One day, before we actually opened the Western Auto Store, my father was at the store working when an eighteen-wheel truck rolled in to make a delivery. My father and the truck driver were working hard to unload the truck.
A station wagon with no doors on it rolled into the as yet unpaved parking lot and a gentleman got out dressed in a torn, dirty shirt and torn jeans.
The hood to this car was held down by rope and wires and most of the car was in pretty bad shape. The man came up to my father and started helping him unload the truck.
They shot the breeze a little as they unloaded the truck and when they finished, my father reached into his wallet to take out a little money to pay the man for his help.
The man told him thank you, but that he could buy the place if he wanted
to. As it turned out, this man owned a lot of land, a lot of houses and could, in fact, buy the store if he had wanted to.
You never know by looking or even talking to a person how much or how little money they have. You have to treat each and every person the same.
We were constantly having customers who would not fit your usual idea of a millionaire. We had millionaire customers who drove old trucks with no paint on them.
We also had customers who looked and dressed the part of millionaires and even held themselves out as if they had more money than they knew what to do with. These people would apply for credit and their financials would indicate that, just like Stanley Johnson, they are in debt up to their eyeballs.
Years later, Suzanne and I worked in a convenience store. A local farmer came in every Sunday. He drove an old, but nice, Ford F150 pickup truck.
He was not there to buy beer or cigarettes. Every Sunday he would treat himself to two small cups of Blue Bell Vanilla Ice Cream. As it turns out, this man in the faded but clean jeans was a multi millionaire.
He had more land than anyone else in the county. He had several oil wells and a few natural gas wells, too. Yet, you could not tell it.
Not all is as it appears. Remember, sometimes we entertain angels unawares.
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Robert Bruce McClendon Jr. was also known as “Bones”. He was a scrawny, skinny teenager. He still went out for football.
When he first made the team, there weren’t enough helmets to go around. Bones went to the equipment area and found an old helmet. It was scuffed up and beat up and very dirty. He asked the coach if he could wear it if he cleaned it up. The coach told him yes.
He painted it and polished it and got it looking really good. He wore his helmet to the next game. He was extremely proud of that helmet.
Not long into the game, one of the starters broke his helmet. The coach made Bones give his pretty helmet to the starter.
Sad and disappointed, Bones went back to the equipment room the next chance he got and found another helmet and fixed it up. He got to keep this one. It wasn’t too long before he was a starter
Years later, Bones and his brother Carl were on the same football team.
Johnston High School Varsity Football 1953
During one game, Carl was in and two large opponents decided to try to take Carl out. They kept hammering at him and hammering at him.
After a few plays, Bones went to the coach and said “Put me in, coach.” He did this even though it would have him playing, “The opposite side of the ball”.
The coach got an evil grin and sent Bones in to play.
On the first down after Bones went in, he looked across to the opposing line and said to the bigger of the two offenders, “Get well soon”.
The ball was snapped and he made contact with the first of the two offenders.
He hit him so hard that the opponent could not get up. They found his helmet on the other side of the field, split in half. It was a very hard hit. The opponent just laid there in agony.
Being the polite Southern boy he was, Bones decided that stomping on him with his football cleats would aid the guy in getting up. Back in those days, football cleats had sharp, metal spikes.
Bones stomped on the first boy’s arms and legs with those cleats and did so much damage they had to load the boy in an ambulance. No penalty was called.
Second down. Bones crouched and looked across the line at the second boy
and said, “There is room for both of you in that ambulance”.
The ball was snapped and Bones made hard contact. Down went the second of the two offenders. Bones began his celebratory dance on the offender, stomping hard on his arms and legs. The ambulance was called back.
Bones yelled across the line, “This is my brother Carl. When you mess with him, I mess with you.” He went back to the bench and sat down. No one, not even his teammates, touched Carl the rest of the game.
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When I think of Papa, what stands out in my mind is that he could set his mind to do something and he would accomplish his goals.
He loved to sell. When he worked for National Cash Register (NCR), he was
always either the number one salesman or number two.
Papa Bruce loved a contest. He once told me that it did not matter if the prize was just a pint of pee-pee, he wanted to win it.
Several of the salesman decided that the only way they could ever win a contest against him was if he didn't know there was a contest.
They kept one contest a secret. On the very last day of the contest, the salesman who was in the lead taunted Papa. He told him there were only a few hours left and there was no way Papa could win.
As soon as Papa found out about it, he got on the phone and called around and got enough purchase orders called in to win that contest. .
As I recall, the prize was a small portable color television. The television sat on top of my parent’s chest of drawers in their bedroom for several years.
One of the people he called was the bowling man from another story.
He loved a challenge. In fact, challenges kept him going. I think it was that adrenaline rush that he looked for.
I truly admire my father. I look up to him and I have learned from him. He means all the world to me. And I love him.
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This post is a re-post of one I made years ago. I am reposting it with a video as part of the new Throwback Thursday meme. Come and join us.
My father, Robert Bruce McClendon, Jr., was a proud grandfather. When my sister, Sandra, announced that she was expecting, he beamed with pride.
In 1985, his first grandchild, Patrick, was born. For some reason my father could not get it into his head that Patrick’s last name was not McClendon.
My sister and brother-in-law, along with Patrick, lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. From time to time they would come to Iva, South Carolina, for a visit. The time came for their first visit after Patrick was born.
My family owned the Western Auto Store in Iva, South Carolina, and we had one of those changeable letter signs that were popular in the 1980s. We changed the message about once a week. It was my job to change the message each week. We never had the same message on both sides of the sign. Well, almost never.
I usually ate breakfast at Waffle King No. 3. That morning my father came to the restaurant early and told me he wanted me to go to the store right away and get the changeable letter sign changed to say Welcome Patrick on both sides. The store was not due to open for over an hour but he wanted that sign out before daylight.
I drove to the store and located the correct letters. I had to change the sign in the cold December wind as the sun came up. Shortly after that, Papa Bruce arrived and worked on getting the store open while I went back to the restaurant to get another breakfast since I did not get to finish mine earlier. Papa Bruce paid for the new breakfast.
All morning long, Papa Bruce paced the sales floor. Whenever he spoke with an employee, he would say, “When Patrick gets here, he will straighten you out”. When my sister arrived, my father made sure that she and Al, her husband, had seen the sign.
If Papa Bruce could have arranged it, there would have been a ticker tape parade through the town. Papa took Patrick around the store showing him off to all the customers. Patrick helped Papa wait on customers, even though he was less than a month old. Papa Bruce took Patrick and showed him all the Christmas decorations. He was one proud Papa.
I used to spend a great deal of time at the store with Papa Bruce. Because of this, I heard him tell
many stories over and over. The following two short stories are some I heard many times.
Too Pretty
Papa Bruce often said that someone, his mother, my mother, others, told him he was too pretty. He would say they told him he was pretty ugly and pretty apt to stay that way and that was two pretties.
Boss at his house
Papa Bruce would often talk about this story and he would always tell it exactly the same way. He said one day his father said to him, “Son, a man that will tell you he is boss at his house will bear watching.” Papa said he said, “Why is that, Daddy?” To which Grandpa would respond, “Because that rascal is bound to lie about something else.”
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My child-bride Suzanne and I had dated for several years when, one day, my father decided he wanted to know when we were going to get married.
I was in my final semester at the University of South Carolina and was about to graduate with a Bachelors of Media Arts degree, so I thought. I had resumes all over the world. I would graduate as an audio engineer. I had been offered a job with Turner Television. Turner was in negotiations with Australia and things looked pretty good.
Suzanne and I were sitting in the den at my parents’ house. See my (The House That Built Me post.) My father called Suzanne into the kitchen. He said “Su De Lou, come in here a minute.” She went and I followed. When we got into the kitchen he said,” Su De Loo, are you going to marry David?”
Suzanne looked at him and said, “If he ever asks me.”
He said to me, “David, are you going to ask her?” I responded, “Yes.” He said, "Now that that bull is over with, I have something to ask you.”
Papa offered Suzanne a job at the Western Auto store as a customer service person. He told me he wanted me to manage the store.
His idea was that he wanted to work on another business and train me to take over the store.
Later that night, Suzanne and I discussed the date of the wedding that had been a foregone conclusion for years and was no real secret to anyone.
The next time my father saw Suzanne, he took her to what was going to be our new house. He had plans to fix it up and have it ready for when we got married.
The house was ready on time. As it turned out, my advisor had made a mistake in calculating my credits. I was three credit hours short of graduating. I finished my degree years later at Anderson University, where I took my Media Arts credits and turned them into a BBA business degree. Later, I earned my MBA from the Florida Institute of Technology.
Along the way, we had five beautiful children (one stillborn) who are the joys of our life. We also have two peppy grand-doggers.
What about you? Did life happen while you were making plans?
29 Years ago today (12 May 1987) my father, Robert Bruce McClendon, Jr., went to live with Jesus. It was very much a surprise to me when it happened. Evidently it was not so much a surprise to him.
When Papa died, my mother, brother, and his wife were in Texas visiting my mother’s side of the family. Before my mother left for the trip, my father had visited Southlawn Memorial Gardens in Starr, South Carolina, to arrange the purchase of burial lots. He decided that he and my mother would go there together to make the purchase when she returned.
Not too long before he died, my father asked me what I would like to inherit from him
Suzanne and Papa
. The truthful answer was nothing. However, after he pressed me a little bit, I realized I did want the cash register he and I had bought together a few years before.
The day before he died, Papa asked to get to visit with our son Jared. After the store closed that night, we took Jared up to see Papa and left him to visit Papa while we went to see the movie Crocodile Dundee.
That night when we came to pick Jared up, both Papa and Jared were asleep. We took Jared to our house without waking up Papa.
We got to thinking that Papa might wake up and panic if he saw that Jared was not in his crib. I called to let him know we had Jared.
Jared "Holding" Papa Bruce
At the time of Papa’s death, I was getting the store converted to a computer inventory system. This was a long process. The day before Papa died the computer came online and we printed out one receipt. It was a pretend sale, but Papa could see great things were in store for our little company.
That test sale was the first and last sale the computer ever made.
In order to get the computer on line - this was back in the days before there was an internet - we had to have a second phone line installed at the store.
Every morning I would open the store early and get started working on getting the store’s inventory entered into the computer. I would start about an hour early before customers started coming in because this was usually a good time to get things done. Since I was not quite ready to start transacting business, I did not answer the main phone line at the store, but I did answer the computer line at the store since only Suzanne had the number.
The phone rang and I answered it. Suzanne said, “Papa is having a heart attack.”
What had happened was that my father started having chest pains while getting dressed.
Out in our back yard between our house and my grandmother’s house, my father had installed an old farm bell like what people on farms used to let those people who were working in the field know that it was time to eat. Papa had discovered that his grandson, Patrick, loved to ring this bell. So, he put a rope on the bell that went all the way to the ground so that Patrick could ring the bell all he wanted to.
*Papa went out to the back yard and started ringing the bell over and over. This alerted my grandmother. She saw Papa lying on the ground ringing the bell and ran down the hill to our house and got my wife Suzanne to the door. Suzanne called me on the computer line at the store.
I was rattled and could not think right. I knew the rescue squad’s phone number. The number was also on a big orange sticker on the telephone at the store. Further, the auto-dialer directly by the phone was programmed with the rescue squad’s phone number. I could not think of any of these things. I did remember to dial the operator.
The ambulance was dispatched and I went to the house. I locked the store but did not set the alarm.
When I got to the house, Papa was on the ground telling my grandmother to calm down and go into the house. He was also telling me to have Suzanne get the store open.
Suzanne had never opened the store before and did not have a clue how to do it. I told her as best I could and we loaded Papa in the ambulance.
At 10:10 AM, Papa was pronounced dead by Dr. William Walker.
Papa was a great man. The story I am about to tell is indicative of the type of man he was.
The best way to get my father to do anything was to tell him he could not do it. He had to prove you wrong.
The RCA television sales representative came to the store and offered Papa a great deal on a truckload of televisions and VCRs. So, he ordered them. This was on a Friday evening.
He told my mother what he had done and she walked him into the storeroom and pointed out that it was full of televisions, stereos, and VCRs. She told him we did not have room for the truckload of electronics and that until we sold the stuff we had we could not pay for it. She told him he would have to cancel the order first thing Monday morning, unless he could somehow get rid of EVERYTHING over the weekend.
The next morning, Saturday, I was eating breakfast at the Waffle King. Papa walked in and said, “Get your ridin’ britches on, David.” He then told me he was going to sell every television, stereo, and VCR we had in stock that day. This was a large stockroom full of electronics.
When we got to the store, I loaded half of each kind of VCR we had in the 1965 Ford Galaxy I was driving. I also loaded 5,000 feet of antenna wire and a large assortment of antenna connectors, along with my tool box in the car.
At this time, cable-ready televisions were fairly new and practically no one knew how to set up a VCR. It required a technician to set up either. So, I would have to set up and install whatever Papa sold that day.
Papa sold the first one early and he told me to call before I left each house to see where to go next.
Suzanne fixed me a sandwich and I gulped it down between stops. I would go to a house and find that one of the two trucks (Old Red and the Ford Truck) had dropped off a television and, in some cases, an antenna.
At one house I arrived to find three televisions, three VCRs, and one antenna. By this time, I was exhausted but I got it done.
Finally, about three hours after the store closed, I made it back to the store. Papa had sold everything, even a television that had been traded in that did not work. He sold it to an electronics student that wanted to tinker with it.
I was worn out. The only electronic things left in the store were the coffee pot we used to make coffee for employees and the calculators we used in the office. There was absolutely nothing electronic left in the store.
I was tired; Papa was happy. The entire crew had pulled together to get this all done in one day. Suzanne and Nana filled out contracts until their hand cramps had cramps. The shop guys took turns delivering televisions in the two trucks and Carl delivered several in his car.
This was a lot of work and a lot of fun. I wish we could do it again.
Papa, we miss you.
*Note: In the video I state that Papa put on his shoes and went outside. My Aunt Gloria reminded me that when we went into the house we found his shoes beside the chair where it appears he had placed them. It appeared that he was going to sit down and put his shoes on but got to hurting too bad and went outside to the bell.
This post is a re-post of one I made years ago. I am reposting it with a video as part of the new Throwback Thursday meme. Come and join us.
My father, Robert Bruce McClendon, Jr., was a proud grandfather. When my sister, Sandra, announced that she was expecting, he beamed with pride.
In 1985, his first grandchild, Patrick, was born. For some reason my father could not get it into his head that Patrick’s last name was not McClendon.
My sister and brother-in-law, along with Patrick, lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. From time to time they would come to Iva, South Carolina, for a visit. The time came for their first visit after Patrick was born.
My family owned the Western Auto Store in Iva, South Carolina, and we had one of those changeable letter signs that were popular in the 1980s. We changed the message about once a week. It was my job to change the message each week. We never had the same message on both sides of the sign. Well, almost never.
I usually ate breakfast at Waffle King No. 3. That morning my father came to the restaurant early and told me he wanted me to go to the store right away and get the changeable letter sign changed to say Welcome Patrick on both sides. The store was not due to open for over an hour but he wanted that sign out before daylight.
I drove to the store and located the correct letters. I had to change the sign in the cold December wind as the sun came up. Shortly after that, Papa Bruce arrived and worked on getting the store open while I went back to the restaurant to get another breakfast since I did not get to finish mine earlier. Papa Bruce paid for the new breakfast.
All morning long, Papa Bruce paced the sales floor. Whenever he spoke with an employee, he would say, “When Patrick gets here, he will straighten you out”. When my sister arrived, my father made sure that she and Al, her husband, had seen the sign.
If Papa Bruce could have arranged it, there would have been a ticker tape parade through the town. Papa took Patrick around the store showing him off to all the customers. Patrick helped Papa wait on customers, even though he was less than a month old. Papa Bruce took Patrick and showed him all the Christmas decorations. He was one proud Papa.
When I think of Papa, what stands out in my mind is that he could set his mind to do something and he would accomplish his goals.
He loved to sell. When he worked for National Cash Register (NCR), he was
always either the number one salesman or number two.
Papa Bruce loved a contest. He once told me that it did not matter if the prize was just a pint of pee-pee, he wanted to win it.
Several of the salesman decided that the only way they could ever win a contest against him was if he didn't know there was a contest.
They kept one contest a secret. On the very last day of the contest, the salesman who was in the lead taunted Papa. He told him there were only a few hours left and there was no way Papa could win.
As soon as Papa found out about it, he got on the phone and called around and got enough purchase orders called in to win that contest. .
As I recall, the prize was a small portable color television. The television sat on top of my parent’s chest of drawers in their bedroom for several years.
One of the people he called was the bowling man from another story.
He loved a challenge. In fact, challenges kept him going. I think it was that adrenaline rush that he looked for.
I truly admire my father. I look up to him and I have learned from him. He means all the world to me. And I love him.
Early in our marriage Suzanne bought a Wilton cake decorating course and then went to a cake decorating class at Tri-County Technical College. She did very well with it and was making several cakes per day.
Each morning, I would bring a cake or two to the store and we would give slices of cake to the employees and to customers who came in regularly every morning for a free cup of coffee.
At that time, we were in the process of redecorating the Western Auto Store
with the official Western Auto Flag logo. Suzanne had decided to recreate that logo on a cake. So, she copied it and the next morning I took the cake to the store.
Now, my father was always trying to impress the people at the People’s Bank of Iva. He especially valued the opinion of Yvonne McGee and her husband J. R.
Papa Bruce took one look at the cake and decided it was so perfect that he had to share it with the people at the bank. So, he took our cake and presented it to the people at the bank. He said they thought it was great.
We did not get our cake that morning, but Suzanne was given the highest honor that my father could have paid her.
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