06/20/2018
Cool Story
As a Kentucky dad, the Ale-8 machine that sits in our shop at Woodland is one of my most prized possessions. I grew up in Wi******er, Kentucky and each summer I worked everyday in my dad's tire store. Sweeping, cleaning, and running my own little hustle selling ale-8 out of an old vending machine that sat in the back of the shop for customers waiting on their cars.
My mom would drive me to the Ale-8 factory around the corner and I would fill up the machine and collect the quarters each week. In 3rd grade, I collected enough quarters to buy my first big kid bike. So, my dad drove me to the corner of Woodland Avenue and Maxwell to Schellar's bike shop (where our shop is now located some odd 25 years later) and I bought a rad canary yellow GT Dyno with pegs.
My Dad sold his shop 19 years ago and with it went the Ale-8 machine. Two years ago when we started renovating the old Schellar's, I began looking for an Ale-8 machine for the store so we could provide our customers with a cold drink every time they visited. A little taste of my childhood. I came across this vintage machine on Craigslist and bought it sight unseen. The guy that delivered it happened to be from Wi******er and as he unloaded it, I noticed spark plug stickers on the side of it. It was the same machine from my Dad's shop. A serendipitous, full circle kinda thing.
Happy rad Kentucky dad's day to all the Kentucky papas out there!