Joan Rowden Hart 2018. This week I enjoyed visiting with Lebanon’s Bud Clark about the Glory Days of Lebanon. If that is a new term to you younger readers, it is defined in the Urban Dictionary as a certain time when you reminisce about the” “good old days” however you define them. Another dictionary of colloquialisms says that Glory Days were the “most successful time that someone or something has experienced - a past period of better times.”
Your remembrance of Lebanon’s Glory Days will vary according to your age group. For Bud and for me and for most of you, if I know the majority of my readers as well as I think I do, we look upon the late 1940’s through the early part of the 1970’s as the best times to live and work and shop and play and yes, partake of Lebanon’s many good eating establishments.
I associate Bud and his wife Patsy with the Farm Supply Store in the 100 block of West Commercial. In fact, I didn’t know until this week that he changed the name to Clark’s Hardware about six months after buying the business in 1974. It was always Farm Supply to me as long as it was there. I never bought any farm supply items from him. In fact I didn’t even know there were any there. I just went in to see the beautiful dishes and other colorful ceramic items for home decor.
Some of you will remember that the previous owner, Ralph Butts, died the night before the sale was to be finalized and the deal was consummated with his son with the help of Lebanon attorney Dave Donnelly who is related to the Butts family.
Bud has always liked to collect and trade knives and he has some special ones. His favorite is the knife that Missouri Governor Phil M. Donnelly kept in his desk drawer in the Capitol building in Jefferson City. Another unique knife is called a “hobo knife” because the blade could be transformed into a knife and fork for eating when you were out riding the rails or living in a hobo camp.
Bud and his wife sold the business in 1982, and he went to work for Tony Thornton Auctions out of Springfield. Bud was licensed in seven states and conducted auctions all over the country. He would do the clerking and other paperwork as well as doing the auctioneering for many of the sales. They did all kinds of auctions, including large farm auctions. His record of which he is quite proud is that in 1984 he had sales totalling $3.7 million in just six hours in the Joplin area.
Bud grew up in the Tuscumbia area and attended Iberia High School, graduating in 1957. Some of the highlights of the school years there occurred when the school would put the kids on a bus and drive them to Lebanon for an evening of skating at the Roll-A-Rena here in Lebanon. Bud said it was real easy to slip away from the group, so he and his buddies would take the long trek to the far East end of Commercial to partake of Vern Wilkerson’s delicious local cuisine.
Bud said the Iberia seniors worked long and hard their senior year to earn enough money for their senior trip to Silver Dollar City in 1957. They were able to rent motel rooms and got their breakfast free, and each student was given $4.00 a day for food and other entertainment, like going down into Marvel cave at SDC. In fact the cave was basically all that was there in 1957.
Bud started his business enterprises in Lebanon when he moved here in 1964 and eventually he and his parents opened the Shepherd Hills Standard Gas Station on City Route 66. He bought Farm Supply in 1974 and kept busy taking care of both businesses with the help of his wife, until 1981 when he sold the Standard Station and shortly afterward he sold Farm Supply.
Lebanon was good to Bud Clark, and he was certainly good for the town. And when it comes to the local family owned businesses in any small town, that is the way it should always be.
