The One and Only Dealer Downs

Dealer Downs Scott and I became friends about 30 years ago. Soon after I got married in 1977, I bought a new Ford truck from him. I paid him $4,000. It had a manual transmission, no air-conditioner and only an AM radio. But that sucker was brand new and it was mine.

He got the name Dealer Downs because he was a wheeler and a dealer in the car business. He was always working on a deal and always had a story to tell.

Dealer left the car business and bought the local Chevron service station in Reynolds and began operating it. At the same time, my brother and I were operating our new Goddard Red & White Grocery store across town, along with a couple of funeral homes and the ambulance service.

When Downs became a business owner in Reynolds, he soon went to school and became an Emergency Medical Technician. Since I was one of those as well, we began to spend a lot of time together doing training and riding the ambulance at all hours of the night.

We were trained just enough to be dangerous but we found ourselves in all kinds of situations. I remember the night we were in the back of the ambulance with a woman trying to have a baby and the water broke in an explosive manner in our face. There was one baby foot hanging out. Downs asked me what in the world we should do. I told him to go tell the driver (my brother) to drive faster. The situation was way past our training.

I also remember the Saturday night we both were trying to make deposits and had cash all over our desks at our businesses and we got a call about someone finding someone dead in a building on the outskirts of town. We left the cash and met at the ambulance and took off with sirens glaring and lights flashing. When we got there we found a couple of drunks. One drunk thought the other drunk was dead. They both just needed a hot shower.

I could go on and on about our experiences on the ambulance but we always figured out how to have a good time no matter the circumstances. Dealer always kept me in stitches. He was always working on a deal and always had a story to tell.

Dealer eventually sold the Chevron Station and opened a little restaurant in town called what else but the “Dealer Burger.” It was there that Downs became an institution in Reynolds. The Dealer Burger was not only where many people ate three meals a day but it became the local gathering place in Reynolds. People went for the conversation as much as the food. Both were great.

I remember by dad shooting a pistol in the air (only blanks) when he discovered there was no fresh coffee. Everybody in the place hit the floor and for a split second thought he had gone postal. And there was the time Dealer was jumping around, screaming and hollering because he thought he had won the Florida lottery… only to find out later that his friend Sydney Bryan had played a practical joke on him.

Downs later closed that business and entered the insurance business. It was during this time that he began working with me at the funeral homes. We were no longer riding the emergency ambulance but now we were riding the hearse at all hours of the night.

Our friendship grew. He always kept me in stitches. And he was always working on a deal and always had a story to tell.


The last few years Dealer has had some major physical challenges as a result of his almost lifelong battle with diabetes. Even when his kidneys shut down he always kept me in stitches. He was always working on a deal and always had a story to tell.

Dealer made the biggest deal of his life earlier this year. He got himself a kidney transplant. And all of a sudden he started getting better.

Although we talk on a regular basis, I drove over to his house today in Reynolds to visit. We spent a couple of hours reminiscing. We have more funny stories of our time together than you can shake a stick at.

As usual he kept me in stitches.

From the perspective of an undertaker, you need at least six real friends in this life. You need that many to haul you to the cemetery.

The original one and only Dealer Downs would definitely be one of my six.