Billy Furr’s is gone, but not the memories

By John Kuhn

Special to the Index

I don’t know what year Furr Lumber was originally built, but 30 years ago it already seemed ancient.

I was 5 years old, and my Dad spent his days off from his regular job as a firefighter building and renovating houses in and around Mineral Wells with Lamar Smith. When he wasn’t doing that, he stayed busy making things out of wood in his shop—piddling, he called it.

Dad’s second job and his hobby meant that we paid hundreds of visits to Furr Lumber over the years, only we never called it that. Right up until the day it burned, it was Billy Furr’s to us, no matter what the sign out front said. I guess it will always be Billy Furr’s to my family. And it will always command a special place in my memory.

If I get really still and close my eyes, I can hear the crunch of gravel as Dad pulls his truck into the parking lot of the old lumberyard. I don’t think I ever went to Billy Furr’s without a baseball cap on—it seemed like a required part of the working man’s dress code.

I can see Dad’s weather-beaten hand grab the door handle and I can hear the door creak open. Warm, friendly chatter from inside wafts through the crack in the door to meet us. I can still see the Spartan décor: the PVC man with gloves duct taped on for hands (how long was that thing there?); a plastic promotional clock behind the counter; a high, clumsy counter with tall homemade stools waiting for customers.

Mostly, the walls were covered with things like roofing hammers and measuring tapes and concrete displays and slingshots (along with bags of associated ammo).

“Who’s that you got there, Johnnie?” someone would say more often than not as the door clanged shut behind us.

“This is my bodyguard,” Dad would say. Every single time, he used that same line. And he always kind of halfway smiled and laid his heavy hand on top of my ball cap when he said it.

Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the folks behind the counter knew who I was, eventually. They didn’t have to ask Dad who he had with him every time we walked in. But they did ask. I suspect that maybe it was all a setup—I think they wanted to give Dad a chance to make me feel special. Well, it worked; I don’t remember any store the way I remember Billy Furr’s. I think there may be a Billy Furr’s in my heaven someday.

The chatter didn’t stop there. There was talk of jobs and wives and trips and weather before anyone ever got around to the question of, “What can I help you with?” Dad didn’t seem to mind, and neither did I.

We bought nails and caulk and saw blades and whetstones and shingles and gaskets and hammers and who-knows-what-else at Billy Furr’s. And lumber. Lots and lots of lumber. I can still smell it. We bought other stuff, too. If they didn’t have it, they could get it. It would be on the next truck.

The way I remember it, we never once walked outside to Dad’s pickup without first stopping by the old Coke machine. It sat in a nook over near the giant spools of carpet and linoleum. I don’t know where Dad got all those quarters, but I can vividly remember pulling open the narrow glass door on that old-timey Coke machine and looking at that colorful bouquet of jutting bottle caps, stacked up one on top of the other, and trying to decide which drink I wanted. I think I was partial to grape soda back then. Or maybe that was my sister. We drank more than a few root beers and orange sodas, too. One thing I’m sure of is that we each got to reach in there and pull out a cold glass bottle of soda pop and take it with us back to Perrin nearly every time we went to that old store. Dad wasn’t too worried about sugar rotting our teeth, I guess. I think he was more worried about keeping us quiet in the pickup for the trip home.

Those memories make me want to be a better dad to my own kids, to be honest. I can’t remember a bad trip to Billy Furr’s. I don’t remember my dad telling me to hush or to stop running or to quit asking for soda pops. Maybe he did and I’ve filtered those details out. (If so, that’s reassuring—I’ve said all those things to my kids in the past two days.) I’m glad I’ve held on to the memories I have of Billy Furr’s. A lot of good things happened for me in that massive, ugly building.

I need to find a Billy Furr’s to take my sons and my daughter to, I suppose; somewhere where the people behind the counter will ask me who I’ve got there with me. And when I push open the door to that place, I need to make sure I spend less time growling, “You kids better behave in here or else” and more time scrubbing their heads and telling people they’re my bodyguards.

I think I remember it so fondly because Billy Furr’s was a lot like my life growing up, a lot like life around here for most of us, probably—nothing fancy, but they had what you needed.   


----------------------

John Kuhn is the author of “Texas Eccentrics” and principal of Mineral Wells High School.