The Magnolia Story(17)

When I came back to Waco, I had a very different perspective. I went back to work at my father’s Firestone shop knowing that I didn’t want to do broadcast journalism, but also doubting whether or not I wanted to take over the tire business. I spent a good part of my days in that back office daydreaming and sketching ideas out on a yellow steno pad.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to run my dad’s business, but I definitely liked the idea of owning my own business. I thought about what kind of business I’d like to own—a spa, a bakery, a home store. Whatever I chose, I wanted it to be as beautiful and welcoming as those boutiques in New York.

I drew pictures of what the shops might look like. I designed logos. I never shared those ideas with anybody, and there were times when I thought I was just being foolish. In fact, I started to think about my degree and the fact that I’d worked at one of the top evening news programs in all of television, and I wondered if maybe I’d given up on TV news too soon. I wondered if maybe I should go back to New York and go for it. I was actually in the middle of pulling up all the old contacts I’d made during my internship on the very day I met Chip at the tire shop.

And so I stayed in Waco, and my life took a sharp turn down a path I never could’ve imagined.



We’d only been living in the yellow house for about a month when I flipped open that yellow pad and showed Chip some of my ideas. Remodeling and redecorating that house had filled me with all sorts of new inspiration, so I showed him the sketches and plans I had made for a little home décor shop. I told him I wanted to apply everything I’d learned from this house and my days wandering around Manhattan to a business idea I’d been playing around with.

“Someday,” I said.

“Why not right now?” Chip replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Go drive around and find a building you like, and let’s do it. We’ll fix it up just like we’re fixing up this house, and you can open your business right now.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious! Go find a building and let’s do it! Why not?”

Chip had this way of turning far-off dreams into something that seemed real and achievable in an instant. He filled me up with a confidence I’d never known. He made me believe I could actually do it.

So I did.

I drove around Waco with new eyes, searching around every corner and strip mall for something that I could turn into my vision. One day, I spotted this little building on Bosque (pronounced BOSS-key) Boulevard. It was sunburnt orange—a bit like Chip on our first date—and it was all boarded up, but it looked more like a little house than a cookie-cutter, strip-mall type of business. It backed up to a residential neighborhood, it had its own little parking lot, and it was right next door to a church. There was something cute and quirky about the place that just caught my eye.

It wasn’t for sale. It basically looked abandoned. But I took a picture on my phone and sent it to Chip.

“I love this building!” I told him.

His response was, “Jo, that thing is ugly.”

“But I love all the windows, and I can imagine these pretty displays . . .”

I’ve picked some dumps, some buildings that weren’t pretty, either. But this place seemed like it was on the wrong side of town for a retail location. It looked more like a place that you’d turn into a little gas station or a used car lot or something.

Chip didn’t feel good about it, but he did some research anyway and found out the property was owned by a woman named Maebelle, who was probably in her seventies at the time. We reached out to her, and she agreed to meet us at the building. She told us the whole history of the place. Her son had been renovating it for years, but he had gotten very sick and had never been able to finish. She’d received a couple of offers on the property, but she just wasn’t ready to part with it yet—especially since those bidders wanted to turn it into a used car lot or something else she didn’t want to see in the neighborhood. She and her son had been looking to open a tuxedo shop, and she was hoping for something along those lines.

We had a good talk with Maebelle, and she loved the idea that I’d be opening a shop I would run myself, that I had no interest in tearing down that little building her son had worked on for so long. Before we left, we told her we’d like to make an offer too, and she said that when the time came she would rather sell it to us than to the other folks.

So we got all excited. Thinking back, maybe we got excited a little too quickly. Because we’d never thought through exactly how we’d finance the place.

I had a line of credit that worked well for flipping houses. It was a short-term thing. But I didn’t have the credit needed to do a long-term commercial purchase like that. Even though this was gonna be Jo’s business, it made sense to both of us that it should be in both our names.

I had a tiny bit of savings tucked away that I decided I could use for a down payment. I’d never thought I would touch that money, but Chip inspired me to want to do something more with it than just let it sit in the bank earning next to nothing in interest. I also knew that if I filled out a loan application, I’d still be able to show the income I’d been making at my dad’s shop. I might even be able to qualify for some kind of small-business loan available to women. We decided to go for it and were excited to hear about some financing options Chip hadn’t used before.