Shoe Column: Garber’s was a local treasure

By Tim “Shoe” Sullivan

If you were not living in Stevens Point in the 1960s, you probably never even heard about Garber’s.

So you don’t even know what you were missing.

On the other hand, all the kids in the Water Street neighborhood knew all about the place.

Garber’s was a huge warehouse that I guess one could call a recycling plant. It was located at the very north end of Prairie Street. Garber’s was about a hundred yards from the Water Tower fence if you approached it from the north and headed south.

In 1960, Garber’s was a nice source of spending money for the neighborhood kids. Several of the kids would pull their little wagons around town and pick up old newspapers, magazines, and rags nobody wanted. They would then haul their loaded wagons into Garber’s and get about 32 cents for their trouble.

That would buy a lot of candy.

Ben Garber, a nice man, was the owner. His son, Dave, played on my Little League Firefighters team when we were both 12.

It’s important to know that all of us kids built “forts” all around the Water Tower area. Our forts would be made of old trees, cement bricks, cardboard, logs, and the like. Those forts came in handy later.

A very interesting feature of Garber’s was the loading dock that was outside of the huge building. On that dock were several “bales” of something like cardboard. A bale was about the size of two standard refrigerators. Once in a while, we liked climbing on those bales.

As kids, we enjoyed playing softball in the backyards north of Garber’s. And one fine evening, I chased after a long home run, and while I was out there, what did I see?

A boxcar!

And the boxcar’s door was wide open.

I told the boys about it. We didn’t even know there were railroad tracks around there.

So we investigated.

In that open boxcar were several of those bales!

But these bales weren’t just made of cardboard. Get this: the bales were totally made of comic books and magazines!

And several were loose on the boxcar floor. Just sitting there for the plucking.

Richie Rich. Archie. Uncle $crooge. Batman. Superman. Wonder Woman. Chip ‘n’ Dale. Tweety & Sylvester.

A Playboy. Field & Stream. Baseball Digest. Tons of magazines. Hundreds of comic books.

Our softball game was put on hold. We suddenly had a mission: To relocate some of those wonderful comics from the boxcar to our forts.

Keep in mind that we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of comic books. Maybe thousands. And they all had 1/2 of the front cover torn off. On purpose. Our guess is that they were left over from the bookstores and weren’t supposed to be sold again.

We had our own rule. We would put all of the comic books into the forts and return them to the boxcar about a week later.

But one problem.

A week later, the boxcar had vanished.

With all of those magazines and comic books.

Never saw that boxcar again.

But we never forgot about Garber’s. We just knew if we kept trying, one day would come and we’d find a way to get right into that warehouse. Who needed a boxcar?

And that day came!!

One winter, a few of us were looking around outside in the back of the building. There was brush, glass, weeds, broken cement blocks, rusty metal, and lots of junk.

And some rusty tin outside on the building’s wall hidden by brush.

For the hell of it, we pulled out the tin a little … and … a kid could actually squeeze into the gap! That put you inside the warehouse!!!

After climbing over a second wall, you were now on the main floor!

Surrounded by bales and bales of those wonderful comic books!

Thousands of them. Rawhide Kid, Popeye. Blondie. Donald Duck. Tom & Jerry. Green Lantern. Wyatt Earp.

The Swamp Fox. Avengers. Spider-Man. The Incredible Hulk. Fantastic Four. Superman/Bizarro. Bat Masterson.

Davy Crockett. Dennis the Menace. Bugs Bunny. So many.

A comic book went for maybe a dime.

These were free.

So did we “steal” them?

Well, not really.

We made two rules right on the spot. No. 1: We would not trash the place. No. 2: After a week or so, we would return everything we temporarily “borrowed.” We put everything back on the loading dock.

The great part was that Garber’s never knew anything was even missing. Or if they did know, they really didn’t care.

A drop in the bucket. A speck on a fly. A passing cloud.

DISCLAIMER: Fifty years later, I told Dave Garber about our Garber’s “raids.” He calculated that we owed the family about three cents.

And then, I don’t remember the year, all of a sudden Garber’s wasn’t there anymore. Torn down.

I cried when I found out.

And I still haven’t gotten over it.