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How not to get this show on the road (but go ahead!)
Dad was a Cadillac man. More on that later.
My mom and dad owned an auto repair shop in Mineral Wells Texas, to which they lent their initials, naming it D&F Battery & Electric. They started the business in 1968 and sold it under duress in 1978 to a humorless, stingy, self-serving man Dad had regrettably taken on as a partner. (I wrote another paragraph about this scallywag and his pissant son but I am trying to be nice and took it out.)
The business still thrives in a fine metal building on the east side of town.
Dad was a serial battery shop owner, having previously co-owned Basin Battery & Electric in Odessa Texas, and then a shop I do not know the name of in Baton Rouge.
My Uncle Troy asked what I remembered about Odessa. I told him I remember a handful of things.
I remember the church Big Granddad (Troy’s dad) pastored had a swamp cooler on a platform. I do not know how tall that platform was, but it seemed like a water tower to a small boy. Troy and I climbed onto the platform and jumped off; it felt like flying. He taught me to land with my knees bent and then roll to lessen the impact. I felt like a superhero.
Speaking of superheroes, I remember a birthday with a Batman cake. It is the only early childhood birthday I remember.
I remember Mom walking Troy, my kid sister D’Anna, and me to 7-Eleven for an Icee. I preferred – and still like – the Cherry-Cola mix.
I remember Dad’s partner Earl was a stock car driver. He raced dirt tracks all over West Texas. I remember sitting in the stands and the loudness of those cars when they roared past us, vibrating the metal bleachers.
Earl kept his car in the last stall at the shop. When he fired it up, that thing rumbled like a lion. It was a blend of beauty and power painted blue and white with the number 7 on the top and each door, a big STP sticker on the hood, and Basin Battery & Electric on the trunk.
In Odessa, I was introduced to my father’s passion. He loved cars. He could see a car rolling down the road and tell you the make, model, and year. He understood their secrets, what made them go, what them go faster and further, and what to do when they needed healing.
In the short stint in Baton Rouge, which followed Odessa, Dad had the idea to start a church and a business. My only memory there is living in the office area of the shop. The office/apartment was in the front left corner and the restroom was in the right rear corner of the metal shop. It was scary to go to the bathroom at night, past the sad, broken cars crammed into the stalls. I always hurried. In that little office, at a small table pushed into the corner, Dad poured me my first cup of coffee. He poured himself one, too. Then, he opened a package of Keebler Sandies cookies and taught me the glorious experience of dipping a shortbread pecan cookie into a hot cup of coffee and eating it.
Bad Backs
Mineral Wells Texas is where I did most of my growing up. D&F Battery & Electric was Dad’s signature business and his proudest and most successful stint as a small business owner.
Dad had a bad back. He would get “down in his back” and have to lie on the floor with his feet elevated after taking pain medication to get relief.
I went to work in the shop with Dad when I was 11. Troy was 14 and already working there. My first job was to work with the junk and rebuilt batteries. The law states you must properly dispose of batteries. Most battery proprietors, including D&F, require an exchange when they sell you a new battery. Or, they did in the 1970s. Some of those exchange batteries could be salvaged. If they did not have a blown cell, you could re-acidize them, put them on a slow charge, test them to ensure they could handle a load, paint them, and sell them as rebuilt.
Dad sold rebuilt batteries for $19.99 exchange. Often, the exchanged battery could be rebuilt and resold, as well. It was a heck of a deal. Plus, we bought the exchange batteries from other dealers in town, like Sears, Goodyear, and Texaco. Some of those batteries could be rebuilt. Most could not, so we stacked them in the stall reserved as the battery room until we had a great pile of 500 or more batteries.
The battery room was my domain. It was my kingdom of grease, rubber, and hydrochloric acid. I was the battery boy, charging up the salvageable ones and stacking up the duds.
Dad designed a line charger that could charge up to 35 batteries at a time. We charged them overnight and the next morning, I tested each cell with a hydrometer. One bad cell and the rest good? Off to the junk pile you go. If they passed the hydrometer test, I took a load tester and “threw a load” on it, which simulated the strain of starting a vehicle’s engine. If it was satisfactory, we had ourselves a rebuilt battery. Next, I took Krylon paint, always black, and, using the technique Dad taught me to keep the paint from running, painted the battery.
I was a scientist and an artist in the battery room”¦and not yet a teen. Never mind I was breathing acid and paint fumes at an alarming volume. Believe me, when you open the door to a battery room after 35 batteries have been charging for 24 hours, the pungent odor will water your eyes and take your breath. But later you can have a spray paint chaser.
Troy showed me how to take a pair of pliers, grip a battery by one of it’s posts, and use my body to swing the thing in an arc and land it where I wanted it. It was like battery ballet or a weird Olympic event. With proper technique, even a skinny kid not yet a teen can manipulate a 40-pound battery with ease and grace. I used this technique to move batteries onto the line charge platform, into the junk pile, and once per month, onto Old Yeller.
Old Yeller was Dad’s 1971 model Chevy Silverado pickup truck. It was mustard yellow with white trim. Dad had the bed of the pickup removed and replaced with a custom-built steel bed he designed to be the perfect width for battery hauling and made of material battery acid would not quickly destroy. He also equipped her with overload springs and heavy-duty shocks, making her the roughest ride around unless you had at least 1,500 pounds on her.
Once per month, Dad would pull Troy and me out of school for a half day to load up Old Yeller with junk batteries, which he would drive to Dallas to the smelter. There was money in the lead, the rubber or plastic housing, and the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite cells.
Dad made money on batteries in every way one could imagine.
Using pliers and sometimes slinging a battery in each hand, Troy and I loaded upwards of 500 batteries onto Old Yeller. They filled the bed perfectly and we weave-stacked them to keep the load from overturning on its journey. They were stacked five or six high.
Our reward was Mom taking us to Southern Maid Donuts where I got chocolate iced smothered with pieces of peanuts and a small carton of milk. This is still my favorite donut combo.
Flash forward from those halcyon days of the early 70s to 1999, when I am 38 years old and have a bad back just like Dad, but not as severe. (Dad is long dead by now.) I am sure there is a herniated disc in my back, L4 or L5.
I am the store manager of a Dallas Rent-A-Center, repossessing a refrigerator from a stiff who doesn’t pay his bills. The guy lives on the third floor and offers no help, of course, to me to get the heavy appliance down three flights of stairs. I have almost reached the bottom when gravity gets nasty while I am at an awkward angle. All Hell breaks loose.
I save the fridge but rupture the disc. A good old doctor fixes me up, putting two Titanium cages where the disc once was, and grafting bone around it.
My bad back has a history beginning in the battery room where I did not always use the perfect technique when slinging batteries. That is also where my love-hate relationship with my underrated, overworked, ever-faithful father took hold.
Cadillacs
Dad liked flashy. His clothes may not have been in style or in step with the times but they had personality and clothed a bigger personality.
Whenever possible, the family car was a Cadillac. Usually, it was a Sedan Deville. By today’s standards, it was a stylish armored vehicle or a land-going USS destroyer. It was also the car of the open-road gods.
When I was 16, Dad bought a chocolate brown 1977 Cadillac Seville. The Seville was more sleek and aerodynamic than the boat-like Devilles. Dad bought one that looked like someone had dropped it nose first off the bridge over the Brazos. The front end was smashed to the dash. The vehicle was in a head-on collision. It was totaled.
But Dad knew a guy. The same bodyman who brought his battery truck bed to life was charged with the resurrection of Dad’s Cadillac of Dreams. It took months and months, but when that car rolled onto the D&F Used Car lot (yes, Dad sold used cars, too), it shined so fine, like it just came off the Russell Whatley Motor Company showroom floor. I was in love, real love, for the very first time.
The next year, we drove a U-Haul and our shiny Cadillac to Arlington Texas to start a new life. It was the Summer before my senior year.
D&F Battery & Electric was in the hands of the devil. Jesus left with us.
Battery Trucks
It was an unstable time for the Strothers. Dad partnered up with a gas station owner to open an auto electrical repair shop in his Texaco. I went to work there, too. I neither liked the owner of the joint nor the redhead classmate of mine who worked with me there. Billy was a cocky kid, kind of like me. But he was in his element and my element was 60 or so miles west and no more.
My senior year was miserable but for the success I enjoyed in sports, the preaching I did in various places, and graduating valedictorian, which, given the competition, was like being the tallest midget in the circus.
The year concluded perfectly; however, when the girl I never expected to meet again showed up in my life, this time to stay. Donya moved to Arlington and I moved into high gear. We began dating and in less than a year, we married.
We married at Southside Baptist Church and then drove away in style in Dad’s shiny chocolate brown Cadillac Seville. It would be a night to remember with a lifetime to follow.
After our low-budget honeymoon in Fort Worth, we returned to occupy the one-bedroom apartment Donya found for us on Randol Mill Road in Arlington. Life got real real fast when I returned Dad’s Cadillac and took home Old Yeller. That truck bucked like a wild bronc if you didn’t at least half-load the bed. Donya contracted a bladder infection and the rough ride was pure torture.
The bladder infection would pass. Old Yeller would go off somewhere to die. And life was just beginning.
The Morals of This Story
Understand who and what built you and to what end.
Use your legs, not your back when slinging batteries.
Stop thinking you know how things will go. You don’t. But go somewhere. Do something.
If you have to drive Old Yeller for a while, drive her to a better tomorrow and drive her with dignity and care.
Cadillacs are for show; Old Yeller trucks are for dough.
If you marry the girl of your dreams, don’t keep her in a battery truck forever, and don’t let go ever.
If you are the girl and he takes you on dates in Dad’s Caddy, understand that it is Dad’s Caddy. Old Yeller may soon be your chariot but if your prince is driving, ride that chariot like royalty with your head as high as your expectations.
Plan what you can and when the plan falls apart make another plan.
Don’t be afraid to fly by the seat of your pants because sometimes that is all the navigation you have access to.