The End of an Automotive Era

Dick’s Garage in Perkinsville Closes Its Doors

My family moved to the High Country—Triplett, to be exact—at the beginning of my junior year of high school after living in Fairhope, Alabama for two years. In Fairhope, we lived downtown, about two blocks from the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education where my brother and I were students. I could literally wake up at 7:55 a.m., jump into some clothes, brush my teeth, grab a Pop-Tart and be in Tillie Stephens’ homeroom class by the eight o’clock bell. Which is exactly what I did on most weekday mornings.

Dick Church’s Garage in Perkinsville has helped folks keep their motors running for decades in the High Country. The garage fixed its last vehicle this month before closing its doors for the final time. Photo by Marie Freeman

Imagine my chagrin to find out that we had to ride the bus to get to our new place of study, Watauga High School. It was not just any old bus ride, either. My brother and I were the first ones on the bus before sunrise and the last ones to arrive home each night. And I do mean night. The big yellow school bus that took us to WHS each morning meandered down every pig path and country lane in eastern Watauga County before finally arriving at school, some 90 minutes after we first boarded the vehicle.

My brother and I complained bitterly about our new mode of school transportation, as only 15 and 16 year-olds can. I believe the word “unfair” was bandied about on a fairly regular basis.

The problem was solved when my Aunt Pauline got a new car and her ’65 Dodge Dart (black exterior, red interior) was handed down to my family. We dubbed the car Pony Boy after the Allman Brothers’ song and started driving it to school.

Of course, any time you mix a youngish driver with an oldish car (even one as durable as the Dodge Dart), you are going to encounter mechanical problems. It took me more than one hike to the filling station to realize that the “E” on the gas gauge didn’t stand for “enough” and checking the rest of the fluids was not my strong suit either.

Eventually Pony Boy needed professional mechanical help if we were going to avoid the shame of returning to the dreaded school bus. After asking around for a cheap reliable mechanic, some of the locals in Triplett told us about Dick Church’s Garage in Perkinsville.

If you were coming from the Triplett side of the county, Dick’s Garage on New River Heights Drive was located on top of a steep hill. So steep, in fact, that we used to say that if your car could make it to Dick’s, maybe it wasn’t in such bad shape after all.

After decades of keeping all manner of American-made vehicles on the road, Dick’s Garage closed for good last week. It was a sad moment in High Country automotive history and one that should be noted and discussed.

Dick himself had gone to that great garage in the sky about five years ago after a bout with cancer. If you never met the man, you missed out on a true Watauga County original. Dick held court in a chair not too far from the giant wood stove in the garage. In the winter, the place had the most alluring smell, a manly combination of hardwood smoke and Valvoline 10W-30 motor oil.

Sitting next to Dick was always his big white dog. It was one of those dogs that looked remarkably like its owner, heavy-set but powerfully built, with a perpetual smile on its face. Why anyone who owned a garage would get a white dog is beyond reason, and by the end of the day both of them would be covered with some sort of dark petroleum product.

For any vehicular problem, Dick’s advice was always the same: “Write down what you want me to do and leave the key in the ignition.”

For all of the thousands of cars left outside of Dick’s with their keys in the ignition, I never heard of one that was stolen or borrowed for a teenage joyride.

Dick’s Garage had the well-earned reputation as being fair, fast and affordable. If your car was past its prime and was about to suffer a catastrophic breakdown, Dick would tell you to your face to start saving your money for a new one. He was also a great source of information about the used cars that were available in the High Country.

One time in the early 1990s I brought my Olds Omega (an updated version of the Dodge Dart) to Dick’s because it was running rough as a four-day beard. When I went to check on it a few days later, Dick told me that the distributor—that large piece of machinery under the distributor cap—had crapped out. When he saw me blanch upon learning the price of a new distributor, he thought to himself and said, “I might know where I can get a used one.”

The next day Dick drove to a junkyard in Virginia where he had seen a car like mine, took out its distributor, drove back to Perkinsville and installed it on my Omega. The whole ordeal took him a day to accomplish and saved me about $500. He considered it a mechanic’s challenge and talked about it the way a coach would have bragged about his team upsetting a tough cross-town opponent.

Dick was an old school mountain man and trusted people enough to drive away with their cars even if they couldn’t pay him until the next Friday. He knew that people depended on their cars to get them to work, and if they couldn’t get to work there was less of a chance for a payday for customer or mechanic.

One time he told me a story about a man he had had a feud with when he was just a kid. Apparently Dick raised some ducks and this man, a neighbor, kept luring the ducks to his place where he would promptly kill them and eat them. Dick was a lot younger than the man but warned him to stop stealing his ducks “or else.” The man continued his duck-poaching and bullying ways so Dick waited until one day when he was gone and then burned the man’s cabin to the ground.

I stood with my eyes wide open upon hearing this terrible tale of feuding, duck killing and premeditated arson. Dick just laughed as if he had told a lighthearted story about a prank that he and some friends had pulled one April Fools.

I’ve never been one to look forward to car trouble. But I miss Dick Church and I know I’m going to miss going to his beloved garage every time I need something fixed or a new inspection sticker. He was always good for an inspection sticker, even if your tires were a little bald.