The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
FINISHING TOUCH
Auto body garage owners closing up shop after 9 decades
PORTLAND » Over much of his lifetime as a gasoline merchant and auto body repair shop owner, Pat Nettis, 88, has seen an awful lot of changes in his family business that’s been around since 1928.
“Back then, there were Fords, Chevys, Packards and Cadillacs on the road. They had flower urns on the inside where you put flowers,” he said. “Between the front door and the rear door — that little post — they had a little vase on each side and you put fresh flowers in them or you put artificial. That made it fancy for the person that sat in the backseat to have flowers.”
And ladies, in those days, sat in the rear of the family automobile, he said.
“I remember getting in the car, my mother was in the back seat, and I was 12-14 years old and I’d have the front seat next to my father,” recalled the owner of Patty’s Auto Body on Silver Street.
At the end of this month, Pat and his son John Nettis, 61, will say goodbye to their last customer. “It is sad to see the business
go, see the name go. It’s the end of a time. There’s no fourth generation (that wants to continue the family business),” Pat Nettis said.
The car repair business runs in his blood. Ever since he was 3 or 4 years old, he’d be there, watching his dad work.
“My father would pull me in the garage, and if I didn’t do it right, a bang on the head!” Pat Nettis said. “He’d show you how to do this and he’d say, ‘This is how you do it,’ and if you didn’t do exactly what he said, Bam! You got it. ‘This is the way you’ve got to do it! Not the way you’re doing it!’”
Pat Nettis has an eighthgrade education, very common in the early 1940s. “I learned on the job.”
High school was a big deal back then, he said.
“When I was 13 or 14 years old, my friend who lived down the street from me graduated and I thought that was the biggest thing in the world. I congratulated him. I hugged the guy. Today, high school is nothing,” Pat Nettis said.
“I went through high school,” he joked. “Through the front door and right back out again. You couldn’t afford college.”
Nettis has a black 1961 Ford Thunderbird convertible, which bears a blast from the past on the front — one of those old blue Connecticut license plates with white letters spelling out “Coach,” a tribute to his father, Philip V. Nettis.
John Nettis’ baby is a red 1976 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
His grandfather opened an auto repair shop in New Britain in 1928 called CT Coach Works. Known to many as “Coach,” the elder Nettis moved the enterprise a couple years later to Kings Avenue in Middletown, at the foot of Main Street, just over the Arrigoni Bridge.
It was the first auto repair shop in Middlesex County, Pat Nettis said.
“Cars in the old days were either black or brown and were repaired by hand using a file and hammer to remove dents,” Nettis said. “Parts were hard to come by.”
“Metal was a lot thicker then, so you could hammer it out and when you had a lot of little bumps, you could take a file and you’d file it and made it fairly smooth, and when you wanted to make a finish you’d put lead on it: hot lead,” Pat Nettis said.
“You’d heat it with a torch — you had a paddle — and you’d paddle it over, smoothed it over, like a butter knife. And you’d file that again to make it smooth. It came out like a new product.”
Not too many parts needed to be repaired in those days, Pat Nettis said, however, “the motors wore out a lot sooner. They weren’t as sturdy as they are today or built to precision. Today, a motor will get 150,000, 200,000 miles. Then, if you got 60,000, 70,000, it was time to overhaul it.”
“You had to order a part and it would take two to three weeks before you got it. Today you call them up; five minutes later, you’ve got the part,” Pat Nettis said.
When his father retired, Pat Nettis opened his own business on Washington Street, where Illiano’s Ristorante and Pizzeria is now. It was a Chevron gas station.
His most notable “customer” was the late Gov. Ella Grasso, who was traveling on Washington Street in a motorcade with the state police in the 1970s.
“I had a fig tree. I had it in a big barrel. I used to wheel it outside: It was 8 feet tall and 4 feet around,” he said, moving his arms into a giant circle. “She spotted my fig tree and she stopped the procession and came over.
“She got out of the car we took pictures. She was squeezing the figs, seeing if they were ripe.
“She asked me a lot of questions,” Pat Nettis said.
Back then, Route 66 was a busy highway just like now, he said. “Cars were bumper to bumper getting out of work.” That was the only way out of Middletown to Meriden. “It was known as gas station alley,” Pat Nettis said.
Price Chopper and Staples plazas were big open fields with cows and Walgreens was the former Millside Furniture.
He sent his four children — two girls, Patty and Carolyn; and two boys, Phillip and John — to Xavier and Mercy high schools, from his earnings, working from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.
John Nettis began working in the family enterprise in high school.
“I was a little kid pumping gas, then he opened the body shop and I started doing summers. All of my vacations were working there,” he said.
When he graduated from Xavier, John Nettis said, “It was a change from Catholic school getting there at 6 a.m.”
The business moved to 4 Silver St. in 1990s and began specializing in domestic and foreign car repairs, collision work, painting, radiator and glass repairs, frame straightening and 24-hour towing.
At one time, Pat Nettis had three people besides his son working for him in the shop. “Then things went bad. It was harder with insurance companies (dictat- ing where repairs had to be made).”
Now people go to dealerships for fixes.
“I think the dealers have sort of brainwashed the customers to come there for their repairs — that warranty. Customers sort of slid into that groove,” Pat Nettis said. “They go to the dealers even for body repairs.”
Insurance companies changed the value of his work by placing a set limit on each service, like health insurance.
“It isn’t like a mechanic,” Pat Nettis said. “He does the same thing every day. Every job that comes in, you’ve got to look at it from a different angle.”
Now the pair have to wait for the adjustor to come down, wait again for the estimate, and agree with the figure, Pat Nettis said. “It takes a lot more time.”
People paid for auto body work out of their pockets, he said.
“In those days, you were only paid 25, 30, 40 cents an hour. You could work all week on a car and it would cost you $300, $400. Today you can’t spend a half a day on a car and you’ve spent $1,000 already in labor,” Pat Nettis said.
Now, there are environmental regulations, too.
“There’s nothing but chemicals now. It’s a lot more hazardous than ever,” Pat Nettis said. “They’re more deadly now and more of them today. The bond, just the fumes ... you have to wear gloves and a mask.”
So Pat Nettis made the decision earlier this year to shutter his doors.
“It’s time for me to quit. I’m getting tired of working. I kept working up till age 85. Now I work twice as hard as home.
“When (John) needs a helping hand, I come down and help.”
Since then, Pat Nettis has been puttering around the house, cutting the lawn and wood for his stove, trimming trees and working on the house.
“All my customers have died off, from when I was young, they’re all gone,” Pat Nettis said.
John Nettis is not sure what he’ll do for work — after taking some time off, that is.
“When we leave here, it’ll be empty, maybe a couple chairs will remain,” said Pat Nettis, who is eyeing August, when he can get back to crabbing at North Cove in Old Saybrook. He and his grandchildren will haul in anywhere between three (“I’ll throw those back”) and (less often) upward of 300 a night.
Both men said they are appreciative to their customers — for their loyalty and friendship — and feel a pang of sadness when they think of moving on.