's when Blair Sneddon begged her, "Please, Milly, the next time you want to fix anything, call me first."

            Evelyn died from breast cancer when Patty and I were in the 8th grade (1960-1961).  By 1965, Johnnie was retiring from the business at age 54.  The upstairs was an apartment and storage by then, and he covered everything 2" deep in sawdust making a desk that was decoratively inlaid on every surface.  He made arrangements for Blair Sneddon to manage and to buy him out over time. However, Blair wasn't a manager like Johnnie, and when Johnnie examined the books, he walked to the doctor's office upstairs, got his heart checked, then took back the business. Eventually he sold it, then the building. Today the old and new buildings are one again, and house an antique mall.