Business

Muskrat Ramble

General Auto Parts has seen a lot of "business" in. 71 years in Pontiac.

GEORGE DILA
Special to the Jewish News

R

etail business peo-
ple are always look-
ing for creative
ways to expand the
appeal of their stores.
Gas stations sell coffee and
donuts, restaurants offer gifts
and clothing, discount stores
lease space to fast-food joints,
and supermarkets become
homes for bank branches.
But none of these combina-
tions compare to the one put
together by Sam Toby many
decades ago at his place of
business north of Detroit —
an auto salvage yard where he
sold used-car parts, but also
traded in muskrat meat and
hosted illegal cock fights in the
back.
"See this," says Mel Toby,
pointing to a faint, oval-shaped
scar high on his left cheek. "I
got that when I was about 10
Mel and Bernie Toby of General Auto parts.
years old, from one of the
roosters." He laughs, then
explains. "I kicked at it and it
Flint, ended up in the Detroit area
flew up and got me."
where he met and married Ethel
Mel and Bernie Toby, two of Sam's
Standler. They had three boys,
three sons, run the business now,
Bernard, Melvin and Charles. In
General Auto Parts in Pontiac. It's in
1939, Sam became part owner of an
the same location as when their father
auto salvage yard that an acquain-
ran it, but you won't find muskrat
tance had started 10 years earlier.
pelts or roosters anymore.
Around 1950 he bought his partner
Mel, 57, is pleasantly round, with
out.
gray, wavy hair and silver-rimmed
The location of General Auto
glasses. Bernie is a trimmer 59, with
Parts, about a mile south of down-
gray curly hair. The brothers laugh a
town Pontiac on what for years was
lot, and love to tell stories. This is the
called South Saginaw, but is now
story they tell about their father:
called Woodward Avenue, has not
Samuel Toyb, born in White
changed since 1929. But it did start
Russia, came to America as a kid in
out a lot smaller.
1920. An Ellis Island immigration
"This was the original building,"
clerk decided Toyb was too hard a
Mel says, pulling open a heavy metal
name to pronounce, so he switched
door. The old building, about 20 feet
the "y" and the "b" and Sam set foot
wide and 50 feet deep, is dark and
on the soil of his new homeland with
unused now. There are wooden
a new last name.
shelves lining the walls and wooden
He grew up in Battle Creek and
storage racks built down the center.

"This is where the counter used to
be," Bernie says with a sweep of his
hand. "I remember from when I was
just a kid. The front door was right
there with a porch out front. Back
there were all the parts. And all
around," he says with another sweep
of his hand, "I remember the muskrat
skins hanging."
"And roosters in cages," adds Mel.
Sam would pay amateur trappers 50
cents to a dollar for a trimmed-out
muskrat, only 25 cents for one not
skinned. He'd sell the pelts to furriers,
and the meat to the locals. No one
remembers much about the cockfights.

Salvage To New
Behind the building was the
wrecking yard. Until the early '70s,
Sam sold mostly used parts, salvaged
from wrecks, and from cars that sim-
ply ran out of gas, figuratively speak-

ing. Then he went out of the
salvage business and started
stocking more new and rebuilt
parts.
There are still a few of the
old used parts around, gathering
dust. Mel lifts up the end of a
'49 Chevy transmission, and a
Ford transmission, "probably a
'65," he, guesses. Bernie picks up
a round housing he says is a '44
distributor. There is a rack of
brand new leaf springs, from the
'50s and '60s. "And this," Mel
says, indicating a monstrous
floor scale, "is what he used to
weigh radiators on. He paid by
the pound for used radiators.
The copper," he explains.
But this wasn't Sam's only
auto parts business. In the '50s
he opened a second store,
Bagley Auto Parts, on the
other side of Pontiac. For sev-
eral years, Bernie and Mel ran
that store, in friendly competi-
tion with their father. Their
brother Chuck, now an attor-
ney in Oakland County,
worked there when he was a
student at the Detroit College
of Law. But in 1972, when their
father was ready to retire, the brothers
sold Bagley Auto Parts and took over
General Auto Parts. They've been
running it together ever since.
Sam died in 1984 at age 77. Ethel,
now 88, lives near her sons in West
Bloomfield. "She walks every day,"
says Mel. "And plays the piano," adds
Bernie.
The original building has been
added to three times, and now covers
about 5,000 square feet.
And how many parts do they
stock? "I don't know," says Mel,
laughing, "thousands and thousands."
The store is open 365 days a year,
and since there are only two part-time
employees to help Mel and Bernie,
one of the brothers is always there,
and usually both of them.
They've never had a computer. The

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2000

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