Howard Herron Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Howard Herron 7
on account of your guts." So I took a job selling Fords, $25 guaranteed
and 3 percent override commission and what I wanted was to get him to
furnish me with a car. I couldn't buy a car, coal miners' salaries
didn't pay enough and anyway I gave all my money to my dad to help pay
the bills. I was wanting that job so I could have something to ride the
girls with so I got him to furnish me a car. And he said, "When do you
want to start?" I said, "Well, Mr. Latham, I don' t know how to run one."
He said, "What? You want a job selling them and don't even know how to
run one?" I said, "1 can learn." He said, "Wally." Wally Fleming was a
mechanic and he said, "Take this guy out and teach him, get one of those
old cars out there and show him the road and head him north out of town,
so he can learn to drive." I never will forget the roads were dusty, or
frozen, they weren't dusty, they were just frozen and horse tracks and
just as raugh as they could be. I stayed with it and you didn't have to
know very much to learn how to drive a Ford car. And so I went on and
that was in January.
Q: How old were you then?
A: I was about 21 and so he said one day, "Where's all these automobiles
you said you were going to sell?" I said, "1'11 get 'em, 1'11 get 'em."
I said, "What I need is I need a new car," they gave me an old car. I
said, "What I need is a new car so I can create a little attention like
when I go into a town like Glenarm, Divernon or Thayer." And so he
said, "What do you want?" I said, "Give me a new touring car. I can
haul a lot of girls in that." (laughs) So he started out and I said,
"1'11 show you one of these days," and I had a lot of them lined up. See in
them days we had to wait on your turn to get one and so I started out on
the road, the weather got nice, the farmers all drove the roads. I
started out to Glenarm, I had a deposit on a car they were trying to buy.
For $450 you could buy a Ford car then and I got a $25 deposit on one
there and I went to Divernon and I got one there, and I went to Thayer
and I got two. I come in and I had a $100 deposit on four automobiles.
The old man said, "BY God, you can sell cars," and so 3: went right then
and I stayed with them until--that was about 1922. In 1926 I began to
lose sales to Chevrolet and I said, "Somebody is going to come in here
with Chevrolets and it might as well be me." So I went to the banker and
I had these fingers mashed off over there in the garage and the insurance
company gave me $750. 1 had my car, a demonstrator, 1 hadn't paid on
that in about a month. I owned it myself and so T went to the banker
here. My uncle used to be president of the bank, Simon Herron, and he
was also supervisor and a member of the high school board and he didn't
like it. He lived on a farm out here. So he give up the presidency of
the bank to Mr. Stockdale. I told him, I said, "Chevrolet, General
Motors is going to have a big meeting in St. Louis and I can get down
there and get that franchise from Chevsolet for this city." And he said,
"Well, that's a good thing. Auburn needs something like that." I said,
"Well, I don't have very much money." He said, "How much money you got?"
I said, "$750 and I got enough money to buy Grant out, Grant Tire
Company there, the stock that they had." So he said, "Here's the checkbook,
go down there and get you a carload of cars and give them the check just
like you have the money." And he said, "When you come back give us the
number of the cars and then when you sell them come in and pay it off ."
I said, "Okay." So I did and I got the contract, the franchise, and I