Landmark hardware store closing doors

Jerry, left, and Doug Vap prepare to close their 75-year-old family-owned store at 112 East B in McCook. The store offers feed, seed, hardware, tack and art supplies. [Click to enlarge]

"Jerry was heading back to Lincoln," Doug said, "And he hung the signs before he left."

Doug said that he and Jerry had talked about retiring, closing the store that evolved from the feed and seed store that their uncle and their dad started back in the 1930s. "We'd kicked it around ... ignored it. I had put my head in the sand," Doug said.

Doug admitted that, even though he was the one who had had the signs made, "I was the one draggin' my feet."

Jerry taped the signs in the windows and, when Doug returned from lunch, he left for Lincoln. Doug realized 20 minutes later the decision had finally been made.

It'll be "business as usual" with discount prices as Doug and Jerry liquidate inventory -- they don't have a definite closing date -- and then, in the spring, they'll conduct an auction.

The signs are already attracting attention. Doug said a man from Sterling, Colo., stopped by shortly after the signs appeared and picked up quite a few items of horse tack, and then, "scrounging around," bought all the gate hinges. "I would have thought those might have been among the last things to sell," Doug said.

A couple bought all the sizes of turnbuckles, he said, and then all the cable clamps. "I never thought those would have sold so readily this early," Doug said.

Vap's has always carried a diversified line of hardware inventory, Doug said, "including things you don't buy a lot of very often. We carry what people need on an occasional basis," but still want when they need it.

It's become hard to keep up with discount and big box stores, Doug said, and he's witnessed changes in American buying habits over the years.

"Many shoppers are so sophisticated and educated today, they don't need places that sell service with their products," Doug said. And, he explained, shoppers go into a discount store and have any number of a particular item to pick from. "It requires capital wherewithal to do that," he said, something that's a challenge for small retail establishments.

"If door-busters were every day, life would be fun," he said.

Neither Jerry nor Doug have children who want to carry on the family business for a third generation. They and their families are leading busy, successful lives and professional careers elsewhere, Doug said.

He added, "They may come back to McCook, but for other reasons."

Vap's store started with frontage on the highway, McCook's main east-west street, in the mid-1930s. "Dad's brother, Joe F., opened the store and called it Beaver Valley Feed and Seed, a branch of his store in Atwood, in, we think, '34 or '35," Doug said. "Uncle Joe couldn't pay my dad to work, so Dad took over the assets of the business," he said.

Fred Vap moved the business to the 200 block of West First, to a location north of what is today Hershberger's music for a couple years, and then back to the highway location, where he changed the store's name to "McCook Seed."

During the late depression and World War II, Fred Vap bought alfalfa seed for a company in Indiana and sold it on a commission. "But Dad learned quickly -- even with only a sixth-grade education -- that he could make two to three cents more a pound if he bought the seed and sold it himself," Doug said. " ' course, he was accepting more of the risk."

Fred bought alfalfa seed from local growers, Doug said, cleaned it using two mills, bagged it in 135-pound bags and sold it by the boxcar-load to companies in Fort Wayne, Ind., and Greeley, Colo., from his own railroad siding location in McCook, Doug said.

Fred Vap used the same railroad siding to accept shipments of fertilizer, and Vap's became the first McCook-area business to promote and sell fertilizer for field use, Doug said.

In the ensuing years, other McCook companies entered the anhydrous ammonia fertilizer business, Doug said. "Times kept evolving around us, and it required bigger and bigger money to keep up with it. Borrowing money scared Dad," Doug said. "He didn't have the educational background for big, big business."

Fred's brother Elijah joined him after World War II and into the 1950s, and they expanded their offerings to include hardware, "for something to do during the winter months," Doug said.

Fred's business financed college educations for his sons Doug and Jerry, and in the early 1960s, both returned to McCook to help run the store. They expanded onto the remainder of the quarter-block and Fred retired. He left the business to the two boys in 1972.

The boys expanded to include lawn and yard services, something quite new for McCook at the time. "No one had done this kind of work around here ... landscaping, underground sprinkler systems," Doug said. "No one had seen anyone lay sod before."

Doug and Jerry bought sod from sod farms at Gothenburg and Minden and in Colorado, Doug said, and they shipped it into McCook by the semi-truck load.

They hired football players from McCook Junior College for their landscaping crews. "As time went by," Doug said, "Our best employees became our best competition."

Landscaping is physically-demanding, Doug said: "We got older ... and then came the children ... "

And other opportunities presented themselves. "Times change ... people change," Doug said. "As we mature, we explore new opportunities, new experiences."

Jerry became deeply involved in conservation efforts, serving locally with the Natural Resources District and eventually as president of the National Association of Conservation Districts. He is now chairman of the Nebraska Public Services Commission and is a member of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

"The PSC is a natural fit for Jerry," Doug said. "It's three days a week in Lincoln, and then in McCook Thursday through Saturday." Doug mans the McCook store throughout the week.

Doug, a licensed pilot who has flown for business and pleasure, served on the McCook Airport Advisory Board and with the Nebraska Association of Airport Officials. In 2001, Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns appointed him to a commissioner's position on the Nebraska Department of Aeronautics. In 2004, he was selected by fellow commissioners to serve as chairman of the Aeronautics Commission.

Times change ... people change ...

The Vaps are starting their going-out-of-business sales with a 20 percent discount throughout the store.

Come on in, browse, scrounge around really well ... find just that thing now that you'll discover you need the day after their auction next spring.