Farewell, Brownies Auto Parts & Hardware
In big cities and small towns alike, you’ll always find a chain auto parts store or two to help with whatever project or repair you’re working on. But the mom-and-pop auto parts store? That’s an increasingly rare sight. You might know the sort—it’s located in a part of the old downtown business district, or perhaps in a quiet area outside the city limits. These small shops served their communities for decades, only for them to disappear. The explanation might be a parts-store chain that sweeps up all but the most loyal customers or, as in this instance, the owners retiring with no one to take up the torch.
Brownies Auto Parts & Hardware in Moneta, Virginia, near Smith Mountain Lake, has served its customers and community for 52 years. By the end of 2024, Brownies, like many others before it, will fade into history. Agnes Brown, proprietor of the store, will be retiring, at the age of 76. Her late husband, Glenwood “Brownie” Brown, worked at Rubatex for 11 years before leaving to start his business in 1972, bringing Agnes along for the ride.
“[My husband] liked cars,” said Agnes. “He started buying a few parts and selling those parts to the boys he worked with at Rubatex. They would come out after they got off work, and they would get their parts out of the trunk of his car and pay him. He reinvest[ed] the money back into more parts. And it just grew and grew.”
When the Browns started their auto parts business, they were one of four stores in the entire Smith Mountain Lake area, including a grocery store and a garage. When the area residents requested a hardware store for their home improvement needs, the couple added a hardware section to their auto parts store. When the lake grew popular with tourists and new residents, the Browns—and eventually their daughter, Annette—added marine parts to their wares, along with small engine parts for lawnmowers, lawn tractors, and more. Over the decades, their store became a mainstay in the community. In 2012 Glenwood passed, leaving the store in the hands of his wife and daughter.
Twelve years later, Brownies Auto Parts & Hardware is closing. “I’ll miss the people,” said Agnes. “You’re around people all the time. You see ‘em, and if you don’t see ‘em for a while, you wonder, ‘Are they sick? Did they move away? What’s happened to ‘em?’ You miss the people. And the people’s been good to us for 52 years. They’ve been good to us.”
Once the shop is closed and nearly everything remaining is auctioned off, Agnes plans to work around the house, selling a few items on eBay while keeping others as family mementos. Then, she’ll take a few bus trips around the country with friends she’s met on past trips. As long as her health is good, she’ll be busy for years to come.
The space Brownies once occupied will be hard to fill, especially for anyone looking for hard-to-find parts for their cars. Agnes said that many of her and her husband’s customers over the years have come into their store when their searches for parts didn’t pan out elsewhere. Even the Browns would run into stocking issues for all of their wares over the decades as more and more of their suppliers closed. Fewer factory representatives visited the store to advise the family on what to stock for their customers. Parts books went out of publication as the online world took over. Finally, Agnes said, it was time to call it a day in the Roanoke Region of Virginia.
“It’s really changed,” said Agnes. “They compare you with the internet, the prices. I hear all the time, ‘Well, I can get that off of Amazon for such and such.’ But not all the time what you see on the internet is what you gonna get. You may have to send it back once or twice. The internet has its good [sides] and its bad.”
As chains and the internet continue to take over the auto-parts store space, shops like Brownies fade further into the background. One day, they’re gone forever. Treasure your local mom-and-pop auto and hardware stores for as long as they’re around. May their owners, when they do move on, be fondly remembered for all they’ve done for their communities, like Agnes, Annette, and Glenwood Brown have served Moneta, Virginia.
Every day that I walked home from Berkley High School, I’d stop in at Grand Schafer North Auto Parts and say hello to Mr. B, Leonard Bensky, who had been a Boy Scout troupe leader of mine. When I brought in the tiny rear brake drums to my brother’s ’63 Mini Cooper for resurfacing, he said to me, “What are those out of, a go kart?”
Great article. Good luck to the owner in retirement, she has worked hard and deserves to see the world on her terms.
The Internet. Progress. Yeah, right.
Yeah killing the actually helpful customer service oriented locals one by one over price.
Yes, just like the “big box stores” killed small-town main street decades ago. Progress?
Trying to support the local Levine’s Automotive over the three national chain stores that surround it. Anything you need is ‘in the warehouse’, but that warehouse is across town, and the parts arrive after lunch.
I just bought a Pint of paint at Levines paint store in Danbury, cost me $167 for a pint without any hardener or thinner! That’s $1336 a gallon. With hardener, well over $2000. No more Levines for me.
Our children and grands will not be able to go to the store, pick up their wanted item and have it immediately.
They will not have the ability to return it for a refund or different item without postal costs and lost time.
Plus the ability to make new friends they meet there, let alone the advice and help on the product they are purchasing. Some time “the time that marches on” is not so good.
The chain auto parts stores employ those that are often not car people, and it’s a struggle at times. You can’t just go into the store and ask for a holley accelerator pump diaphragm. They will ask what car, year, and engine and then say, “That engine is not available for that car”. I have to pretend that I am buying a part for a 1996 ford e150 instead of a 1990 Mustang. When you have a Frankenstein car it really confuses them. I do miss the old parts places, but some of them were pretty gruff and slow, but at least you could get some advice from them or the guys standing around in line.
Even the online supply sites demand year, make, model and trim. C’mon, I have no idea what or where most of my motors came from.
Bradlee’s auto parts in Stoughton, Massachusetts (still there!) used to hand me the ticket for a part I paid for so I could go to the warehouse in the next town over and that staff would pick the part and hand it to me on the spot. Different world.
the parts place in Elkorn Wisconsin, a real old time auto parts store, who remembers Dagies in Chicago? how about Wisnewski’s in Milwaukee?
One thing not in the article, but in comments, is the help and advice you get from a local and experienced business owner. Sure you can go online for information, but often the information is faulty, just click bait from some attention seeker. That said economics is a tough task master. Folks will pursue the lowest price and are often unwilling to pay for advice until a project goes wrong. Sure it is irrational, but people ARE irrational. I wish Agnes a good final chapter in life.
A good parts person is worth their weight in gold and are getting about as hard to find as hens teeth, as are good independent parts stores. Sorry to see another bite the dust but this has been a long time problem, and not just for auto parts, try finding a machinist you trust.
in the late 70s while in high school, i was a parts runner (delivery) for d&j auto parts in whittier, ca. the co-owners dyed in the wool car people. they had a machine shop, typical for the independents. i later worked for valleyview auto parts. although independent, they hooked up with a couple dozen others and made for some real buying power. i remember buying a couple palet fulls of name brand coolant from a local warehouse. we borrowed a stakebed truck from one of the owner’s churches. one case (6 1-gallon jugs) dealer cost: $3.95. coolant was selling for 4-5 bucks a jug at the time.
I’ve lamented about the loss of my favorite parts store on these pages before, but this seems like the right place to re-tell the story. In Boise, Idaho, there was a place named Service City Auto Products (SCAP) and under that big sign, one could get advice, regular parts, speed parts, and some great company and coffee ever. Roger and Bush were my favorite counter-guys. I sometimes knew just what I wanted, but often those guys would present me with a better option – or just flat tell me what was out there that addressed my needs. A charge account was allowed for regular customers (pay in a month with no interest – and even that could be fudged a bit if you at least made a decent payment). There was a machine shop right across the parking area, and the symbiosis benefitted both businesses. A stop at SCAP was pretty much mandatory every Saturday during my high school years and on into my racing period. Sad, sad day when it finally closed for good.
This article touches a nerve. As a teenager I worked in an excellent auto parts store-Bridge Automotive Parts Distributor. Did deliveries, became a counterman, cut drums, rotors, axle bearings etc. It was really a parts jobber supplier to a lot of commercial shops and gas stations.
It was a great place, the customers were like family. Best place I ever worked! Bad place to work for a budding car nut- some weeks my paycheck was “John owes us $19.78”, haha.
Joe Meyer, Louie, Chuckie and all the guys- boy do I miss you guys. Often the mechanics asked us what the right answer was on a repair.
Kept a lot of the catalogs-my friends and family ended up going to work for Standard Auto Products when they were local.
Most of the places are gone and I miss them.