08/25/2026
I Just Kept Going
My Story of Hard Times, Hard Work, Family, and Never Giving Up — Part Twelve
Too Much Rested on One Person
Before I finally decided to leave Rooster Run, I had talked to Joe about something that had been bothering me.
I felt like we needed to start teaching some of the crew how to do more of the things I was doing.
Too much depended on one person.
I told Joe, “We need to teach some of the crew how to handle this stuff in case I need to be off someday—or if I ever decide to take a vacation.”
Joe agreed. He understood that somebody else needed to know how to handle some of the responsibilities I had been carrying.
The truth was, I had vacation time coming to me every year, but I never took it.
Instead, I would have Joe pay me for the vacation and just keep working.
At the time, that seemed to make sense. I could use the extra money, and there was always something at Rooster Run that needed to be done.
But year after year, I kept working.
Seven days a week.
No real break.
No vacation.
Eventually, that catches up with you.
Joe and I tried to get some of the crew interested in learning more of the responsibilities I was handling. If something happened to me, or even if I just wanted to take a few days off, somebody else needed to know what to do.
But we couldn’t convince them. They just didn’t seem interested in taking on the additional responsibility.
I was the type of person who wasn’t going to force responsibility on somebody who didn’t want it.
If you showed me you were interested, I would teach you everything I knew.
But if you didn’t seem interested, I wasn’t going to push it on you.
So things continued pretty much the same way.
I kept doing what needed to be done.
I kept taking the vacation pay instead of the vacation.
And I kept showing up.
Looking back, I can see the problem more clearly now.
I had helped make myself almost impossible to replace, but in doing so, I had also made it almost impossible for myself to get away.
Eventually, something had to give.
And in October 1990, it did.
⸻
The Day I Laid Down the Keys
It was October 1990.
By then, I had reached my limit.
I had spent years at Rooster Run. I had left and come back three different times, and on that third return Joe Evans had trusted me with more responsibility than I ever imagined having at such a young age.
But I was tired.
Not just tired from one long day.
I was tired from years of long days.
Seven days a week. Early mornings. Late nights. Leaving home in the dark and coming home in the dark.
I had reached the point where I couldn’t even find enough daylight to mow my own grass.
One day Joe came into the store and went back to the office.
I followed him.
I told him how I felt.
“Joe, I’m tired. I’m ready for a change.”
I told him about the hours and about not even being able to keep my own grass mowed.
Then I finally said what had been building inside me for a while.
“I think I’m going to quit.”
Joe suggested maybe I just needed some time off.
But I knew it was more than that.
“No,” I told him. “I’m looking for a change.”
And with that, I took my keys out and laid them on Joe’s desk.
Those keys represented a lot more than the doors to Rooster Run.
I had spent a large part of my young adult life there. I had learned business there. I had made mistakes there. I had grown up there.
Joe had given me opportunities when other people might not have.
He had given me somewhere to sleep when I didn’t have a home.
He had trusted me with his checkbook and told me to run his business like I owned it.
And now I was walking away.
I thanked Joe.
Then I left.
I didn’t have another job waiting.
I didn’t have some great business plan sitting on my desk.
I just knew I couldn’t keep doing what I had been doing.
⸻
A Conversation Under a Shade Tree
Mama lived across the road from Rooster Run.
When I pulled in, she was sitting outside under a shade tree.
I stopped and sat down to talk to her.
“I just quit.”
I can still remember the concerned look on her face.
A mother doesn’t have to say much. Sometimes you can read everything she’s thinking just by looking at her.
I tried to reassure her.
“Mama, I’m tired.”
We sat underneath that tree talking for a while.
Then, almost casually, Mama said something that would change the direction of my life.
“I wish you could buy that Olde Delaney’s. It’s coming up for auction.”
I knew the place.
My first thought was almost ironic.
Do I really want to get back into the store business after I just walked away from one?
But then another thought came.
This would be different.
I’d be working for myself.
That little thought started growing before I ever left Mama’s yard.
⸻
I Had to See It
When I left Mama’s, I drove into Bardstown and went out to Olde Delaney’s.
I didn’t go inside.
I just looked at the property from the outside.
It didn’t look bad.
Vinyl siding had been put on the building. There was a two-car garage beside it. There wasn’t much of a parking lot, but I could see possibilities.
After everything Joe had taught me at Rooster Run, I wasn’t looking at that building like an ordinary customer.
I was looking at it like a businessman.
Could I make this work?
I knew where the previous owner was operating his new business, so I went to see him.
He had once worked for the Delaney family and eventually bought the business himself. I was told he had operated it for around twelve years.
I asked him a straightforward question.
“Do you think I could make any money there if I opened it back up as a store?”
He told me he had made a good living there. He had raised his family, sent two boys to Catholic school, paid his bills and still had some money left over.
Then he told me something else.
“If you work at it, you can make money.”
That was something I understood.
Work had never scared me.
My biggest question was whether a bank would loan me enough money to buy the place.
He gave me some simple advice.
“Go to all of them.”
Don’t ask one bank.
Ask every bank you can.
So that’s exactly what I did.
⸻
Finding the Money
I went first to the bank where I was already doing business.
I had financed a brand-new truck through them and had nearly paid it off. I knew the loan officer personally.
I sat down, explained what I wanted to do and gave him the information.
He told me they would get back with me.
They finally did.
Two weeks later—on the morning of the auction.
They told me they would loan me $25,000.
Fortunately, I hadn’t spent those two weeks sitting around waiting.
I remembered the advice:
Go to all of them.
So I had gone to another bank right down the street.
There I talked to Paul Monin.
I explained what I wanted to do and how much money I needed.
Before I walked out of that bank, Paul had approved the amount I requested.
Just like that.
Suddenly, this wasn’t just an idea anymore.
I had financing available.
I had some money of my own for a down payment.
And the auction was only about two weeks away.
The plan was in motion.
That decision also began a banking relationship that would last for decades.
I have banked with Town & Country Bank for more than thirty-five years. Once I became established and developed a track record, we built a good working relationship that helped me tremendously over the years.
But back then, I didn’t have decades of business history to show anybody.
I was just a young man with an idea and enough confidence to ask someone to take a chance on me.
There was still one very important person I hadn’t told.
Barbara.
⸻
“Go for It”
Barbara was working second shift, so I had to wait until she came home that night.
We were living together then, but we weren’t married yet.
When she got home, we sat down and talked.
I told her everything.
I had quit Rooster Run.
Olde Delaney’s was going to auction.
I had gone to the banks.
And I was seriously thinking about buying it.
Barbara listened.
Then she said:
“Well, if that’s what you want to do, go for it.”
That meant a lot.
I had her blessing.
Now there was only one little problem.
I still had to buy the place.
⸻
Auction Day
Two weeks passed.
Auction day arrived on a Saturday morning.
Bill Luckett’s real estate company was handling the auction.
I had already thought about one potential problem.
If people at that auction saw me bidding on Olde Delaney’s, some of them might assume I was buying it for Joe Evans.
And if they thought Joe was behind it, I was afraid people might start bidding just to run the price up.
So I called my brother-in-law.
“Would you bid on it for me?”
He agreed.
We drove to the auction in separate vehicles.
Once we got there, we stayed away from each other.
We didn’t stand together.
We didn’t talk.
He would look across the parking lot at me, and I would signal when I wanted him to keep going.
The auctioneer started low and worked his way through the crowd asking for bids.
My brother-in-law bid.
Meanwhile, I walked around pretending I wasn’t involved.
After a while, people started wondering.
I could hear people asking:
“Who’s that guy?”
The bidding continued.
Eventually, it came down to two people—my brother-in-law, bidding for me, and the person who owned Busy Bee Market.
The price kept climbing.
Fifty thousand.
Higher.
Higher.
Finally, it reached $60,000.
That was supposed to be my limit.
The other bidder had the $60,000 bid.
My brother-in-law looked across the parking lot at me.
For a moment, I had a decision to make.
Stick to my limit.
Or take one more chance.
I raised one finger.
One more time.
My brother-in-law bid:
$60,500.
Then we waited.
The other bidder quit.
And just like that…
I had bought Olde Delaney’s.
⸻
“My God, You Bought a Dump”
After the auction was over and the paperwork was taken care of, I drove back to see Mama.
“I bought it,” I told her.
That evening, Cox’s Creek Elementary School was having its fall festival. I asked Mama if she wanted to go with me and get some supper.
She agreed.
When I picked her up, I said, “We’re going to swing by the store first. I want you to see what I bought.”
I already had the keys, although I didn’t officially have possession of the property yet.
We pulled in.
Mama got out with me.
I unlocked the door, and we walked inside.
Mama started looking around.
She didn’t say a word.
The longer she looked, the more I wondered what she was thinking.
I’ll admit it.
The place needed some prayers.
It needed updating.
It needed cleaning.
And it needed a lot of cosmetic work.
Finally, Mama spoke.
“My God, you bought a dump.”
That was Mama.
She didn’t sugarcoat much of anything.
I started explaining that it really wasn’t as bad as it looked.
Anybody who has ever moved a refrigerator or a piece of furniture knows what I’m talking about. You pull it away from the wall and wonder how all that dirt and dust got underneath and behind it.
The store was the same way.
Shelving and equipment had been sitting in the same places for years. There were areas you simply couldn’t get to and clean properly.
I explained my plans.
“We’re going to pull this out. We’re going to clean that. We’re going to fix this. We’re going to brighten everything up.”
Mama saw what was standing there.
I was trying to see what it could become.
Sometimes that’s what you have to do.
You have to be able to see something before it exists.
⸻
“Where Did You Say You Bought?”
We left the store and went to the fall festival.
While I was there, I ran into Jack.
I knew Jack through Rooster Run. He was the person I dealt with when we purchased Rooster Run hats, shirts and other merchandise.
And when Rooster Run ordered merchandise, we weren’t buying a few pieces at a time.
We bought a lot.
Jack knew me pretty well. He knew how I operated and the amount of merchandise I had handled for Joe.
Naturally, I told him my news.
“I bought Roby’s Grocery.”
Jack looked at me.
“Where?”
“Roby’s Grocery. Out on Louisville Road.”
He still looked lost.
That surprised me because his father owned a farm back on Plum Run Road, and Jack had probably driven past that store more times than he could count.
I tried again.
Nothing.
Finally, I said:
“Olde Delaney’s Store.”
That did it.
He knew exactly where I was talking about.
That conversation stayed in the back of my mind.
I didn’t know it yet, but Jack had just helped me decide what to call my business.
⸻
How Olde Delaney’s Got Its Name
The following Monday morning, I went to the bank to open a checking account for the business.
The lady started filling out the paperwork.
Then she came to a question I hadn’t given much thought.
“What’s the name of the business going to be?”
I sat there for a second.
Then I thought about two conversations.
A couple of weeks earlier, Mama had said:
“I wish you could buy that Olde Delaney’s.”
Then at the fall festival, Jack hadn’t known what I meant when I said Roby’s Grocery.
But the second I said Olde Delaney’s, he knew exactly where I was talking about.
The place already had an identity in people’s minds.
So I told the lady at the bank:
“I guess we’ll call it Olde Delaney’s.”
Then she asked:
“How do you want to spell ‘Old’?”
Instead of O-L-D, I decided to use the old-fashioned spelling:
O-L-D-E.
It was different.
I liked it.
“Let’s go with that.”
And just like that, without a marketing company, without a focus group and without spending weeks trying to invent the perfect business name, Olde Delaney’s Grocery had its name.
It would remain Olde Delaney’s Grocery for the next fourteen years, until changes along North Third Street eventually led to another chapter in the business.
But that was years away.
Right then, I had much bigger problems.
Mama had already given me her professional assessment:
I’d bought a dump.
Now I had to prove I could turn it into something.
⸻
Now What Have I Done?
There is a strange feeling when you win an auction for something that big.
One second, you’re trying desperately to be the highest bidder.
The next second, you are.
Then reality sets in.
Now I’ve got to pay for it.
After the real estate sold, the auction moved inside and they began selling the equipment.
I bought a case, the meat slicer and several other pieces.
At the time, I thought I was saving money.
Within the next year, nearly every piece of used equipment I bought at that auction broke down and had to be replaced.
That taught me another business lesson pretty quickly:
Be careful when you think you’re getting a bargain on used equipment.
We completed the auction paperwork, and I put down my deposit.
Now the bank had to get involved and everything had to come together.
As I walked through the store, I was looking at it differently.
It wasn’t somebody else’s store anymore.
It was going to be mine.
And the closer I looked, the more work I saw.
The inside hadn’t been updated much.
It needed a complete makeover.
Then another reality hit me.
The money I had budgeted for inventory was going to have to stretch a lot further than I had planned.
I needed merchandise to sell.
But I also needed money to repair and update the building.
I couldn’t spend the same dollar twice.
I was going to need some help.
And that made me think of Susie at Buzick Lumber.
⸻
The Woman Who Had Trusted Me Before
I stopped by Buzick Lumber and talked to Susie.
I explained what I was doing and what I needed to remodel the store.
I asked whether I could put a little money down on the materials and pay the balance at the end of the following month.
She agreed, with the understanding that it needed to be paid by then.
“No problem,” I told her.
But there was a reason I felt comfortable asking Susie.
We already had some history.
Years earlier, when I was just out of high school, I had been working during the day and at The Stephen Foster Story at night.
Mama had a big garden.
And Mama had a front-tine tiller.
Anybody who ever wrestled with one of those old tillers knows exactly what I mean when I say:
That thing would beat you to death.
Mama wouldn’t wait for one of us boys to come home and till the garden.
If that garden needed tilling, Mama was going to till it.
She would get out there and fight that machine herself.
I didn’t like seeing her have to do it.
One day, I went to Buzick’s S&T Home Center on North Third Street.
Susie was the manager.
They had a tiller that could work garden soil until it looked almost like ashes.
I wanted that tiller for Mama.
There was one problem.
I didn’t have enough money.
I believe it cost around $800.
I had about $200.
So I went to Susie and told her what I wanted to do.
I asked whether I could give her the $200 and make payments on the rest.
She agreed.
“If you’ll pay me $25 a week, I’ll let you have it.”
I gave her the money.
Then I took that tiller home to Mama.
We unloaded it, and I showed her how it worked.
Mama was tickled to death.
And I felt pretty good myself.
Because I knew Mama.
Whether one of us boys came home or not, that garden was getting tilled.
Now she had something that would make the job a whole lot easier.
Every week, just like I promised Susie, I made that $25 payment.
Week after week.
Until the tiller was paid for.
Years later, when I walked back through Buzick Lumber’s door needing materials for the business I had just bought, I wasn’t a stranger asking Susie to take a chance on me.
She knew me.
More importantly, she knew my word.
Buzick Lumber and Joe Hill’s Auto Center were the first two businesses that ever extended credit to me.
I have never forgotten that.
I still do business with them today.
Today, I don’t need that credit the way I did when I was starting out. I can pay as I go.
But I remember the people who were willing to help when I did need it.
That means something to me.
Because I had been building credit long before I understood that credit wasn’t always a number printed on a piece of paper.
Sometimes your credit was your reputation.
Sometimes it was your handshake.
Sometimes it was simply doing what you said you were going to do.
If you told somebody you would be there Friday with $25, then Friday you showed up with $25.
That was how I had been raised.
And now those lessons were coming back to help me at one of the most important moments of my life.
⸻
A Beginning
Think about how quickly everything had happened.
I walked into Joe Evans’s office exhausted and laid my keys on his desk.
I had no job waiting.
I had no plan to buy a business.
I drove across the road and sat underneath a shade tree with Mama.
She said:
“I wish you could buy that Olde Delaney’s.”
That one conversation planted a seed.
Within weeks, I had talked to the former owner, walked into banks asking for money, gotten Barbara’s blessing, secretly bid on a property through my brother-in-law and spent $60,500 buying a business.
Now I had a loan.
I had a building.
I had repairs to make.
I needed inventory.
I had bills coming.
And I had walked away from a steady paycheck.
For the first time in my life, there wasn’t going to be a Joe Evans standing behind the business.
If I made a good decision, I would live with it.
If I made a bad decision, I would live with that too.
This time, the checkbook was going to have my name on it.
For years, I had worked for other people and helped build their businesses.
Now I was about to find out whether everything I had learned could help me build one of my own.
Joe had once looked at a young man in his early twenties and told him:
“Run it like you own it.”
I didn’t realize it then, but maybe Joe was preparing me for this moment all along.
Because now there was no pretending.
There was no owner standing behind me.
There was no safety net.
The doors weren’t even open yet, and I already had money going out.
Now I had to turn that tired old building into a store.
I had to put merchandise on the shelves.
I had to get customers through the doors.
And somehow, I had to make enough money to pay everybody back who had taken a chance on me.
Mama looked at that building and said:
“My God, you bought a dump.”
Maybe she was right.
But I saw something else.
I saw my future.
And for the first time in my life, when somebody told me to run a business like I owned it…
I really did.
To be continued……
