Johnny Carson was filling his car at a gas station on Ventura Boulevard when the owner’s wife came out of the office crying. The bank manager was already inside. Carson set the nozzle back in the cradle. He did not get back in his car. What happened in the next 20 minutes and what the owner found in the mail 6 years later, nobody knew about until after Carson was gone.
It was March 11th, 1974. Ventura Boulevard, Burbank, California. A Tuesday morning, cold for March. The kind of gray that settles over the San Fernando Valley when the desert wind comes in from the east. The Healey Hardware store sat three doors east of the mobile station on the south side of the boulevard.
Two display windows, a handlettered sign above the door. Healey Hardware established 1951. A coffee can of pencils on the counter, a clock on the wall that ran 4 minutes slow and had always run four minutes slow and that Frank Healey had never corrected because his father had said it and his father was gone. Frank Healey was 51 years old.
He had worked the counter of that store since he was 14. First alongside his father Raymond, then alone after Raymond died of a stroke in 1968. He had the hands of a man who had carried lumber and pipe fittings and 50 lb bags of concrete since before he was old enough to drive. He knew every contractor in Burbank by name and first name and what they drove and how they took their coffee.
He knew which of them were good for their tab and which ones needed a gentle reminder in the third week of the month. He knew the names of their wives and the grades of their children and which ones had come back from Korea changed and which ones had come back the same. He had extended credit to half of them at one point or another.
Extended it without being asked because Raymond had always done it that way and Frank saw no reason to change what Raymond had built. Raymond had opened the store in 1951 with money saved from 12 years at Lockheed. He had built the shelves himself, painted the sign by hand, set the clock on opening morning, and never corrected the four minutes it ran slow.
He had taught Frank two things. Learn every customer by the name they answered to, not just the name they gave you. And extending credit is not charity. It is confidence. I believe you will be back. I would rather have your business next month than your money today. Frank believed both things in March 1974. They were part of why the letter from First Western Bank of Glendale had arrived in January and the second in February and the man from the bank had called on the 1st of March to say he was coming in person on the 11th. Frank’s
son Dany was 19 years old and in his second semester at Burbank Community College, mechanical engineering, first Healey ever to attend college. Tuition was $180 a semester. Frank had been paying it from the register. In November, a supplier in Van NY had raised their wholesale price on electrical fittings by 30%.
In December, Frank had missed his first loan payment. In January, he had missed the second. In February, a letter had come on bank letterhead. Final notice, outstanding balance, $3,200, all operations to cease upon default. At 8:30 that Tuesday morning, Frank’s wife, Elellanar, had come downstairs in her house coat and found Frank at the kitchen table with the bank letter and a cup of coffee that had gone cold.
She had stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the way his shoulders were set. She had seen them set that way twice before when Raymond died, and when the van ny supplier dropped his account in 1971. Both times Frank had sat with it and then gotten up and gone to work. She put her hand on his shoulder for a moment.
He put his hand over hers. Then she went to get dressed. By 9:00, she was at the store with him behind the counter because there was nowhere else to be. She knew the store the way you know a place you have tended for a long time. Not just the facts of it, but the feel of it, the light through the display windows at different hours, the sound the front door made when the wind came from the west.
At 9:40, the man from First Western Bank of Glendale parked his Oldsmobile in front of the store. He was 44 years old in a brown suit and a tie with a small gold pin in it. He carried a briefcase. He did not introduce himself when he came through the door. He set the briefcase on the counter beside the can of pencils and opened it and took out a folder and set the folder on top of the briefcase and began to read from a typed page in the voice of a man closing a ledger.
Notice of default. Healey Hardware, Burbank, California. Outstanding balance $3,200. All inventory and fixtures to be inventoried by bank representative. Premises to be vacated by close of business. Ellaner came out from the back room when she heard the briefcase open. She stood in the doorway to the stock room for a moment, then walked to the counter and stood beside Frank.
She did not say anything. Her hands were at her sides. Frank said, “I need two more weeks. Two more weeks and I can make the January payment. The bank manager turned to Paige. Frank said, “My son goes back to school in 10 days. Let me get him back to school.” The bank manager closed the folder. He did not look up.
He said, “The terms of the notice are clear, Mr. Healey.” He turned and walked to the display window and stood with his back to the counter, looking out at the boulevard. That was when Elellaner walked out the front door. She walked out because she did not want Frank to see her face. She stood on the sidewalk with her arms crossed over her house coat and looked at the mobile station three doors west.
At the mobile station, a man in a gray work shirt and dark trousers was filling a dark blue Oldsmobile at the pump nearest the boulevard. He was tall with silver hair going white at the temples, and he was wearing a baseball cap pulled low. He had his back to her. He did not look like anyone in particular. Elellaner’s shoulders dropped.
She put one hand over her mouth. A sound came out. The man at the pump turned around. He looked at Eleanor for a moment. He set the nozzle back in the cradle of the pump without finishing. He walked across the three store gap of sidewalk between the mobile station and the hardware store and stopped in front of her. He said, “Ma’am, are you all right?” Elellaner shook her head once.
She said, “The bank is closing us.” The man looked at the sign above the door. Healey Hardware established 1951. He looked at the brown Oldsmobile parked in front. He looked at Ellaner. He said, “May I go inside? Drop your location in the comments. I want to see how far this story travels.” The man from the bank was still at the display window when the door opened.
Frank was behind the counter. The man who came in through the door was tall with a baseball cap and a gray work shirt with the sleeves rolled to the forearms. He did not look like anyone famous. He looked like a contractor or a foreman or any one of the men who came through Healey Hardware on a Tuesday morning to pick up fittings and go back to work. He stopped at the counter.
He looked at Frank. He said, “How long have you had this store?” Frank said, “My father opened it in 1951.” The man nodded. He looked around the store. The shelves Frank had built with his father in the summer of 1953. The hardware cloth hanging in rolls from the ceiling brackets. the clock on the wall that ran four minutes slow.
He looked at the man from the bank at the window. The man from the bank turned around. The man in the baseball cap said, “How much does he owe you?” The bank manager said, “Sir, this is a private matter between the bank and how much?” The bank manager looked at him for a long second. He said, “$3,200. Outstanding as of January 1st.
” The man in the baseball cap said nothing for a moment. He looked at Frank. He said, “Is that the number? $3,200 and you keep the doors open?” Frank looked at him. He had the kind of face that had learned across 51 years not to show too much. He said, “And the March payment, $3,200 covers through February. March is another $410.
So $3,610 even.” The man said, “And then what?” Frank said. Then I work the counter. Danny goes back to school. The contractors come back in spring when the building season starts. I’ve been through slow winters before. The man looked at him for a long second. He said, “Do you believe that?” Frank said. “I have to.
” The man in the baseball cap reached into the back pocket of his trousers. He took out a wallet, dark brown leather worn at the corners, the kind of wallet a man carries for a long time without thinking about replacing it because it does what a wallet needs to do. He opened it on the counter beside the pencil can. He began to count.
He counted bills onto the counter one at a time, deliberately, 50s mostly, a few 20s. Frank watched from behind the counter, hands flat on the wood. The bank manager had turned from the window. He stood at the edge of the counter and said nothing. The only sound in the store was the bills going down and the clock on the wall and traffic on the boulevard outside.
When he finished, he said $3,610 even. He pushed the stack toward Frank. Frank did not touch it. Frank said, “Mister, I don’t know who you are, but I don’t take charity. My father didn’t build this store on charity, and I won’t save it on charity. The man said, “It’s not charity, it’s a loan.” Frank said, “I can’t guarantee when.
” The man said, “There’s no schedule. There’s no interest. You pay me back when the season turns and you can spare it. You send it to this address.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a small notebook. He wrote an address on a blank page. He tore it out and set it on the counter beside the stack of bills. He said, “One condition.
” Frank said, “What condition?” The man said, “That boy of yours. He goes back to school.” He said it the way a man says something when he means it entirely and does not feel the need to explain why he means it. Frank looked at the stack of bills. He looked at the address on the torn page.
His hands were shaking slightly and he pressed them flat to stop it. He said, “Mister, who are you?” The man picked up the briefcase from the counter and held it out toward the bank manager. He said, “He needs a receipt. Paid in full. Today’s date, bank letter head.” The bank manager looked at him. Something in the closed professional face had shifted.
He was beginning in the way that people begin when a voice becomes familiar before a face does to understand who was standing in front of him. He took the briefcase. He opened it on the counter. He took out a sheet of letterhead and a pen. He wrote the date. He wrote Frank Healey’s name in the store address. He wrote the amount.
He wrote, “Paid in full. Loan current through June 1974.” He signed it. He handed it to Frank. Frank read it. He read it twice. The way a man reads something he did not expect to be reading. He looked up. The man in the baseball cap was already at the door. Frank said, “Mister.” The man stopped.
Frank said, “I’m going to pay you back every dollar if it takes the rest of my life.” The man looked at him from the doorway. He said, “I know you will.” He touched the brim of his cap once, then he went out through the door and walked back down the sidewalk toward the mobile station. Elellaner was still outside.
She watched the man walk past her. She said, “Excuse me, who are you?” The man stopped. He looked at her for a moment. He said, “Nobody important. You’ve got a good store, ma’am. Keep it open.” He walked back to his car at the pump. He got in. He started the engine. He pulled out onto Ventura Boulevard and turned west and was gone.
Frank Healey paid back $3,610 over 6 years. a money order for $200 in November 1974. A check for $350 in March 1975, another $200 in October 1975. He sent each payment to the address on the torn notebook page. A management company in Beverly Hills. Each payment was acknowledged by a typed letter from an assistant.
Thank you for your correspondence. Payment received. There was never a personal note. Frank did not mind. He had not sent the payments to be acknowledged. He had sent them because he had said he would. Danny Healey transferred to Cal State Northridge and graduated in May 1977 with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Frank and Elellaner sat in the fourth row. Frank wore the suit he had worn to Raymond’s funeral. Some things do not need explaining. Dany went to work for an engineering firm in Glendale. He married a woman named Patricia from Los Cruus in 1978. Frank never mentioned the man in the baseball cap to anyone outside the immediate family.
In the spring of 1980, Frank mailed the final payment, $210, a money order, the last of the $3,610 he had paid back every dollar, slightly ahead of what he had privately calculated as his schedule. He sealed the envelope at the counter of Healey Hardware on a Thursday afternoon after the last customer of the day had gone.
He put a first class stamp on it. He walked to the mailbox on the corner of Ventura and pass and pushed it through the slot and stood there for a moment with his hand still touching the metal of the slot and then walked back to the store and locked up for the night. 3 weeks later, a thick manila envelope arrived from the Beverly Hills address.
Inside was everything Frank had sent over 6 years. Every money order, every check returned uncashed. There was a single sheet of plain paper inside. No letter head typed three sentences. Frank, I never cashed any of it. The loan was paid the morning your son walked across that stage in Northridge. Keep the store open.
JC Frank Healey stood at the counter with the letter in his hands for a long time. He was 57 years old. The clock on the wall ran 4 minutes slow. The coffee in his cup had gone cold. He put the envelope in the drawer where Raymond had kept the petty cash. He closed the drawer. He went back to work.
Healey Hardware closed in 1989 when Frank retired at 66. Ellaner died in 1994. Frank died in 2001 at 78. In 2003, Dany donated three items to the Burbank Historical Society on Olive Avenue. The first was a stack of money orders and checks rubber banded, none of them cashed. The second was a torn notebook page with a Beverly Hills address in blue ballpoint.
The third was a typed letter on plain paper. Three sentences, no letter head, signed JC. The display sits in a glass case near the north window. The card beside it reads, “Donated by Daniel R. Healey in memory of his father, Frank Raymond Healey, 1923 to 2001, and a man in a baseball cap who stopped on a Tuesday morning in March.
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