(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
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Lifelong Ozarker reflects on family legacy — Ozarks Alive [1]
['Kaitlyn Mcconnell']
Date: 2023-10
That meeting, some 46 years ago, happened just two years after Aid decided to come home and work at the hardware store, becoming the fourth generation of his family in the business.
“Toney Aid has joined his father’s business, Aid True Value Hardware, according to the West Plains Daily Quill,” reported the Springfield Leader and Press in February 1974. “A graduate of the University of Missouri - Columbia, Aid will serve as assistant manager.”
Those were days when things were different. Back then, business was central to the West Plains square and the Aids’ store was at the heart of it all. It also sold a wide variety of items, including those that weren’t traditionally found in a hardware store such as toys, dishware, fabric, candy and more.
But with changing times – and the introduction of Walmart, of which Aid shares West Plains was an early store location – so did the business. As the model shifted, he speaks of an effort to compete.
“Toney thought he was smarter than them (Walmart) and he wasn’t,” Aid says of himself, giving an example: “I decided I was going to outsell them on lawnmowers one year. I bought three semi-truckloads of lawnmowers. Sold riding lawnmowers for about a $30 profit and then filled them with gas and filled them with oil and had to take care of them.
“Dummy.”
Ultimately, Aid Hardware shut its doors in 1990 after being open for 105 years. At the time, it was one of three hardware stores that Aid owned: Others were located in Willow Springs and Salem, Ark., and have also closed.
“We’re sorry to be leaving, but we’re proud of the prosperous, growing, healthy place West Plains is today,” Aid said through newspaper pages in October 1990. “And we’re proud to think that we were part of making it that way.”
The news was shared in papers across the region, including through a column by James J. Fisher in the Kansas City Star in November 1990:
“About three years ago we noticed that the crowds weren’t coming,” said Joe Aid Jr., Aid’s father, in the Star. “It was easy to figure out why. There’s a big new shopping mall out west of town with a food market and discount stores and other shops. The traffic pattern had changed. People didn’t have to come down to the square anymore.
“And the simple fact was that our customers had gotten old. People who used to come in here for plow points and fencing and fishing reels and tinware and lamp wicks aren’t buying anymore.”
“It’s hard to imagine a downtown West Plains without an Aid Hardware,” said a former clerk in a newspaper article announcing the store’s closing.
But the Aids’ last day of owning a store on the square wasn’t when they expected.
A year after the hardware store shuttered, it found new life – as an antique mall, run by Aid and his father.
“Gone are the bolts and nuts, the saws and hammers, and all the rest. In their place are thousands of other items, all labeled, priced and in some cases, thankfully identified as to just what they are,” columnist Fisher wrote about the store’s next chapter in 1995.
Downtown Antiques has now been open for around a third of the time the building saw hardware sales, and change has come to this chapter, too. Instead of vendors, Aid owns every lock, stock and barrel himself. It contains a variety of unique antiques, including many with Ozarks ties — including local artwork and a bookshop section filled with works by local authors as well as vintage titles.
The building, too, has seen new life after being completely remodeled: The upper two stories feature apartments, including one in which Aid and his wife, Kathleen, reside. The apartment showcases piece after piece by local artists, often depicting Ozarks scenes, and also holds part of Aid’s collection of Native American pottery.
But it’s only one example of many buildings he has taken time to save.
“I’m working on the 17th (building) we’ve remodeled or restored,” says Aid. “We did four for national landmark status and tax credits, and all the others it didn’t pay to do that but we tried to do them all historically.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.ozarksalive.com/stories/lifelong-ozarker-reflects-on-family-legacy
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