By Bill Scott, Founder of StoreReport LLC & Scott Systems Inc.
The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering ~ Bruce Lee
IT’S ALWAYS HARD to say goodbye to someone you have known for half your life. Such is the case when I lost a dear friend last week. David Powell, the son of Drexel and Minnie Powell and the founders of Powell Oil Company in McGehee Arkansas, suffered a fatal heart attack on June 2 at the age of 66. I owe David a debt of gratitude I will never be able to repay. In 1981, David convinced his dad to let me design a computer system for their Gulf Oil distributorship.
During his lifetime, David had been a tax lawyer, a certified public accountant, an oil jobber, convenience store and truck stop operator, a catfish farmer, and last but not least, the founder and owner of the best darned Bar-B-Que joint in the Arkansas/Mississippi/Louisiana triangle.
Remembering David, first takes me back to the days of bobtails, cottonseed oil, visible gas pumps, and overhead tanks. I had literally moved in with the Powell family for the two years it took to complete the project, and David helped me learn the oil and convenience store business from the ground up. He allowed me to put his brain into my computer. And from there, it made its way into over 500 similar businesses that stretched across the continent, from New York to Hawaii.
Memories of Powell Oil seem to come from only yesterday. I can still see Johnny, who had long passed his 80th year, wrestling a 55 gallon drum of motor oil into the back of a pickup faster than any 20 year-old I have ever met; his leathered face, powerful physique, and sunburned skin, so tough he could catch red wasps in his bare hands. In the spring, the bookkeeper Wanda would bring in fresh turnip greens from her garden, and David’s mom always made the best chocolate pie in the county. It’s the little things that seem to be the most memorable. Like the time my three year-old daughter taught Mr. Powell how to operate his new VCR. Well into his sixties, he held her patiently on his knee without complaint, as they watched Big Bird, Miss Piggy, and Kermit the Frog together.
Miss Mary opened our first convenience store. In my mind, I can clearly see the old, dilapidated building the day we moved in… once, an old abandoned grocery store, painted snow white on the outside, with lime-green walls, and dirty, scarred up shelves. We scoured the bathroom, scrubbed the floors, and put a fresh coat of paint on the areas that needed it most, stocking the shelves with items we thought might please our customers.
I remember the feed mill and the cotton gin, the bank where we would pick up the bank president and go for lunch in the town’s only cafeteria. During the winter, I would get up from my computer long enough to pump one-gallon of kerosene for the old black gentleman that came by every Saturday during “coat-wearing time”. Sometimes, I would just sit on the loading dock next to the old, abandoned railroad tracks with weeds growing between the ties, and I would listen to the silence that seemed to have lasted for hours on end.
I have a vivid memory of the early days of working in the oil and convenience business. I just don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. The new guys in the industry are quick to point out how far this industry has come since the forties and fifties, but the only thing that’s really changed in my way of thinking is the absence of the heart that made this industry great. In our rush to inflate the bottom line with profits, we are losing one of life’s greatest gifts… the gift of friendship, family, and working together for the common good.
As you get older, you will look back on the people you have known that gave you the building blocks to construct your life. Some of them you will have thanked… others, you may wait until it’s too late. I’ve known and worked with literally thousands of people in the convenience industry since 1981. I’ve make lifelong friends of owners and their children, and in a few cases even their grandchildren, and without the likes of David Powell, for me, none of this would have ever happened. So, adios my old friend, and thanks for acting as my doorway to the magnificent world of oil, gas, and convenience.
Bill Scott is the president of StoreReport LLC. He is an author, speaker, cloud service provider, and consultant to the c-store industry since 1978.