We aim to please so I went back almost three years and reworked this previous blog post about Reller Chevrolet. Hope you enjoy it.
From Doug Houser’s previous post: In my previous post about EJ Tire, parts of the Reller Chevrolet building can be seen in several of the historic photos. I became curious to know just how long the building was before it lost its western end. So I combined the two historic photos using Photoshop. Read his full post from 2013.
This great story arrived by email. I think you’ll enjoy it. DH
When I was 8, my closest playmate was Oliver Sivcovich. He was 10. My family lived at 2643 Roseland Terrace in Maplewood, Missouri. “Ollie” lived across the street. Ollie took me down to his church, the only orthodox Yugoslavian church in our part of the world. The deacon showed me through the small church (located at Limit and Southwest). He explained why there were no seats in the church. Parishioners would stand for the reading of the gospel and then kneel on the kneelers in worship and prayer.
The deacon reminded Ollie to bring the root beer for the weekend luncheon. Ollie asked if we could use my new wagon. He showed me the big jars in their basement with wooden lids. He took the dipper and gave me a mug of that great “home-made root beer”–BEST EVER! Ollie said his brothers would load the jars and we would take them to his church. We brought the wagon over and Ollie’s brothers loaded two big stone jars with wooden tops onto it. He pulled and I pushed. The deacon and his helper unloaded the jars. They brought out two empty jars and put them into the wagon. We trudged home but those empty stone jars were really heavy. Ollie’s brothers weren’t home so we took the wagon up my steep driveway and had lunch with my mother.
Later we turned the wagon around and started down the driveway. The wagon got away from us and ran into a steel pole at the end of the street. The stone jars were okay but my tong to my wagon handle was destroyed. Ollie’s brothers used the wagon to get these big stone jars back to their house. They tried to help with the broken tong to no avail. Ollie and I took it across our street to the Reller Chevrolet service department. The manager looked at my broken wagon and heard our sad story. He had his service writer “pretend” to write out a work order and had Ollie sign it. He seemed more interested in the”homemade root beer” than my wagon. They told us two days. We thanked them and went home.
Reller Chevrolet made our “plight” the story of the day and had asked me if I spoke Yugoslavian. I told them I spoke only “Baptist”. After two long days, we went to the Reller service manager and he gave us our ticket and sent us to the cashier. Ollie asked me “Why are they all chuckling?” The cashier (possibly Mrs. Reller) smiled and asked if we had money. We had 38 cents between us. She sighed and asked if we had any homemade root beer. We both nodded and she gave us two empty gallon jars and smilingly said, “Fill those and we will be square.” It seemed all of Reller Chevrolet enjoyed this experience and invited us to come back with our folks’ car anytime. Ollie responded “When we get to drive.”
Billy Jones,
1945 Class of MRH
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