When most his age were preoccupied with social considerations, Dave Comstock was making sure he came up with monthly payments for a lumber yard he had just purchased. “I THINK we (he and wife Glenda) will travel some,” Comstock said, but there still are projects to complete and rental properties to look after.
“I was barely 19 years old and working for my uncle at Colony Lumber when the banker stopped for a visit,” Comstock, 70, recalled from behind his desk at Mid-West Fertilizer, 506 Lincoln Rd. W.
When sale of the lumber yard popped up in conversation, “I said, ‘I’ll buy it,’” Comstock said. “The banker said, ‘Come see me.’”
He did, and Comstock launched a career that eventually would see him own four lumber yards — in Colony, Iola, De Soto and Fort Scott — and have two construction companies, one that built about 80 homes in Iola, primarily in the Briarwood and Sunnyside additions. Comstock also built elsewhere in Allen, as well as Anderson and Franklin counties.
“One of the construction companies at the time was the largest Butler Building contractor in the country,” he said.
Construction and the lumber yards went by the wayside in 1987, when Comstock had to have both hips replaced, a medical procedure that laid him up for six months.
“I couldn’t climb ladders anymore,” he said.
Since then, his main occupation has been selling agricultural chemicals — both wholesale and retail — including the last five years as a sales representative for Mid-West Fertilizer.
That will come to an end at quitting time Wednesday, when Comstock’s retirement becomes official.
That doesn’t mean, however, that he will snooze well into late morning Thursday.
“I’ve gotten up at 4:30 for so long, it’ll be a hard habit to break,” he said.
Also, there are two homes in the Briarwood Addition, started by another contractor several years and then abandoned. Comstock purchased them and intends to have them ready for occupancy soon.
“I’d like to sell them, but it will depend on the economy,” he allowed. “It seems to be getting better in the cities and should here before long. If they don’t sell I can rent them.”
Travel likely will take the Comstocks to Arizona, where son John, an electrical engineer who deals with nuclear facilities lives much of the time, and Joplin, where daughter Audra, a retired paralegal lives. Also, there are four grandsons and a granddaughter to catch up with.
Otherwise, the Comstocks, no longer slaves to regular working hours, will do what they want with their new-found extra time. That may be something of a culture shock, since he has worked long hours and long weeks all of his life, dating back to when he was born on a farm at Welda and spent the first nine years of his life there before the family moved to Colony.
There are fond memories of his younger years, particularly as a six- and seven-year-old helping his grandfather, Orval Comstock, farm with horses.
“Granddad was one of the last around to use horses,” Comstock remembered from the late 1940s. “It sure took a long time to get the farming done.”
Life-long labor eases
