It’s sad to see family business closing its doors.

I open the glass door framed on either side by two large windows displaying living room and dining room furniture. A bell jingles as I step into a brick building with high ceilings on East Market Street in Greensboro, North Carolina.



Walking down the narrow, rubber covered aisle flanked by more furniture stacked in tiers along the walls, I make my way to the desk in the back where the proprietor of Dabbs Furniture Company sits watching my approach.



It’s 1981 and I’m 20 years old, a student at Guilford College. I’ve come to announce my intentions to a man I haven’t seen in a long while.
“I’d like to learn the family business,” I say.
“Great,” replies my father, Bob Dabbs. “You’re hired.”



Selling furniture and keeping accounts was a sweet deal for a full-time college student. I had flexibility to leave for classes and during slow times, I studied, struggling to stay awake as the steady hum of the tall, oscillating fan stirred the air.



A few months later, my adored, older brother, Steve, announced his intentions to join the family business.
“Great,” replied our Dad, delighted to receive the heir apparent.




Steve and I laughed away the tedium of slow summer afternoons entertained by a steady cast of characters which included the young, charismatic Reverend Michael King, and the lady who talked so fast her teeth clacked. We never could understand what she said.
My father’s loyal co-worker of several years, Bob Oakley, a/k/a “Snook’ums,” so named for the cartoon character with the lock of golden hair across his forehead, served as mentor and translator.




I became accustomed to seeing street people relieve themselves and take sips from mysterious bottles wrapped in brown paper bags in the alley that separated the building from the huge, spooky warehouse where most of the furniture was kept.




Working in the family business was not always easy. Emotional baggage had to be checked at the door at 9:00 am and retrieved after hours. During more than one Thanksgiving family meals, the carving knife danced almost telekinetically in each of our hands, as if to carve someone or something other than the turkey.




I resented being the first to express interest in the business only to be shoved aside when the male heir arrived, automatically earning a higher salary and securing his place as future owner.




“Well, after all,” my father explained. “You’ll want to quit working and raise a family one day, right?”




Three years later, I graduated from college and took a giant step across the street to sell advertising at the Greensboro News and Record. It was a hard decision but the right one.




In 1986, Dabbs Furniture moved to a larger location on Lee St. Joined now by my younger brother, David, a photographer by trade and mountain man at heart, the Dabbs Dynasty was complete.




As accurately predicted, I happily married and retired to raise a family.




Eleven years after moving to their final destination on South Holden Road, the daily grind of managing a “Mom and Pop” store combined with heavy competition from overseas has taken its toil.




The Dabbs boys have spilled blood and sweat and cried tears, but they’ve run a successful and lucrative” b’ness,” as my southern father often inflects. They are tired, but the burden has been lifted. The store is closing in March of 2005.




Looking now at the glass windows covered by signs announcing “Going Out of Business Sale,” I am saddened. Reels of film thread through my head as I struggle not to cry.




I am four years old, sitting in our black Valiant with my brothers and our mother, Jackie, at Rex Anderson’s Esso next to Mitchell’s Clothing store on East Market Street, having just visited our Dad two doors down, letting the “Tiger fill our tank.”




I am six, in a plaid dress and white bobby socks, skipping down the aisle at Dabbs Furniture, thrilled to be watching my first color television program, The Wonderful World of Disney.




I am twelve, fetching a glass of grape juice for my Dad who is sprawled on the den sofa watching Sunday football on one of his three televisions, stacked crudely but effectively on an early version of the now popular wall unit assembled with bricks and plywood. He is exhausted from working six day weeks.




I am sixteen at Southeast High School, laughing when the boys yell, “Hey, will a Little Dab really do ya?”, referring to the radio commercial we ran at the time.




Thirty years later, I am watching my daughters visit their beloved “Grandabbsy” at the store on South Holden Road. The girls are fascinated by the 1958 R.C. Allen typewriter their grandfather still uses to pound outraged letters to newspaper editors, government officials, and anyone else who gets his goat.




Uncle Steve cracks them up making announcements about them on the P.A. system. Uncle David rests his feet, shattered by a fall from the roof of his log cabin a few years ago, making long stints on the concrete floor agonizing painful.




The girls never leave empty-handed. There’s always a hand fan, a ruler, or a pen with the Dabbs Furniture logo. More often, their doting grandfather slips them a little cash. They like that best.
They’ll have lots of souvenirs and memories, most notably tapes of the television commercials they often starred in.




There are no heirs now. Our sons Max and Ross lead golden lives at Duke University. Our daughters Caroline, Virginia, and Emily are too young for the passing of the torch. Steve and David have no children. I have no time.




Though I’ve often teased my husband, Robbie, that he only married me because I’m heiress to the Dabbs Furniture Empire, there remains a yearning , put aside so many years ago by the young girl who first announced her intentions to run the family business, growing stronger now in the woman who dreams of resurrecting a new furniture company sprung from the roots of grandfather Henry Dabbs fifty-four years ago, and perhaps one day propagated by his great, great grandchildren.




Like a tongue that can’t resist probing the gap where a lost tooth once was, I return to the idea again and again. I can’t help it. It’s in my blood