‘We’ve lived the store’

Hanging on wood paneling over the back office of Roberts Bros. True Value is a painted portrait of Ralph Roberts. He’s depicted in a formal suit, laughing in front of the first hardware store he founded with his brother Wiley Roberts on Prairie City’s downtown square almost 90 years ago.

It was painted by Ralph’s granddaughter, Sharon Frykman. She used a pose from a photograph taken at her wedding and superimposed his image on the old storefront. Working the hardware store floor Monday, another of Ralph’s granddaughter’s, Ginny Dalton, gets to work for the day.

Ginny is a third generation owner of Roberts Bros., along with her husband Mike Dalton. Their son, Kevin Dalton, is the fourth generation to own a stake in the hardware store.

For the last 46 years, Mike and Ginny have been dedicated to Roberts Bros. and Prairie City — no time to have “the toys, the boats and the campers,” Mike said. “We’ve lived the store.”

Roberts Bros. is a cornerstone in Prairie City history and the Dalton’s have added their mark to the legacy. That’s why March 14’s announcement was bittersweet for both their family and the community.

The Dalton’s announced on the Roberts Bros. Facebook page their family hardware store is for sale. Ginny said they’d had a two-year plan in place for selling the business, but when Kevin’s wife was offered a job in North Sioux City, S.D., she said they needed to accelerate the process.

Kevin has been studying to be a medical lab technician and decided not to finish out his career in the family business. Kevin said he plans to enter phlebotomy when he and wife Andrea move to South Dakota. Mike and Ginny expect their seven grandchildren to take up a lot of their new-found free time.

There are many details to work through for any potential buyer but what’s non-negotiable, said Mike and Ginny, is the store’s future — it must remain a hardware store.

“We just want to see a hardware store here. We believe it’s important, as important as having a grocery store,” Ginny said

Above all, the Daltons stress their hardware store is not closing, a question they’ve received dozens of times in the last week. The store will remain open in the transition, keep the same hours and continue to sell garden mulch, tools, light fixtures and appliances to its customers.

"It's going to be more (emotional) as time goes on and it gets more real," Mike said. "Right now we're kind of in the shock period that we actually said we're going to do it."

Ralph and Wiley opened the Roberts Bros. doors July 4, 1928. At the time, they were a hardware and grocery store. As the years went on so did their business, growing to use all the real estate on the west side of Prairie City’s downtown Garden Square.

At its peak, Roberts Bros. had a bakery, coffee shop and a stockyard. Ginny said her grandfather and great uncle processed all their own meat and made fresh bologna once per week. There was also the Robert’s Bros. lumber yard, which provided both materials and labor for building many Prairie City homes that still stand today.

The generational changes at Roberts’ Bros. over the years have been simple — Wiley sold his stake to Ginny’s father Raymond and her uncle Harold and, eventually, the store went to Ginny and Mike.

Mike started the Roberts’ Bros. flooring department in 1972, selling and installing carpet. Their son Kevin officially became part owner 28-years ago, helping in the flooring department until it ended in 2000.

Mike and Ginny moved the business off the square and built its current location at 203 S. Madison St. in 1973, and donated a portion of the old property on the square to the Prairie City Historical Society.

Community has always been first at Roberts Bros. It’s the part of being local business owners in which Ginny and Mike both find the most pride. Volunteering during Prairie Days, performing as clowns for town celebrations and during the flood of 1993, the Daltons and Roberts Bros. were there.

“Helping the people — it’s my favorite part. Coming down at 3 a.m. and selling sump pumps when the town’s flooding. We’ve always been really close to our customers,” Mike said.

“I’ve loved the people. We were down here at midnight unloading the truck because we were getting bottled water, generators and all that kind of stuff,” Ginny added. “We’ve had a lot of loyal customers over the years.”

Kevin’s memories of Roberts Bros. began at an early age. He was 5 years old when he first took on a job at the hardware store, cutting pipe threads for 160 pieces of pipe that would be used in the construction of an area hog confinement. He used an old machinist lathe retrofitted into a pipe threader to do the job. The lesson the job taught him at such a young age brings a chuckle to the Daltons to this day.

“They put me on a milk crate in the back in front of the big machine, with this 6 to 8-inch wide belt,” Kevin said. “My directions were, ‘if you feel like you’re going to fall, push yourself away from the machine because it will kill you.”

After school, Kevin’s job was always to empty the trash cans and ashtrays out front.

Reaction to the sale by customers and the community has been met with positivity for Mike, Ginny and Kevin mixed with sadness for Roberts Bros.

In her Facebook comment, Marilee Fenton wrote, “Wow! I’m excited for your future but sad that you will be leaving! God will send you someone meant to step in and keep this going the Roberts way!”

“I am so happy for you and your well-deserved retirement but your store will be missed,” wrote Mary Bone Elrod. “Thanks for serving PC and surrounding communities for so many years!”

Contact Mike Mendenhall at mmendenhall@myprairiecitynews.com