Michigan General Store Proprietor Wheels and Deals With a Century of Inventory

You won’t find Webster, Mich., on any map. But you won’t come across many in these parts who don’t know of Webster and its “founder,” Cloyce Webster.

“I guess everyone knows about me,” Webster says, hands thrust in the pockets of his worn overalls.

Webster is proprietor of a ramshackle general store on a dirt road 7 miles north of Fremont. A sign outside reads:

WEBSTER MICHIGAN

OPEN 7.A.M. TO 10 P.M.

CLOSED SUNDAYS

He has no post office in his store, but he is so well-known locally that mail addressed to Webster, Mich., reaches him.

Since first setting up shop here in 1932, Webster has been collecting derelict automobiles and gadgets, pop bottles and hubcaps, batteries and milk jugs, toasters and sewing machines, all kinds of litter that together make up something of a scrapbook of the 20th Century. Indeed, a trip to Webster throws the visitor into a time warp, back to the days of Coca-Cola thermometers and 5-cent soda pop.

Cloyce Webster, a youthful-looking 70-year-old pack rat, storekeeper, cobbler, mechanic, storyteller, artist, husband and father.

Surrounded by dairy farms that dot the rolling hills of west-central Michigan, some might call Webster’s 27 acres a junkyard. But among the rusting hulks of 1930s and ‘40s automobiles are some treasures.

“Sure, I know some of these things are worth a lot,” he says. “And I sell some of ‘em.”

He rummages through a box full of antique bottles. “Here’s one of them old Dr Pepper bottles. Betcha never seen one of them before.”

Webster will sell you anything you want. But if you can’t pay, he’s been known to make a deal. Cut him some wood, and he’ll fix a battery free.

Batteries are his specialty. But, he says, he can fix just about anything “if I can get the part.”

Chances are, he has it already.

Even more remarkably, he knows where it is.

“Inventory? I keep it all up here,” Webster says, pointing to his soiled, green cap.

Indeed, there is a touch of organization amid the apparent chaos.

“See that ’36 Hudson?” Webster asks, pointing to the moss-covered automobile partially embedded in the ground outside the back of his shop. “It’s filled with table-model radios. That ’35 Chevy over there? Filled with gaskets. Only gaskets.”

Webster bought most of the old cars and bicycles, although some were abandoned after being dropped off for repairs.

Entangled in vines and weeds, are probably 500 bicycles and cars, Webster estimates, not including all the ones in hundreds of pieces. About 2 1/2 tons of hubcaps are piled up, reaching the branches of the trees.

“I’d clean it all out, but even if I took 10 tons a day out it would still take seven or eight years to get rid of it all,” Webster says.

Inside the weathered building is a cluttered maze of spare parts and cases of soda bottles stacked to the ceiling, dark and narrow aisles leading to several rooms. There’s a grocery section and a shoe repair section, where Webster uses car tires to make rubber soles--”guaranteed not to wear out.”

“This is where I do my painting,” Webster says, indicating a cramped area by a window. There are enamel paints on a cluttered, flat surface, but no room to sit down.

It is here that Webster gets away from it all, painting wildlife scenes on aluminum printing plates.

“Ten dollars apiece. I sell lots of ‘em,” Webster says, pointing to the hundreds of finished products piled in his “art department.”

An 11th-grade dropout, Webster spent four years in the Air Force, from 1942 to 1946, closing the shop while he was gone.

When he returned, he married, and he and his wife, Elaine, have been running the store ever since, living in a rickety house next door. Webster’s 94-year-old father, a former farmer, lives down the road.