The coffee is always on

“Now Papaw will have time to build a tree house,” Frank Sutherland recalled his 7-year-old grandson saying when he heard his grandfather had sold Pea Ridge Tire.

“That’s a pretty high priority,” Sutherland said.

Sutherland has owned the shop since 2004 after he was forcibly retired from Glad Manufacturing. His brother, Doyle Sutherland, operated Pea Ridge Tire and Lube there for years, then sold it.

The building housed a couple of di◊erent business before Frank opened the tire shop.

Frank Sutherland graduatedfrom Pea Ridge High School in 1966 then joined the U.S. Air Force for four years.

“The best - and the worst -part is the people you deal with,” Sutherland said, as smile spreading across his face. Working in the tire shop was good, he said,except when it’s really cold or really, really hot.

The coffee is always on at Pea Ridge Tire and there’s always time for a chat.

“It’s bittersweet,” Sutherland said of retirement.

“It’ll be good to go do some of the things I’ve wanted to do,” he said, adding that it will be hard not coming to work after nine years. He said he had only one vacation in the past nine years.

“It’s done well. I couldn’t have done it without my wife. She was behind the scenes but she was a big part of it,” he said, adding that “she never threw a meal out the door when I wasn’t there on time.”

One of the funniest times, Sutherland recalled, was when he was in the shop about 11 one night when a “kid came in the door and asked what time I close. I told him 12. He came back with two fl ats he wanted fi xed because he was going fi shing that night.”

Sutherland says he fi xed the flats then told the young man he meant 12 noon, not 12 midnight.

“I want to thank the people for supporting me here,” he said. “I had to make it pay its own way, but if you can help somebody, that’s the good part.”

“I never did a price comparison,” Sutherland said of competing with larger stores. “I just tried to give everybody a fair deal. I treated people the way I wanted to be treated.

That’s hard sometimes.

You’ve got to appreciate your customers. I keep aclean place, a place where a kid can come in and not be embarrassed by the things hanging on the wall.”

“The Lord’s been watching over me,” he said.

“I’ve got cows to take care of; I’ve got nine years of catch-up,” he said, adding that the retirement is as much for his wife, Becky, who has taken care of the books of the business all these years. The couple has two daughtersand three grandsons.

Sutherland admitted he’d been considering selling for a while. Then, a regular customer, Bill Russell, asked him about it.

“I bought tires from Frank ever since he opened,” Russell said. He bought the business from Frank and the land from Doyle.

Russell said everything will stay the same.

“I want to take careof the people like Frank did. It will be the same as Frank.”

Russell said he worked in heavy construction as a civil engineer for 20 years in Chicago, then drove a truck for 20 years. He said he and his wife moved to Beaver Lake in 1999 and he worked at Rocky Branch Marina for several years.

He took o◊a year and built his house.

“I tried retirement for a year and a half. It didn’t set well with me,” he said, adding that his wife, Nancy, will be behind the scenes at Pea Ridge Tire.

The couple met at a boarding school and have been together for 54 years, he said. He saidhis daughter, Pam Kennedy, is a teacher at Pea Ridge schools. He said he has two grown children, a daughter in Pea Ridge and a son in Chicago and five grandchildren, two of whom are in Pea Ridge.

“We aren’t changing anything,” Russell said.

“There will always be fresh co◊ee.”