This inspiring story from a friend of mine is a great teachable moment. It shows what true American grit is and how hard working families are what make up this great country of ours. One thing I would like to add: Even if grandpa Valkema would have known how our President treats small businessmen today he wouldn't have changed his family's momentous and arduous journey one bit.
Please enjoy.
Hello Friends,
This email is quite long and I'll understand if you don't want to read it right now. Print it out and save it for a Sunday afternoon when you're doing nothing and would like to know what happened to one "small business" that was once successful.
This story could have been written by any "small business". It surely could have been written by my family's "small business" (it wasn't) which of the whole family, only my brother, Steve, has the heart to continue trying to keep alive. Steve owns and runs a few of the old tire stores of what was once 17 tires stores throughout western and central Michigan.
My father's father, my Opa Valkema, knew the rubber business pretty well in the northern section of the Netherlands. World War II ravaged everything especially all business in this northern section of the Netherlands (Friesland and Groningen). When the war was finally over (let me tell you, if you want some stories about barely being able to keep soul and body together, I've heard many from my dad and his family, but that's for another email) since my dad's family had "lost it all", and because they saw the clouds of abject socialism on the horizon, they looked for a place to go where the fruits of their own labors would be their own to enjoy. Socialism really started to take over the thinking of the people of the Netherlands earlier in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, but when the war was over, it was a perfect time for the socialists to say that the only way to rebuild the nation was through complete and abject Marxist philosophies.
So, when grandpa Valkema and his family immigrated to the United States after WWII, he settled in Holland, Michigan. But what's more is that he was an entrepreneur who knew he had the skills and desire to be successful, which is the reason why they immigrated in the first place. He had the ability to work smart and hard and to do it for his own purposes, not his neighbor's. Don't get me wrong, no one helped their neighbors more than the Valkema Family both in Leens, Groningen or in Michigan. But the difference, at least to my grandpa, was that in America it was not compulsory to give what you had earned to the state for it to give to others who had not worked for it.
After landing on the shores of the "land of opportunity" he started up a tire store in downtown Holland, Michigan. A couple years later he went on to start up another one in Grand Haven, Michigan. Then came Spring Lake, Fennville, South Haven, Zeeland, Wyoming, Grandville, and so forth and so on. He started up one by one, each of the 17 small town tire stores throughout the state was started and run with the hard work of its founder, Willem Valkema and the crews he'd put together. He labored hard to make each of them successful. People thought my grandparents were very rich, because they saw all the employee Bill Valkema had, the beautiful home he lived in on the lake in Holland where the Valkemas would host an annual summer picnic for all the tire store employees, and the nice car he drove (Opa Valkema was a "Cadillac man", while his brother-in-law, Cornie, was a "Studebaker man"). What they didn't understand is that no one else worked harder for that money and put their lives and fortunes on the limb in order to make those tire stores successful. At the end of each year, Bill Valkema had an adequate income, the good feeling that he had worked as hard and smartly as he possibly could, and employees who had a home and food on their tables, all as the "fruits" of their own and his labors.
What happened to those tire stores? As Michigan's economy continued to grow and as the automobile industry continued to be very successful, so did the tire stores, which also served as mechanic garages. Opa Valkema had invented a special way to produce new tires from old tire casings. "Recap tires" as they were called then, were very unreliable in that there wasn't a good way to keep the new rubber "crown" (treads) on the old tire casing. Grandpa worked tirelessly on developing a process that would "hot mold" the new treads in a special machine onto the old bias ply (radials had not been invented yet) casings. A few of the stores all had a special area where the recap tires were produced. It was a regular industry and employed hundreds of people throughout the small towns of western and central Michigan.
No one can really say who was at fault for the tire businesses to start to decline in their sales and bottom lines. But as the radial tire was invented in the mid-1960s which used a totally different kind of ply technology in the casings, the business climate in Michigan also started to change. It seems as if Detroit and the big auto makers really stopped rewarding hard work, smart decisions, and a true "day's pay for a day's worth of work". That all had an effect on all the industries in Michigan. As organized labor unions in the big automobile plants realized they could get away with getting more concessions from the management to "dumb down" both the work ethic and ability to work smart and hard, so this type of thinking also started to seep into the small business atmosphere throughout Michigan. The Big Three, its labor unions and management teams all kept trying to get more and more and more out of the consumers. Management sat across the negotiation tables from Organized Labor and said "yes" to the contracts that would divvy up even more of the bottom line of the Owners and Stockholders.
More taxes were levied on small businesses and the regulations started to really take over in the state. The politicians in Lansing started to realize that they could get "in" on all this and started making decisions that were only one sided and would not so much help the employers but only help the "workers", and of course, them. The whole thought that business was gouging the worker started to take over throughout Michigan. Laws to protect the Workers were enacted because everyone thought they knew that the Owners were only out to get the Small Guys and the Workers.
My grandpa started to feel very uneasy as if he had already been through this before as a young man in the Netherlands. He stopped putting "his all" into the running and success of his tire businesses. After all, he was seeing much less "fruit" for his labors at the end of the year. One by one he started to make the decision that a previous year's receipts for a certain store didn't really make it worthwhile to keep that store open anymore. Workers were laid off and the store would be boarded up. My grandpa was also getting older and didn't need the hassle that the State of Michigan was making it to keep businesses open. Grandpa would rather go to Arizona for the winter with his lovely wife, Anna Mae, than work through the winter to oversee his "tire empire".
Then came his decision to totally retire from the business and travel between Arizona or Florida and Michigan for the seasons. My Uncle Bill took over the running of the family businesses, as my father had taken the route of Christian ministry and gave his right to the business up when grandpa had helped to paid dad's way through college and seminary. Nothing against my Uncle Bill, but he was a playboy and enjoyed the fun aspect of it as much as the hard work aspect. With Michigan's continuing unfriendly attitude to small business climate, more stores had to be boarded up. Then Uncle Bill died in the mid-1980s leaving the responsibility to running the tire businesses to my dad again. Dad retired from over 35 years in public Christian ministry in order to try to run the tire stores again. Dad was also a hard worker but just didn't have the "heart" literally (he had a bad heart and ended up dying having a heart transplant in 1999) to keep all the rest of the tire stores open and employing people and selling tires to the consumers of Michigan. It was so difficult to continue keeping ahead of the new business laws, taxes and regulations in Michigan. So, rather than try to fight against the government and its onerous to "small business" thinking, all but three of the stores were sold.
My younger brother, Steve, started working for the Valkema owned Riverside Tire Company back when he was in his early teens. He learned every aspect of the tire business including the old tire recap production system that my grandfather had invented (by then, they had invented a way to recap radial tires as well as bias ply tires). Steve never had it easy as anyone who has ever worked for their "Dutch father" understands. I really respect and honor by brother, Steve, as he has always wanted keep the 3 generation family business intact. However, he now understands how hard the State of Michigan has made it for those "small businesses" to stay ... in business. I have even heard rumblings from Steve about letting all that was left go and just closing shop one last time. He continues to say how difficult Michigan has made it for all "small businesses" and how at the end of the year the amount of money in his own pocket just doesn't seem to justify all the hard labor he has put in through the year. Steve even showed me his 2009 business accountant yearly statement. I was totally shocked that my brother could even keep food on his family's table for such a small amount.
What I am really trying to say through this long email, my friends, is that we can't continue to allow our Federal and State government's to take more and more out of our "bottom lines" and to not reign in frivolous government deficit spending. The fruits of our labors will not be enough for us to decide to stay in the business. I continue to maintain that taxpayers are like water - we will find the path of least resistance to the center of lowest gravity, "gravity" being amount of taxation. We Midwesterners see it every day. Here in Illinois every day I hear about more families and wealthy individuals who have looked at the amount of tax they pay to the state and local government, and then end up deciding to move to one of those southern states where there is no personal income tax. This last July 3rd when I was transferring my legal residency to Indiana where I have a home in Long Beach, IN, and where the business climate is a whole lot friendlier, I was in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles getting an Indiana driver's license. I asked the other 8 people getting their licenses or state ID's if I could ask them a question and take a straw poll, if you will. Out of the 9 of us there, only one person was renewing their Indiana driver's license. The rest of us were transferring our legal residency from another surrounding state. Michiganders, Illinoisans, and Buckeyes, you better tell your state government officials if they don't really start looking out for all their citizen's best interest; they may not have a constituency to govern over any more.
Now with the Federal government poised to pass the largest national takeover of a private industry tomorrow afternoon, I am left even wondering about my forefather's decision to come to what they thought at the time was the "Land of Opportunity". If my opa and father only knew what would eventually become of their adopted homeland, perhaps even they might have rethought such a momentous and arduous journey. I am left, as a first generation American, wondering if I too will someday soon look over the horizon seeing the clouds of the insidious ideologies of Marxist thought and decide to repatriate somewhere where my personal property and the fruits of my own labors will be allowed by my government for me to enjoy.
I hope I haven't bored you to tears and that you'll still call me "friend".
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