The two Bobs hold back the march of time
McDougall’s Garage in Stoney Creek is a virtual community centre — at 100 years old
Do you ever get the feeling we lost something more valuable than money can measure when businesses put shareholders before shopfronts and maximized profit before making people’s acquaintance?
Every day at McDougall’s Garage, aside from fixing cars, they play cards at the back. The cribbage board is their cracker-barrel.
Customers, old friends, casual passersby, they come and go, laugh, talk, leave, return and there’s a feel of the daily current of life, the reassuring ebb and flow.
Isn’t that what we want? Maybe that’s how McDougall’s got to be 100 years old.
Not with Facebook likes, MBAs and market research but with goodwill.
You should’ve seen the century celebration party Saturday, April 7 — maybe you did, there were more than 200 people there.
The business started in 1918 as a blacksmith’s and carriage repair shop.
“Young” Bob McDougall, current owner, is fourth generation. “Not-as-young” Bob, young Bob’s father, is third, and still comes in every day.
They work together, in the space they’ve always been at, the village heart of Stoney Creek (61 King St.), sticking it out there, respecting tradition, long after the banks bolted.
“I don’t do much anymore,” old Bob tells me. (Some of the customers, like Brian Perretti, call him “Dad.”)
No not much. Young Bob smiles when old Bob says that. He’s just finished changing the brakes on a Honda Accord, a couple of days before his 90th birthday. If I make it to 90 I doubt I’ll be able to change my own ... well, enough said.
McDougall’s is the kind of place where a senior will come in, fretting about a bad smell in the car or nail in a tire, and one of the Bobs will sit him or her down, pour a cup of coffee, and work the nail out, or look everywhere and finally find an old bag with kielbasa in it under the seat (true story).
And when the customer says “How much will that be?,” you know the Bobs will say, “No charge” and send them on their way.
But it comes back to them. Their feedback is sometimes literally feed back, stuff you can eat.
Pastries, baked pies, you name it, often homemade by the customers.
That nail-in-the-tire story is also a true one.
Says Bob’s wife Lynda, “The woman came back with muffins for them.”
Goodwill? Right now, they’re trying to convince a 98-year-old who’s been coming to them forever not to give them her car. She’s sharp as a whip, says young Bob, but she can’t drive any more — she did, right up till now, at 98. She feels they should have the car because they took such good care of it.
This story was going to run last week, in time for not-as-young Bob’s 90th but Brian took me aside, handed me an invitation. A surprise 100th birthday party. Brian and some friends organized it all.
Brian spent two months lining up an old buggy and carriage from Judy at Farm Fresh. There was a display of old tools, old trunks and some vintage cars as well as a DJ who played “Waltzing
Matilda,” old Bob’s favourite song.
“I’ve known them for 50 years,” says Brian. “Old Bob treats me like one of his sons.”
The party, as we said earlier, was packed.
And the two Bobs received two certificates stamped with the
official seal of Ontario from MPP Paul Miller, a longtime family friend and some-time cribbage rival — one certificate was for old Bob’s birthday, one for the shop’s centenary.
Old Bob even gave a speech, thanking everyone.
Some things really change.
Other things, like McDougall’s itself, thankfully don’t. Why would they? Theirs is a richness you can’t put a price on.
But you can bake them a pie.