Sunday, November 1, 2009

Spicer's Tire Service and Firestone Tires.....


The left 1950 photo shows Spicer's Firestone(Spicer's Tire Service) as I remember it on the corner of May and Bethune St., except they had added a service centre to the right of the store by the late 1950's. The orange part of the right photo and the yellow part shows how the store and service centre looks today, as two other businesses.

This photo shows how many items a Firestone Tire store would sell beside tires, especially near the Christmas season, and the photo on the right is an advertising tool many tire companies used. It is a miniature tire ashtray, which has become very collectible today.
The photo on the left is a typical very colourful magazine ad from 1935, and the one on the right shows "Greased Lightning" from the movie "Grease" using Firestone Tires in the 1970's.
Love those wide whites.....summer and winter!
I worked here at Spicer's as an inventory controller and store clerk in the early 60's after I graduated from high school and it became my first full time job. Spicer's Tire Service was a very successful family run business by the Spicer brothers. The manager, Bill Spicer became a Fort William city alderman at that time as well. In the early years and into the 1960's and as mentioned above, Spicer's was not just a Firestone dealer, but a very eclectic hardware and toy store as well.
The thing I remember the most from working in the store was that every parcel that was purchased was wrapped in brown paper(fancier at Christmas), and tied with string. Do you remember stores doing that??
The years that I worked for the Spicer family was very enjoyable, and I was treated very well.
Directly across the street from Spicer's was Kam Motors depot. That's where I traded in my first car(my '49 Chevy, and bought my '57. That lot is completely empty now.......Dave
Thanks for looking and click on photos to enlarge.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I worked at Spicer's summers from age 15 to 20 with Larry McGuire,Bill ,Loyd(who live across the street and gave me rides to work)and Roy Spicer in the store,Fred and Allen Spicer,Ken Haggardy in the retread shop, Orin Robinson,Al ----,Gary ---- and myself in the tire shop. My older brothers Larry and Bob worked there before me in the early to middle 1960's. good job met alot of people and we made it a fun time about 97 percent of the time
John K

Anonymous said...

Dave I have remembered the two fellows names that I worked with,they were Allen Blake and Barry Graham not Gary

John Kelly

Dave Cano said...

John, I don't remember these guys but definitely remember all the Spicer boys as well as Ken and Orin for sure. Thanks for the update!