Jon,
Regarding my dad’s involvement in the beer/wine/bar supplies distribution
business, it happened because he took a job in Coos Bay as a driver with a
distributor in 1935 or 1936. He had been injured while working in the Forest
Service during a fire – knee damage – and wanted to do something else. He was
in his late 20’s, and found this job where he was the sole employee of the
owner. Within a year or two, the owner wanted to sell and retire and offered
Dad the opportunity to buy the business. He had no money but he ended up going
to his mom and she lent him $700-800 out of money she had squirreled away over
the years, and that became his down payment on the business. He thus had
operated the business for 4-5 years prior to the onset of WWII and Pearl Harbor
and by that time had paid the entire purchase price off, including paying back
the loan to him Mom. He joined the service in January, 1942, a month after
Pearl Harbor, and Mom and one employee/driver who was 4-F kept the business in
operation complete with warehouse and rolling stock which was thus available to
Dad the minute he arrived back in Coos Bay on the Troop Train in September,
1945. Dad told me he was virtually the only distributor in business with the
functional capacity of serving the Southern Oregon Coast from Florence to
Brookings, and, as a result went from having the distribution rights to one
brand of beer and some miscellaneous bar supplies to a dozen nearly overnight!
He also said that nearly 100% of the beer and wine that were consumed in
Southern Oregon from September, 1945 until September, 1946, passed through his
hands. It was one big party fueled mostly by beer that lasted a year, and by
the end of it Dad was looking for a bigger warehouse, had purchased 3-4
additional beer trucks, and had about a dozen people working for him. His money
worries were over forever.
Dave
Was this 'mom' grandma Sampson, or who? That's an AWSOME
story! Thanks for sharing!
Yes, Grandma Sampson lent him the money and my Mom ran the business during
the war.
And the follow-on is that Gene loaned Vake $11,000 (as I recall the figure)
to buy the land, house, shop, and inventory to set up West Lane Plumbing in
1953. Vake and Milly repaid it as fast as they could, and Gene refused ever to
take a cent in interest. At first, Vake had a bookkeeper for the business, but
she was so slow and nonresponsive that Milly took over the bookkeeping and the
retail sale of goods out of the shop, despite having four kids (1947, 1949, 1954
and 1955) to ride herd on. It couldn’t have been easy—I was chronically ill with
tonsils, Vake came down with infectious hepatitis, Vake, Mark, Tina and I caught
mumps—Vake joined the Boosters and the Elks and for a while, the volunteer
firemen, and Milly was a Girl Scout leader, PTA officer, fundraiser for the high
school band, and 10-year school-board member--but it was a partnership that they
worked on together until they could retire. Where did they get that energy?
I guess they just kept on keeping on. My guess is the three of us were at
least as much of a problem as were the four of you. I, too, had chronic ear
aches – small Eustachian tubes the doctors told us – tonsillitis, appendicitis,
broken arm which the first doctor wanted to amputate on the spot, and the topper
was nearly biting off my tongue! That would have made the world a different
place, but the doctor stitched it back together; although I completely bit
through it about 1.5 inches in from the tip, both the left and the right sides
of the bite stayed connected. Additionally, I managed to have fender benders
with every car my parents owned, completely rolled the jeep, and crashed it
twice more; the only cars I never injured were the beat up 1948 Chevy dad gave
me at Xmas in 1957 and the 1949 Ford I bought (secretly) while attending OSC in
the fall of 1958. The Ford became Arnold’s car, but it burned up in the 1960
fire at my folks house; I have no clue what happened to the Chevy. Dad took it
back when I started at OSC – he felt a car would distract me from my studies.
Little did he know that I was already distracted by both babes and the 99
bottles of beer on the wall which I tried to drink through each night. Arnold
and Sam were almost equally bad with broken bones, etc..
The funniest story of all was when Sam got a spiral fracture of his femur
while skiing somewhere in Idaho, I think. Anyway, Grandpa Siegrist came over to
talk to my mom about it when he heard; he was kind of excited about it and told
my mom that he had taken out an accidental injury policy on Sam when he learned
he was going skiing. I can still remember Mom, who was already in a state of
shock, after she began to understand that Gramps had been doing this on a
regular basis, saying to Gramps, “You mean to tell me that you have been betting
that my sons will seriously hurt themselves? Gambling with their lives?”
Gramps had never looked at it that way. I thought he gave the money for the
policy to Sam as that had been what he had in mind, but I am not sure whether
Sam got it or not.
Dave
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