A sliding door separated where we lived from where my father worked. My dad would slide the door open and pass the threshold into a wonderland of sounds and textures and smells; not all of them good smells, but there was no doubt that he had entered a different place. The shelves were full of colorful boxes with letters and numbers. Things hung from the walls all the way up to the ceiling. There was a desk in the front window, swivel chairs at the counter, and an old mahogany cash register behind the counter.
People came and people went. The phones rang and were answered. The cash register ca-chunked and dinged and magically opened. And I watched with wide eyes or I played in the aisles or I asked questions about what was happening. This was my playground and these were my friends and I didn’t know that there was any other way of living.
It was a sliding door moment that brought us all back to Maiden Lane and to the family business that my grandfather had started in 1928. My father had never intended to join the business. He had been drafted soon after my parents married in June of 1967 and had been sent to Italy instead of the front in Viet Nam. My mother went with him and I was born there in November, 1968. My mother and I came back in 1969 and stayed with my Grammy Lord, and when my father came back from the army, we moved back to Penn Yan. My father was convinced that he would support our little family without working for my grandfather, mostly holding a variety of jobs and hustling pool on the side, but, when my grandfather became ill in 1970, my father felt it was time for him to help.
My grandfather on my father’s side was born in December, 1899 in Brooklyn. I loved that I could remember how old he was because his age changed with the year. I never even thought about the fact that he had lived an entire lifetime before I had entered the picture. He was almost 70 when I was born.
My grandfather’s name was John Stevenson Reeve, but everyone called him “Steve.” Steve and his mother, whom I have always heard referred to as “Grandma Ida,” lived in New York City, and came to Keuka Lake during the summers. On one of these trips, they met the Rapalee family (Sheriff Milton Rapalee). Steve and Allen Rapalee became friends and Steve and Louise Rapalee were married in 1926. After the wedding, Steve and Louise returned to Long Island, lived with Ida, and Steve worked for the Long Island Railroad. Two years later, in 1928, they returned to Penn Yan and Steve and Allen went into business together with Rapalee Auto Repair.
The original location of the business was 1 Delano Place and the original focus of the business was used auto parts and auto repair. This proved to be a very successful approach during the depression, and the business on Delano Place did everything from selling used parts to selling used cars to repairing cars with used parts.
In 1935, Steve and Allen separated the two businesses. Steve moved Penn Yan Auto Parts to Maiden Lane and focused on new parts, and Allen stayed at Delano Place with the auto repair. The idea of “do-it-yourself” was appealing to people during this time and “preventative maintenance” was a new concept that made sense in the depression era; extending a big ticket purchase and making it last. Penn Yan Auto Parts didn’t just sell parts retail, Steve drove all over the Finger Lakes region to sell parts wholesale, which allowed garage owners to buy parts for considerably less than they would from a dealership.
Penn Yan Auto was a part of our family, as much as a sibling or grandparent, and keeping it alive and well was the central theme of our family; the pulse of the business setting the tempo for the heartbeat of our lives. It was as difficult for my grandfather to admit that he needed help as it was for my father to give it, each of them begrudgingly committing to take the next steps together instead of in opposite directions.
We all settled into life with the auto parts at the center. It was both our life and our livelihood for the next thirty years.