Financial History Issue 126 (Summer 2018) | Page 29
The original warehouse in Scottsville, Kentucky;
the big brick building was bought at half price.
Scottsville, Kentucky, was a great
place for a kid to grow up, but it was a ter-
rible place for a wholesale business. Nash-
ville, 60 miles to the south, or Louisville,
120 miles to the north, would have been
much better. Fewer than 2,000 people
lived in Scottsville in 1939, and the roads
leading in and out were winding and rut-
ted. To my father and my grandfather,
though, Scottsville was the center of the
universe. Besides, they had just bought a
big brick building on East Main Street—
they had gotten it for half price, and a
Turner will buy anything for half price—
and so Scottsville it was.
My grandfather, James Luther Turner,
was one of the smartest men I have ever
known. He was also one of the hardest
working. He was just 11 when his father
died in a freak wrestling accident in 1902,
and as the oldest of four children, he left
school to run the family farm. I picture
him in those days as a skinny kid walk-
ing behind their mule, turning up dusty
Macon County, Tennessee, dirt so he
could plant corn for the hogs, vegetables
for the family and tobacco for cash.
He sold his first tobacco crop for $190
and put part of the money into savings.
When he said, as he often did, “You need
to save something from every paycheck,”
it was because he had done it and had
learned that it worked. From the begin-
ning, he dreamed of a better life, and at 24,
he was asked to manage the local co-op by
farmers who recognized him as the hard-
est-working young man around. He had
by that time saved $300, and he opened
a bridle shop in a refurbished woodshed
behind the co-op, which amounted to a
general store, making and selling bridles,
harnesses and saddles in his spare time.
He would set out on foot before dawn,
carrying a lunch as he walked the three
miles from the farm to the co-op, and walk
back at night.
He and his wife, Josiephine—they mar-
ried when he was 17—lost two children
in infancy, and they devoted themselves
tirelessly to their third and only surviving
child, Hurley Calister, born May 28, 1915.
Baby picture of Cal Turner, Jr.
Hurley was the surname of a prominent
area man, and my grandmother, whose
own name was spelled with a country
flourish, just liked the sound of “Calister.”
Luther worked at the co-op for about
a year—after running his own farm,
he wasn’t much for bosses. He and his
brother-in-law bought the inventory of
a small general store and used it to start
their own in Adolphus, across the state
line in Allen County, Kentucky. In 1920,
just after Luther bought a second store,
the nation entered a severe recession. His
stores failed, and he figured it was time to
try working for someone else again .
He approached Nashville’s Dobson-
Cannon Wholesale Grocery Company,
which was less than impressed with his
third-grade education but hired him as
a salesman when he offered to work on
straight commission. “Just give me your
sales sheets and pay me for what I sell,”
he told them. A year later, he jumped at
the chance to work for Neely Harwell, a
Nashville dry goods wholesaler. He loaded
samples of their merchandise into his car
and showed them to store owners all over
southern Kentucky and middle Tennessee.
A natural salesman, he flourished, although
he never lost the dream of returning to his
www.MoAF.org | Summer 2018 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 27