Editor’s note: This is the first report in a continuing series about Brookings-area residents who have reached their biblically allotted three-score years and 10 and are still working or who in retirement are still doing something meaningful for their fellow community members.
By John Kubal | The Brookings Register
BROOKINGS – Big isn’t always better.
Check out “Auto Repair & Service” in the Swiftel Directory’s Yellow Pages and you’ll find more than a dozen small businesses listed for the Brookings area. Ron’s Auto Repair, 312 Third Ave., is one of them. It’s owned by Ron Dobesh, 78, and operated with his son Ronnie. Like all the small businesses listed, the key to Ron’s success is loyal customers who like what they find and spread the word to other potential customers, who then keep coming back.
“You want to know when I started the whole works?” Ron asked, referring to his entry into his chosen profession.“In 1971, I was in a Mobil (service) station on the (US 14) bypass where the implement dealers are, on the north side, that’s where I started. I owned the product and all the stuff, but Mobil owned the property.”
Come the late 1970s he moved to downtown Brookings, “to the other Mobil (service) station on Sixth (Street) and Medary (Avenue). I bought the product once again, from Roy Van Maanen, from Volga. He quit.”
In the 1980s, he switched product from Mobil to Sinclair. “When we did that, I had to buy the property from Mobil. I can’t remember what the price was, $100,000 something.”
In 1989 he sold the property to Pam Oil in Sioux Falls and moved to his present location in downtown Brookings, where he and Ronnie operate an auto repair business — but not a service station — where Ron still comes to work daily. But does he entertain some now-and-then thoughts of retirement?
“What do you mean?” he asked, laughing. “Everyday, but not like today (Monday, Feb. 9) when it’s not too bad. But when it’s 20 below zero out, then for dang sure.”
Keeping it in the family
When he finally does retire, will son Ronnie take over?
“That’s the plan,” Ron said, noting that he and his son already run the business together. “He’s the one who runs the office. And I don’t do a lot of the work anymore. I do give rides and I pay the shop bills, like for Napa or whatever. He prints out all the statements and stuff. My wife (Susan) at home, does some of the filing for the bookwork and then she mails out the statements.”
Ron’s Auto Repair breakout ad in the Yellow Pages cites service for “Foreign & Domestic Automobiles” that includes: complete brake; air conditioning; engine tuneups; batteries; tires; lubrication; and customized exhaust systems.
The elder Dubesh was born in Burke, out near Winner. He grew up on a farm there. “I was a farm kid, so I learned how to tune up tractors and cars for my dad,” he explained. He graduated from Burke High School in 1965.
Next stop was South Dakota State University, where he studied mechanical engineering — and met Susan, who hails from Huron. They married in 1965 and have two sons, a daughter, and seven grandchildren. Their daughter lives in Minneapolis. Their son Brian lives in Sioux Falls near Harrisburg and owns Dobesh Construction, which builds houses and commercial buildings.
Looking back to the old days
Dobesh noted that he never received any technical or vocational training, learning all his automotive repair skills via on-the-job experience. However, he continued to hone his skills in an ever-changing world of automotive engineering.
“I can still remember in the ‘70s when I’d be tuning up a car with spark plugs, points, condensers and that sort of stuff,” he recalled. “In 1974, along came electronic ignitions and I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never be able to do it. What can I do?’ Now electronic ignition is nothing. It’s all computer stuff.” Then came fuel injection about 1988.
“Before that it was computerized carburetors,” he noted. “And there was a guy from Des Moines, Iowa, who would come up to Sioux Falls and give a three-day class every year on how to work on those carburetors and get them working better. I took a few of those classes.”
Continuing, he noted that “today everything is computerized.” Get behind the wheel and you’re pretty much driving a computer.
Does he understand all the modern digital-age technology that goes into today’s motor vehicles?
“No,” he said, laughing. “You can go online, Google a lot of stuff and learn lot of stuff.”
However, Ronnie and the other mechanics are up to speed on the latest technology and the other skills needed to repair and maintain most of today’s motor vehicles.
”When you do an oil change and want to reset the oil change deal, I don’t know how to do that,” Ron admitted. “I have four other guys that can do that. I should have one more, but they’re hard to come by right now. I need an older guy that can do the old electronic stuff; which the new kids don’t want to do that kind of stuff.”
— Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
Leave a Reply