The summer between the 8th
and 9th grade I was a partner in a popcorn stand with my boyhood
friend Ralph Thomas. We paid $50.00 for an old popcorn wagon. We cleaned it, we
painted it. We bought 10 gallons of coconut oil, a bag of popcorn salt and 2 50
pound bags of popcorn. We bought boxes of candy bars, cases of pop and we
learned how to make cotton candy and caramel apples. We parked our stand in the
parking lot of a roadside market owned by Ralph’s dad. The rent for our space, we
had to work in the market during the day. We sold watermelons, corn, locally
gown vegetables and I learned to work the deli counter. To this day I can wrap
meat better than the guys at our SoCal grocery stores, thanks to Ralph’s dad,
Ralph Senior.
Our location was brilliant; a
quarter of a mile from the “Starlite” drive in theater. The Starlite’s popcorn cost
50 cents a box. We sold the same box for a quarter. Ralph and I killed them. In
an era when the minimum wage was whatever you got paid. Ralph and I were making
75 to a hundred dollars a week selling popcorn, candy and soda. In a few weeks
we paid off the startup costs and pocketed the rest.
The business was Ralph’s idea.
From that summer on he never stopped. Not for a minute.
Ralph grew up in a boarding
house, his mother renting rooms and cooking for strangers. As Ralph said, “I
never knew who we were going to eat dinner with.” How far did Ralph go from
that boarding house in Grand Forks? A long, long way, here’s an example, Ralph,
his wife Carolee, Jan and I had dinner at Spago in Beverley Hills. Wolfgang
Puck sat with us over after dinner drinks. Wolfgang wasn’t a stranger to Ralph
and Carolee.
Ralph dropped out of school,
he joined the Marines. Later in life, we were having a drink at a LA hotel.
Ralph told me, he was dyslectic. He said he could never figure out why it was
so hard for him to read. In those days, dyslectic kids were rarely diagnosed,
they were considered slow or just dumb. The only way he could get a C was to
literally memorize every word the teacher said.
Ralph got out of the Marines
armed with his GED and a burning desire to be successful and he was. He went
into the car business with my dad’s help. In a few years he was a sales manager
and it wasn’t long before he owned his first car store, a tiny Chevy dealership
that he, Carolee and his brother Pat staffed. Soon he had another, another and
another. 30 years ago he sold all but one of his dealerships. He told me it was
time. He held on to one, Gateway GM in Fargo. Why would a guy who had owned and
operated dealerships in major markets go to Fargo? As he told me it was all
about location. General Motors likes to have dealers operate in a market area
with population base of 100-125 thousand. Fargo has a population of just over a
hundred thousand, but the marketing area has well over 250,000 people. The
closest Chevy dealer north of Fargo is Rydell’s and as Ralph said, “Who in
their right mind is going to drive a 160 mile round trip to buy an Impala?” At
over 500 cars a month, he was right again. It was the popcorn stand all over
again.
When he left the car
business, Ralph got involved in real estate investment and development and many
other ventures. He got back into the car business again when he built Metro
Auto Auctions in Phoenix and Dallas. First class operations and successful enough
he sold them a few years ago to Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway.
Ralph’s philosophy was if people are buying 13-15 million new cars a year, that
means there are a lot of used cars around and used cars are where the money is.
Then he told me he learned that from my Dad.
I’m going to miss Ralph, his
intelligence, his counsel, his friendship.
I’m going to miss his
incredible memory as well, one afternoon driving back from lunch in Phoenix, he
quoted the entire pitch of the barker for Margie the Wham-Wham Girl’s cheesy
strip show at a carnival we went to in junior high…part of it went ”She shakes
it to the North, she shakes it to the south, she shakes it from the east and to
the west aaaaannndd she shakes it where it shakes the best.” Ralph turned to me
and said, “What was that damn song they played?” I said, “Preston Epp’s “Bongo
Rock”. We both laughed like adolescent boys.
Ralph died yesterday in
Scottsdale.
