“Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days … ”
You might recognize this opening line from the 1986 hit recording by the country duo The Judds. I was thinking about this recently, reflecting on how agriculture has been such a big part of my life — as I'm sure it is with many readers of The Packer — in one manner or another.
My dad, “Buddy,” ran a small cow-calf operation in southern Colorado deep into his 70s. He returned to his ag roots in his late 40s after decades of working and helping Mom raise eight kids in the city. Later on when us adult kids were helping Dad put his hay up for the winter, I told him the work was just getting too hard.
“I still feel okay,” he said. “In fact, pretty good!”
“I'm not talking about you,” I said. “You might be used to this, but it's killing me!”
I was no stranger to physical work, managing produce departments. But it's nothing, nothing like farm work. At the end of a day helping Dad with baling, branding or driving cattle, Mom's supper never tasted so good, a hot shower never so refreshing and sleep never so sound.
Years later, I'd call then-retired Dad from the road while I traveled for work. He liked to talk about his early ag days, especially about my grandfather, Emilio, in the same sleepy, remote town of Chama, Colo. I liked to joke and say the town is so small, they're thinking of having the town carpeted, or that if you happened to end up there somehow, you are truly lost.
Retail runs in the family: Grandpa Emilio Lobato (wearing tie, holding hat) is shown in front of his Chama, Colo., mercantile store, circa 1930. Numerous small-town general stores stocked everything from tack to turnips decades before supermarkets existed. (Photo courtesy of Armand Lobato)
Dad reminisced about how my grandpa not only ran cattle but also raised thousands of head of sheep — wool necessary for the world war's heavy demand for soldiers' uniforms, blankets and more. Grandpa kept a form letter of appreciation sent from the White House and President Franklin Roosevelt.
Dad frequently recalled when I checked in each week, describing how grandpa's father-in-law, my great-grandpa Armand Choury, helped grandpa establish a general store, The Chama Mercantile. Dad helped grandpa stock it with common, rural needs: tack, boots, feed, hardware, tractor parts, perhaps a few luxuries and, of course, groceries. That's what I found especially interesting.
Related: Read more insight from Armand Lobato
With few fresh distributors in the 1930s-1940s, my grandpa embarked on seasonal road trips. To distant Grand Junction to load peaches, apples and pears, to New Mexico for chili peppers, or to Rocky Ford for melons. Dad described tagging along as a kid to help load grandpa's flatbed truck, along with a sagging trailer, with fresh produce to sell at the Mercantile. It was grandpa's regional buying trips, certainly, but to my dad in his youth, it was always an adventure, shaking the Chama dust off his feet to see just how far this old world extended.
As in so many small towns, the old general store closed sometime in the mid-'50s, as most rural people migrated to the city to find work. But at its peak, dad described the store as the town's gathering place, where folks shopped for fresh, seasonal produce procured from far and near.
We recently said goodbye to Dad — the tough, 90-year-old cowboy — a week before Christmas. Laying him to rest just a stone's throw from his dad's grave and great-grandpa, among others. As I've returned to work, driving along distant roads across the country, I pick up my phone out of habit, then softly put it down, remembering I can't call Dad any longer to talk about … anything. The ranch, my latest dumb joke, what's for supper, or further details about the Mercantile. The good old days.
Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His 40 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions.