Interestin'.............

[Bob Wright]

My earliest western store was a place in downtown Memphis called Ben Howell & Son Saddlery. Was thinking about it the other day and decided to do a Google search on the name. Found Ben Howell's obituary. He was born in 1880 and died in 1973. His early job was working for a local moving company, as livestock manager. Yep, horse drawn moving trucks then.

He is most noted for bringing the Tennessee Walking Horse into prominence. He introduced the breed to Southern planters, as the horse's smooth gait was easy on the planter as he traversed his cotton fields. Later he drew up the standards that define the breed, and in the course of his show career garnered some 42 blue ribbons.

My Sunday School teacher worked for Howell, and at Christmas gave each boy in his class a hand tooled leather belt.

Interesting course of history right under my nose.

Bob Wright

 

[Colonialgirl]

Whatever happened to "Western Auto' stores??
I haven't seen one of them in several hound dawgs ages.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

Last WA I saw was in Simpsonville, SC . . . quite a while back.

 

[Kevin]

I love all the old hats and such with the names of the western stores in them. It always seems to conjure up simpler days and easy times, with Big puffy summertime clouds.

There was a hardware store in downtown Palatine Illinois, creaky wooden floors and shelves stuffed with esoteric parts, a basement even... "if they didn't have it, you don't need it." I went there more than Home Depot, cause they had it, with an old timer who knew his stuff.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

Whatever happened to "Western Auto' stores??
I haven't seen one of them in several hound dawgs ages.

Western Auto Supply Company—known more widely as Western Auto—was a specialty retail chain of stores that supplied automobile parts and accessories. It operated approximately 1200 stores across the United States. It was started in 1909 in Kansas City, Missouri, by George Pepperdine, who later founded Pepperdine University.

Western Auto was bought by Beneficial Corporation in 1961; Western Auto's management led a leveraged buyout in 1985, leading three years later to a sale to Sears. Sears sold most of the company to Advance Auto Parts in 1998, and by 2003, the resulting merger had led to the end of the Western Auto brand and its product distribution network.

Sometime in the 1940s or 1950s, or possibly earlier,[vague] Western Auto started selling rifles and shotguns in its catalogues. As with other chains at the time, such as Sears, Roebuck and Co., Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney, Western Auto's firearms were sold under a proprietary brand. Often called "store brand" firearms, they were produced by reputable name brand manufacturers, such as O.F. Mossberg & Sons, Remington Arms, Savage Arms, Winchester Repeating Arms Company and High Standard Manufacturing Company. Western Auto firearms sold under the "Revelation" brand name, and were generally models from the brands Savage, Marlin Firearms, or Mossberg.

 

[Bob Wright]

Uh........... This thread was about horses and western stores, not autos and Western Auto.

Though I did buy my Marlin 336T .30-30 from Western Auto.


Bob Wright

 

[coach]

Used to spend time in the local western auto store as a kid, although I can't remember why. Probably getting something for my bike or buying bb's.
We had a horse farm nearby, closer than the western auto, but never knew anything about Tennessee walking horses.
If nothing else this thread brought back memories of the old neighborhood.
The western auto store is long gone and the shopping center is finally being renovated, it was built in the early sixties and the horse farm is now a county park.
You can probably still hear the fog horns from the harbor on a foggy night, but the trains don't run anymore to the shut down steel plant where my father and uncle both retired from.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Come on now Bob. This didn't run to far off the track. The replies are about a Western Named Store and the Horseless Carriage.

 

[JPGLSG]

Uh........... This thread was about horses and western stores, not autos and Western Auto.

Though I did buy my Marlin 336T .30-30 from Western Auto.


Bob Wright

Well see there Bob you even deviated from the horses and western stores when you went to the Western Auto and bought a gun. Do you still have that that Marlin 30-30 and if how about a photo. I sold a boat load of Winchester guns and ammo to the OTASCO years ago, Oklahoma Tire and Supply Company, HQ Tulsa, OK. Also did a little business with Western Auto on the ammos side. I loved going through those old small town horse/western/hardware stores back in the mid 70s while living in Arkansas and working Oklahoma. Ah life was just a tire swing back then, fresh out the Marine Corps and that last year of school, working for Winchester.

 

[Bob Wright]

Well, Sir, since you asked, my Marlin from Western Auto, ca. 1966:




Bob Wright

 

[protoolman]

Nice classic looking marlin right there.

 

[Joe S.]

That is a nice Marlin there Mr. Bob.

Those Walkers are nice animals. I see folks around here running them down the road from time to time. Beautiful gait they have.