The "Meat Market" Ford Garage

The previous article, 1913 -Transition to The Garage Business, was the first in the Garages of Spring Valley series. It provided an overview, a context, within which the reader might fit the pieces in subsequent articles.

To this end, it included the time-line (1913-1942) for the Ford Garage series of articles. It identified the development of the business in two phases: Phase 1, starting in 1913, took place at the “meat market” garage in the middle of the block on “main street” (Mackay); Phase 2, beginning in 1923, took place at the final location of the Ford Garage on the corner where you can still see vestiges of that venture today. It discussed briefly the evolution of the assembly process as well as Rex’s involvement as the “Ford Assembly Line in Spring Valley” and later, partner and bookkeeper.

In this article Rex tells about his dad’s acquisition of the Ford Agency and the facilities to house it in Spring Valley. He also relates how he was the designated “Spring Valley Ford Assembly Plant” in the Ford Garage’s early years.

So let’s let Rex tell it in his own words. Following are excerpt from a family conversation on Rex Pence’s 83 Birthday:

{Russ: “When did granddad start the garage?”] “1913. Dad (Rex’s dad, Cassius) was the agent-operator down here at the depot, that is for the railroad, and a fellow out here in the country, Nels Madson, had a sawmill, and he had the Ford agency. Nels wanted to get rid of the Ford agency, so he got after dad to take it over. I don’t know – I don’t suppose dad paid very much for the dealership. But anyway, he finally decided to go into the car business.

“There was a meat market down on Main Street where the Chevy Garage was located later, when you were growing up. It was located down in the middle of the block. A man named Hunter shot himself, and his partner Kirk, sold the building to dad.

“Dad cut a front - there were two big windows there, plate glass windows, and he took one out - and they built a door there so that they could drive the display models in from the front and park them behind the remaining glass window for public viewing. Anyway, he started there. And then the building itself was only 50 feet long, just halfway back to the alley. He added on to that building and made it a hundred feet.”

Author’s note: Page 424 of Doug Blegen’s first book, Spring Valley – the Early Days provides some history on the site that was to become the new Ford garage. Of meat markets and garages, Doug wrote “…Hunter had gone into partnership with his son Fred and were doing business in the present front section (or original) of the “G&L Repair” building. C. W. (Cassius) Pence bought it in 1913, as his new Ford dealership and added the rear, or repair, section to the existing building.” It was a meat market in 1913 and the Chevy Garage when I was growing up in Spring Valley. The first Ford Garage was sandwiched in between those two moments in time and uses of the building.

To see a picture of Cassius sitting at his office desk in this first Ford garage, see page 439 of this same book by Doug. The caption for the picture reads: “C. W. (“Cash”) Pence in his office about 1915. Model “T” parts are in the bins behind him. At this time he operated his Ford dealership in the present day “Spring Valley Auto Repair” building. He acquired the dealership in 1913 from Nels Madson and bought the former kirk and Hunter Meat Market for his use shown here. He also added the rear section for mechanic work – still having the same use today. In 1923, Pence migrated north to the corner and bought the former H. J. Park Furniture store. Also in 1923, he built a new repair shop still remaining, just north of the present day Deb’s Country Inn. Pence had come to Spring Valley in 1902 as the railroad depot agent.”

It’s interesting to examine the picture and realize that this was “state-of-the” art high-tech in those days. There was what appears to be an old crank type telephone with “voice-recognition” technology – you simply spoke into the mouthpiece and the operator connected you to your desired telephone number. What a concept. And, you can be sure the parts in the racks behind Cassius were all new and destined to go into the latest newfangled contraption – the automobile.

Rex continues his story with the transition from the old meat market. “He was in there until 1923. Then we bought where the Ford Garage (Author: Oakdale today) is now. We bought that building, and on the south 50 feet there was an old frame warehouse. We tore that down and built the building that’s there now, that brick and tile building. That was 1923.”

The Spring Valley “Ford Assembly Plant”:

[Russ: “Well, that was a pretty good business when granddad developed it…”] [Golda: “Oh yes, he did the right thing when he went into that.] “Oh, yes. Gee, that … boy that was a gold mine in those days. They couldn’t… he could hardly get cars fast enough.

We sold a lot of Ford cars around Spring Valley.

“They used to come in seven in a car load. They used to come in boxcars. I think at one time we had… I think we had three car loads - three boxcars standing down here on the track, loaded with 21 Model-T’s. We just couldn’t get them fast enough from the Ford Motor Company.

“They were all torn down, stripped right down to the chassis. We had to set them up. Well, it turned out that was pretty much my job. I was the assembler. The chassis were in one end of the boxcar and put in there at an upright angle. We had to slide those things out and get them out on the depot platform. The motor was in the chassis - and the radiator. But the windshields, bodies, fenders, running boards, wheels - everything was off of them in crates, tucked in here and there in the box cars between the chassis.

“The other end of the boxcar had a body for each chassis, of course, and we had to wrestle those things out. Get them on the chassis. The fenders - we had fenders in those days of course, and the wheels – everything was off of the chassis.

“We used to unload those things – go down here (to the depot ramp from the house on the hill) after supper, get the bodies out, set them on the chassis to get them down to the garage. Albert Coon helped me quite a bit.

“We’d get them out of there and we’d put the wheels on so that we could get them down to the garage. And then we’d have to take the fenders and the windshields and all of that stuff and assemble it. That was my job there for a number of years.

“I could assemble about two cars in a day, by working hard at it, after I got onto it. But they were hard to assemble. Some of the bolt holes didn’t line up very good. I had a big long punch that I’d get down through the holes, and I’d pry them and pry them together and slip in the bolts that way. They were awfully hard to get assembled. Anyway, we used to sell a lot of model-Ts.”

[Kay: “How old were you when you started doing that?”] “Oh, I suppose I was probably eighteen, eighteen or nineteen.”

In the next article in this series, 1923 to 1942 – The Last Ford Garage in Spring Valley, Rex will tell about the transition from the “assembly line in Spring Valley” to the train and trolley trek to the Twin Cities to pick cars up at the assembly plant and drive them back.

To be continued …

Russell Pence

The Spring Valley Kid

pence@asu.edu