“Glenn & Dave’s is equipped to do all nature of repair work: everything from transmission, air conditioning, valves, all . . . everything. I refer to it as a garage because we do everything garages do.
“We have been here four years.” He himself has been of it “steady” for twenty-nine years. “When I was a kid in high school I worked at the Studebaker garage part-time for seven dollars a week. And I paid seven dollars a week board and room.” (Laughs.) It more or less runs in our family. My great-grandfather used to make spokes for automobiles back in Pennsylvania when they used wooden wheels. I have a brother, he’s a mechanic. I have another brother in California, he’s in the same business as I’m in. My dad, he was a steam engine repairman.
“Another reason I went into this business: it’s Depression-proof. A good repairman will always have a job. Even though they’re making cars so they don’t last so long and people trade ’em in more often, there’s still gonna be people that have to know what they’re doing.”
I work eight days a week. (Laughs.) My average weeks usually run to eighty, ninety hours. We get every other Sunday off, my son and I. Alternate, you know. Oh, I love it. There’s never a day long enough. We never get through. And that’s a good way to have it, ‘cause people rely on you and you rely on them, and it’s one big business. Sometimes they’re all three trucks goin’. All we sell is service, and if you can’t give service, you might as well give up.
All our business has come to us from mouth to mouth. We’ve never run a big ad in the paper. That itself is a good sign that people are satisfied. Of course, there’s some people that nobody could satisfy. I’ve learned: Why let one person spoil your whole day?
A new customer comes to town, he would say, “So-and-so, I met him on the train and he recommended you folks very highly.” Oh, we’ve had a lot of compliments where people, they say they’ve never had anything like that done to a car. They are real happy that we did point out things and do things. Preventive maintenance I call it.
A man come in, we’d Xed his tires, sold him a set of shocks, repacked his wheel bearings, aligned his front, serviced his car—by service I mean lubricate, change oil, filter . . . But he had only one tail light working and didn’t know it. So we fixed that and he’ll be grateful for it. If it’s something big, a matter of a set of tires or if he needs a valve job, we call the customer and discuss it with him.
Sometimes, but not very often, I’ve learned to relax. When I walk out of here I try to leave everything, ’cause we have a loud bell at home. If I’m out in the yard working, people call. They want to know about a car, maybe make a date for next week, or maybe there’s a car here that we’ve had and there’s a question on it. The night man will call me up at home. We have twenty-four-hour service, too, towing. My son and I, we take turns. So this phone is hooked up outside so you can hear it. And all the neighbors can hear it too. (Laughs.)
Turn down calls? No, never. Well, if it’s some trucking outfit and they don’t have an account with us—they’re the worst risk there is. If they don’t have a credit card or if the person they’re delivering won’t vouch for them, there’s gotta be some sort of agreement on payment before we go out. Of course, if it’s a stranger, if it’s broke down, naturally we have the car.
Sometimes if we’re busy, bad weather and this and that, why we won’t get any lunch, unless the wife runs uptown and grabs a sandwich. I usually go home, it varies anywhere between six thirty, seven, eight. Whatever the public demands. In the wintertime, my God, we don’t get out of here till nine. I have worked thirty-seven hours non-stop.
I don’t do it for the money. People are in trouble and they call you and you feel obligated enough to go out there and straighten them out as much as you can. My wife tells me I take my business more serious than a doctor. Every now and then a competitor will come down and ask me to diagnose something. And I go ahead and do it. I’ll tell anybody anything I know if it’ll help him. That’s a good way to be. You might want a favor from them sometime. Live and let live.
You get irritated a lot of times, but you keep it within yourself. You can’t be too eccentric. You gotta be the same. Customers like people the same all the time. Another thing I noticed: the fact that I got gray hair, that helps in business. Even though my son’s in with me and we have capable men working for us, they always want to talk to Glenn. They respect me and what I tell ’em.
If I’m tensed up and there’ll be somebody pull in on the driveway, ring all the bells, park right in front of the door, then go in and use the washroom—those kind of people are the most inconsiderate kind of people there is. If you’re out there in the back, say you’re repacking wheel bearings. Your hands are full of grease. In order to go out in that drive, you have to clean your hands. And all the customer wanted to know was where the courtroom is. When I travel, if I want information, I’ll park out on the apron. Sometimes we have as high as fifty, sixty people a day in here for information. They pull up, ring all the bells . . . You can imagine how much time it takes if you go out fifty, sixty times and you don’t pump gas. I call’em IWW: Information, wind, and water. It’s worse the last four years we’ve been here. People don’t care. They don’t think of us. All they think of is themself.
Oh, I lose my temper sometimes. You wouldn’t be a red-blooded American if you wouldn’t, would you? At the same time you’re dealing with the public. You have to control yourself. Like I say, people like an even-tempered person. When I do lose my temper, the wife, she can’t get over it. She says, “Glenn, I don’t know how you can blow your stack at one person and then five minutes later you’re tellin’ him a joke.” I don’t hold grudges. Why hold a grudge? Let people know what you think, express your opinion, and then forget it. Of course, you don’t forget, you just don’t keep harpin’ on it.
In the summertime, when I get home I don’t even go in the house. I grab a garden tool and go out and work till dark. I have a small garden—lettuce, onions, small vegetables. By the time you’re on your feet all day you’re ready to relax, watch television, sometimes have a fire in the fireplace. At social gatherings, if somebody’s in the same business, we compare notes. If we run into something that’s a time saver, we usually exchange. But not too much. Because who likes to talk shop?
There’s a few good mechanics left. Most of ‘em in this day and age, all they are is parts replacers. This is a new trend. You need an air conditioner, you don’t repair ’em any more. You can get exchange units, factory guaranteed and much cheaper, much faster. People don’t want to lay up their car long enough to get it fixed. If they can’t look out and see their car in the driveway, they feel like they’ve lost something. They get nervous. It’s very seldom people will overhaul a car. They’ll trade it in instead.
This is something hard to find any more, a really good, conscientious worker. When the whistle blows, they’re all washed up, ready to go before they’re punched out. You don’t get a guy who’ll stay two or three hours later, just to get a job done.
Take my son, Dave. Say a person’s car broke down. It’s on a Sunday or a Saturday night. Maybe it would take an hour to fix. Why, I’ll go ahead and fix it. Dave’s the type that’ll say, “Leave it sit till Monday.” I put myself in the other guy’s boots and I’ll go ahead and fix his car, because time don’t mean that much to me. Consequently we got a lot of good customers. Last winter we had a snowstorm. People wanted some snow tires. I put ’em on. He’s a steady customer now. He just sold his house for $265,000.
When we took this last cruise, my customers told me Dave did a terrific job. “Before, we didn’t think much of him. But he did a really good job this last time.” I guess compared to the average young person Dave is above average as far as being conscientious. Although he does sleep in the morning. Today’s Wednesday? Nine o‘clock this morning. It was ten o’clock yesterday morning. He’s supposed to be here at seven. Rather than argue and fight about it, I just forget it.
Another thing I trained myself: I know the address and phone number of all the places we do business with and a lot of our customers. I never even look in the phone book. (Dave had just made a phone call after leafing through the directory.) If he asked me, I coulda told him.
DAVE STRIBLING
He is twenty-three, married, and has two baby children. He has been working with his father “more or less since I was twelve years old. It’s one of those deals where the son does carry on the family tradition.
“I actually worked full-time when I was in junior high school. School was a bore. But when you stop and look back at it you wish to hell you’d done a lot more. I wanted to go get that fast buck. Some people are fortunate to make it overnight. My dad and I had a few quarrels and I quit him. I used to work down at Chrysler while I was in high school. I worked at least eight hours a day. That was great. You don’t work Saturdays and you don’t work Sundays. Then I came back and worked for my dad.”
How would I describe myself? Mixed up really. (Laughs.) I like my work. (Sighs.) But I wish I hadn’t started that early. I wish I would have tried another trade, actually. At my age I could quit this. I could always come back. But I’m pretty deep now. If I were to walk out, it would be pretty bad. (Laughs.) I don’t think I’ll change my occupation, really.
I think I’da tried to be an architect or, hell, maybe even a real top-notch good salesman. Or maybe even a farmer. It’s hard to say. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. You turn around and there’s an attorney. It makes you feel different. You work during the day and you’re dirty from this and that. The majority of the people overlook the fact as long as you’re established and this and that. They don’t really care what your occupation is as long as you’re a pretty good citizen.
Where it really gets you down is, you’re at some place and you’ll meet a person and strike up a conversation with ‘em. Naturally, sometime during that conversation he’s going to ask about your occupation, what you do for a living. So this guy, he manages this, he manages that, see? When I tell him—and I’ve seen it happen lots of times—there’s a kind of question mark in his head. Just what is this guy? You work. You just sweat. It’s not mental. ’Cause a lot of these jobs that you do, you do so many of the same thing, it just becomes automatic. You know what you’re doing blindfolded.
It’s made me a pretty good livin’ so far. But I don’t have a lot of time that a lot of these guys do that are in my age and in the same status that I am. I put in every week at least sixty, sixty-five hours. And then at night, you never know. If somebody breaks down, you can’t tell ’em no. You gotta go. My friends work forty hours a week and they’re done. Five days a week. I work seven, actually. Every other Sunday. I have to come and open up.
I don’t really like to talk about my work with my friends. They don’t really seem to, either. A lot of times somebody will ask me something about their car. How much will this cost? How much will that cost? I don’t really even want to quote my price to them. A couple of ‘em work for the state, in an office. A couple of ’em are body men. One’s a carpenter, one’s a real estate salesman. A few of ’em, they just work.
I come home, I gotta go in the back door, ‘cause I’ve got on greasy boots. (Laughs.) If it does happen to be about six thirty, then I won’t get cleaned up before I eat. I’ll sit down and eat with the wife and kids. If they’ve already eaten, I’ll take a shower and I’ll get cleaned up and I’ll come down and eat. If it’s a nice night, I might go out and putz around the yard. If it’s not nice outside, I’ll just sit and watch the TV. I don’t really read that much. I probably read as much as the average American. But nothing any more. Sometimes you really put out a lot of work that day—in general, I’m tired. I’m asleep by ten o’clock at night. I come to work, it varies, I might come in between eight and nine, maybe even ten ’ in the morning. I like my sleep. (Laughs.)
He’s the one that opens it up. He believes the early bird gets the worm. But that’s not always true either. I might come in late, but actually I do more work than he does here in a day. Most of it probably is as careful as his. I can’t understand a lot of the stuff he does. But he can’t understand a lot of the stuff I do either. (Laughs.) He’s getting better. He’s kinda come around. But he still does think old-fashioned.
Like tools. You can buy equipment, it might cost a lot more money but it’ll do the job faster and easier. He’ll go grab hand tools, that you gotta use your own muscle. He doesn’t go in for power tools.
Like judging people. Anybody with long hair is no good to him—even me. If he caught me asleep, he’d probably give me a Yul Brynner. Hair doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’ve met a lot of people with hair really long, just like a female. They’re still the same. They still got their ideas and they’re not hippies or anything. They go to work every day just like everybody else does. It gets him. Especially if someone will come in and ask him to do something, he’ll let them know he doesn’t like them. I don’t give people that much static.
When somebody comes in and they’re in a rage and it’s all directed at you, I either go get the hell out of there or my rage is brought up towards them. I’ve definitely lost customers by tellin’ ’em. I don’t know how to just slough it off. In the majority of cases you’re sorry for it.
I’ve seen my father flare up a lot of times. Somebody gives him a bad time during the day, he’ll take it home. Whereas instead of tellin’ ’em right there on the spot, he’ll just keep it within himself. Then half-hour later he might be mumblin’ somethin’. When I used to live at home, you could tell by thirty seconds after he got in the door that he either didn’t feel good or somebody gave him a bad time. He just keeps it going through his mind. He won’t forget it. Whereas when I go home to the wife and the two kids, I just like to forget it. I don’t want to talk about it at all.