Life Behind the Counter: The Story of Chuck Evans and His Liquor Stores

By Charlie Evans

"I am pleased to offer to you Life Behind the Counter-the Story of Chuck Evans and his Liquor Stores for your enjoyment. My dad owned a number of retail liquor stores in Bowling Green, Kentucky over 40 years. This book will give you Chuck's biography and will include a number of stores from his 40 years in the business. For those who

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlie Evans
• Release date: May 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737132615

Charlie Evans

Charlie Evans is a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), an attorney licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, an author and co-developer of A Journey Divine. Visit www.charlieevans.org for more information.

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Copyright © 2021 Charlie Evans

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations for a book review. To request permissions, contact the publisher at [e-mail]

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-7371326-0-8

E-book ISBN: 978-1-7371326-1-5

First Edition May 2021

Cover Art by MilbArt

Printed by Charlie Evans in the USA.

Publisher: Charlie Evans

www.charlieevans.org

These are my memories, from my perspective, and I have tried to represent events as faithfully as possible.

Foreward

It was a perfect fall day in Kentucky. The familiar sound of the Call to Post trumpeted over the racetrack loudspeakers. The anthem signaled that I only had a few moments before the race commenced. As I sipped my Kentucky bourbon, I finalized my wager to bet on a 48-1 longshot. Before I could set my bourbon down, I heard my father Chuck Evans yell, Son! Don’t you waste your money on a grey horse... especially one from Ireland. Chuck was a self-proclaimed handicapper and I decided to trust his instincts and place my money on a safer bet which was the 2-1 crowd favorite mare.

I am Robert Evans and the trusting son in the above betting narrative is myself, the youngest son to that father, Charles Chuck H. Evans.  Our family grew up in a small town in Warren County, KY. I realized at an early age that growing up in a small town had its advantages. Friendships were close and family bonds were strong. The author of this book is my older brother Charlie Evans and we both shared the same upbringing. Today I am a father of two beautiful children. I can only hope I can raise them with the same morals and integrity as my father. I believe my father, deceased now, would be extremely proud of my new role as a parent and to my brother’s commitment in writing this book. 

This collection of stories and events from my father’s life expand into both his personal and professional life. Most importantly, his business was his passion as was his philanthropy to his friends, neighbors and community. Chuck Evans was more than a businessman. He was a father, mentor and friend to many young individuals who knew him. It would not be out of the ordinary to see him reach into his pocket to give you his last dollar. He was a true source of inspiration. This book is unique in the sense that it is not only sharing stories of Chuck but it also allows the readers to recollect their own personal experiences with him. I hope while reading this you are able to visualize and remember these stories as you yourself were probably involved in some of these and/or knew the individuals mentioned. 

Charlie has captured the best memories of my father. He is the right person to write this memoir as he experienced these events throughout his time and career with my father. We are excited to recollect on those times in our past when life was simple. The accounts that follow are actual events and personal stories that have taken place throughout my father’s life in Kentucky and throughout his retail spirits career. This book is written to save the stories and memories about my father and the era of the Chuck Evans’ Liquor Outlet days. I am writing this foreward to make sure Charlie’s stories of my father live forever in this work.

Thank you, Charlie, for sharing your stories of my father and look forward in hearing other stories of remembrance from you the readers.

Robert Evans

By the way, that

48-1 grey Irish horse won by two lengths.

Introduction

The name Chuck Evans is one that is locally well known among those who have lived either in Warren County, Kentucky or the surrounding counties. For many years, it was Chuck Evans who supplied many people with their beer, liquor and wine. Many thousands of people got to know Chuck from one of his liquor stores. Only a scant few know Chuck’s full story. As an eyewitness to Chuck’s life behind the counter and of his liquor stores, I am privileged to bring this work. So please enjoy reading these pages, but keep in mind these following points:

The material that follows comes from my personal experiences and memories. Like most memories, mine also has faded over time. I have tried to be as accurate in the facts, details and descriptions as my memory allows.

Chuck owned a total of 7 different liquor stores over the years. In order to make it clear which store I am referencing, you will see them referred to as follows:

128 State Street — This is the first liquor store, opened by Chuck and his father Maxie.

100 State Street — This is the second liquor store, opened by Chuck and Maxie.

Chuck’s Liquors — This is the third liquor store, opened by Chuck, Maxie and J. K. Travelsted. It was located across the street from the Corvette Assembly Plant.

Chuck’s #1 — This is the fourth store opened by Chuck. It was named Chuck Evans’ Liquor Outlet and located on Louisville Road.

Chuck’s #2 — This is the fifth store opened by Chuck. It was named Chuck’s Wine and Spirits and located on Three Springs Road.

Chuck’s #3 — This is the sixth store opened by Chuck. It was named Chuck’s Liquor Outlet and located at the corner of Morgantown Road and Veteran’s Memorial Boulevard.

Chuck’s #4 — This is the seventh and final store opened by Chuck. It was named Chuck’s of Hartland and located on Scottsville Road.

None of Chuck’s customers will be mentioned by their actual names. There should exist, even today, a confidentiality between Chuck and his customers. However, there are a number of people who appear in this book in other contexts and their real names are used in those instances.

I set out to write a total of 70,000 words about Chuck and his stores. The most difficult part of this book wasn’t getting it to 70,000+ words, but figuring out which stories to leave out. There is so much left untold and unsaid. But I trust that what is told and said will be worth the read. Enjoy!

Chapter 1.

Humble Beginnings

The year was 1950. Charles Schultz debuted his new comic strip called Peanuts. Senator Joseph McCarthy began chasing after communists. Nat King Cole topped the music charts with Mona Lisa. Gasoline could be purchased for 27 cents a gallon. All of those events of 1950 were unknown to a farm boy growing up in rural Kentucky. This farm boy had other things on his mind, like doing his daily chores and helping his mom fix dinner.

In the rural hills of the Smiths Grove community lived a family of six, in a small home on a hillside farm. In the afternoon, the mother would have her oldest son, 12 years old at the time, help her with preparing supper for that evening. The centerpiece of the family meal would be fried chicken, as chickens were in ample supply on this rural farm. To begin, her son would sneak up behind a resting chicken and grab the chicken firmly around both legs. The boy had learned the hard way that a firm grip was needed to hold on to a chicken. If a chicken ever broke free from his grip, it would be twice as difficult to catch the next time.

While the son held the chicken up as high as he could, his mother would come up behind him, grab the chicken around the neck and in one swift action snap the chicken’s neck, instantly killing the animal. With the neck snapped, the boy quickly and gently set the chicken on the ground where it would flop around for a few moments before becoming completely still.

As his mother walked toward an outside fireplace with a large pot of hot water resting over it, the boy carried the still chicken to a chopping block near that fire. He chopped off the head of the chicken with a small axe kept for that purpose. The head removed, the boy held the chicken upside down over a bucket, letting all the blood run out of the body.

Taking the chicken from her son, the mother wrapped her hands in a towel to keep safe from the heat and dipped that chicken into the pot of now boiling water. His mother had done this so often that she knew down to the exact half second how long to keep the chicken in the boiling water. The chicken was always dipped head down into the water three times, just long enough to loosen the feathers. Once this was complete, the mother laid the chicken on a wooden table where she and her son began to pull the feathers off the bird.

Once the feathers were removed, the mother tied the bird’s legs to a wire strung between a tree and a pole and hung the chicken upside down. With a quick pull of a sharp knife down the center of the chicken’s belly, the inside of the chicken opened and spilled the entrails into a bucket held by the son. The son then took those chicken parts to feed to the hogs while his mom washed the chicken, cut it up and prepared it for frying in a large, iron skillet filled with hardened lard.

That boy went through this routine with his mom day after day. He would develop a serious dislike for chicken for the rest of this life, no doubt from the images he observed. Perhaps sausage is not the only food whose preparation is better off not witnessed. From those days on the farm, the boy swore to himself that he would never eat chicken again — and he kept to that promise. As an adult, he would gladly recommend a wine to pair with a meal having poultry as its centerpiece but would never indulge in such a meal himself. His opinion was valued in such matters, because that boy would go on to become one of the most successful liquor store owners in the Kentucky Commonwealth.

Charles H. Chuck Evans was born on that same family farm where he chased chickens, in rural Smiths Grove, Kentucky. Chuck was born inside that farmhouse on March 26, 1938. The original family home is long since gone, but was located only a short distance from Chuck’s final residence. Chuck was the oldest of four children born to Maxie and Lacy Evans, his three younger siblings all sisters. His mother became adept at fixing fresh fried chicken. His father made a living the best that he could for the family.

The old homeplace was a house with an open kitchen/family room that was heated by a large wood fireplace. A narrow hallway led the family from the main room into four bedrooms, two on each side of the hallway. There was no electricity or running water, instead a deeply dug well provided water for the family. An outhouse had been constructed a short distance from the home.

Even though I had never seen the old homeplace, I know what it must have looked like. Years later Maxie would build two additional houses, one for himself and one for Chuck, that were very similar in style to the old homeplace. In fact, the old homeplace and the two newer houses were all basically identical. Maxie was not a home builder by trade, so he would have built all these homes based upon familiarity and available lumber. Both Maxie’s home and Chuck’s residence shared the open kitchen/family room design, heated by large wood fireplace. The only difference in the old homeplace and the two homes that Maxie built would have been the addition of an indoor bathroom. The houses also shared some similarity with the tobacco barns of the day, with the interior of the homes showcasing small, wooden beams branching off of a large center beam in the kitchen/family room. These smaller, wooden beams were the same size and distance apart as the beams used in the tobacco barns to hang tobacco.

Maxie was an interesting character. I recall he was a good grandfather to me, although he died of cancer when I was just 14 years old. I have a lot of good memories of helping him on the farm and playing cards with him. He also paid me my first paycheck, earned for pulling tobacco plants. I’ll always remember his advice when he handed me my first paycheck to cash the check as soon as you can while there is still money in the bank.

When Maxie was a young man, making a living on the farm was tough. Because of that, he decided to try his hand at making and selling moonshine. This was strictly illegal of course, but profitable. Maxie found a few other partners to join him in that enterprise. Maxie was smart enough to know that moonshining was best done for a short period of time: make some decent money, then quit before the law catches up with you. Initially his plan went well, as he decided to stop making the corn whiskey after a few successful runs. His problem was that his partners pleaded with him to help with one last batch. Maxie agreed to one final run of moonshine. It was during this final run that the law caught up with Maxie and his partners. He was arrested and paid his debt to society.

Chuck didn’t talk much about growing up on the farm or of his early days of childhood. They were not the easiest of times, and having your dad spend time in jail for running moonshine would have been a social burden in those days. I only know the location of the old homeplace because Chuck pointed it out to me as we were riding through the fields of his farm while checking fences one day. Chuck was never one to say much, but he did give me a few insights into his childhood.

Chuck and his mother had a very close bond. She needed the help of her oldest child to help prepare supper for the rest of the family. No doubt, the many days of catching, killing and plucking chickens together strengthened that bond, as they would have talked about life during that time spent together. Lacy passed away at the early age of 55 years old in 1972, and I only have one memory of her. By all accounts, she was a very warm and loving person who gave her best to Chuck and family. While she was living, she did her part keeping the family going.

As work and money became scarce, Maxie decided to seek work in Northern Ohio to support his wife and children. Word had trickled down to Smiths Grove that a number of good jobs were available on the shores of Lake Erie, Ohio. Maxie ventured north and got a job in a factory as a tool-and-dye man. Once he had his job situated, Maxie sent for the rest of the family to join him. For Chuck, leaving Smiths Grove and relocating to Northern Ohio seemed like moving to paradise. His new home had electricity, running water and an indoor bathroom. The beautiful shores of Lake Erie soon made him forget the dirty, algae covered ponds, chicken coops and livestock pens of the family farm.

Chuck was of school age when the family moved to Ohio. He attended high school at Brookside High School, Lorain, Ohio, a member of the Class of 1957. Brookside High was so much larger than Chuck’s school in Smiths Grove. In Smiths Grove, one teacher covered multiple grades. At Brookside, the graduating class alone would have filled up most of the former school in Smiths Grove. In the Brookside High School yearbook, a short poem was composed for each senior to be displayed under their photographs. Chuck is strong and silent. Always peaceful, never violent are the words that appear below the picture of Charles H. Chuck Evans. Whoever on the yearbook staff composed Chuck’s poem did a pretty good job describing the core characteristics of Chuck Evans. He made many good, life-long friends at Brookside and these friends would have a direct impact upon Chuck’s liquor stores many years later.

One thing about Chuck that many people did not know is that he was blind in one eye. I don’t know if he was born without vision in that eye, but by the time he was in high school he certainly was visually handicapped. That served as a negative impairment most of his life, but it worked out to his advantage in one very specific instance.

Upon graduation from high school, Chuck and a couple of his friends had decided that they should enlist in the armed services. The Korean War had ended just a few years earlier and they sought to perform their patriotic duty by serving. As Chuck and his two friends entered the enlistment office and began the process of enlisting, they began to develop a case of cold feet. At this point in the enlistment process, there was no room for doubts as they had gone too far to back out. However, one of the final steps was a vision test. When the physician realized that Chuck was blind in one eye, and thus disqualified from serving, Chuck was told that he would have to go back home and could not serve in the military. Chuck began to speedily walk out of the enlistment hall, not wanting to wait for them to change their mind. The last thing he remembered from that scene was hearing his two friends hurl a number of curse words at Chuck on his way out, saying that he had got them into this blankety-blank mess and now he was bailing on them.

Somewhere during this time, Chuck’s parents moved back to the family farm having saved enough cash to make a living in Smiths Grove. Some of Chuck’s younger sisters also moved back, but Chuck decided to stay in Lorain, Ohio. Maxie soon discovered when he moved back that the neighboring farmer has erected a new fence between their respective farm boundaries. A new fence was a good thing, but the problem was that the neighbor put the new fence some 50-60 feet into Maxie’s property, basically claiming a good portion of Maxie’s land as his own. Maxie felt that the battle over the property line was not worth it, so he didn’t raise the issue with the neighbor, though he certainly grumbled about it among family for years to come.

Chuck would often travel back to the Smiths Grove farm to visit his mother. Many times, Chuck would drive the 10 hours from Lorain just to spend one day with her. I remember him telling us about driving to visit his mother for Christmas. As he traveled from Lorain to Smiths Grove on Christmas Eve each year, there was only one gas station that was open on that entire route. Despite missing his family, Chuck was not ready to leave Ohio just yet. He had some great friends and had started working his own business. His business was not one, however, that could be advertised in the Yellow Pages.

I don’t know how it began, but Chuck was a self-employed bookmaker in Lorain for years. A bookmaker, or bookie, is an illegal profession where a person accepts sports wagers from customers and makes a living by collecting extra from those who place losing bets on sporting events or by paying a reduced payout to those betting and winning on the horse races. He rarely talked about it, but I have met a number of people who grew up in Lorain that gave some facts about Chuck’s days as a bookmaker. Chuck would collect wagers on the horse races and sporting events. He had a route each day where he would drop off a Daily Racing Form to his customers that wagered on thoroughbred horses and then would take their racing and sports bets during the day. He would spend the day answering the three telephones in his home, while smoking a couple packs of cigarettes. Other days he would work the telephone from a local bar owned by his friend. The only two stories I heard Chuck mention from those days were about Kansas City Chief Quarterback Len Dawson and Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell.

Chuck once said that there was not a bookie in Northern Ohio that would take a wager on the Kansas City Chiefs while Len Dawson was quarterback. There was a suspicion that Dawson was throwing games, so all the local bookies took the Kansas City Chiefs off the board — meaning that they could not be wagered upon.

The other story involved Art Modell.