SLO LIFE Winter 2010

| publisher’s message
My seven-year-old daughter loves looking at old family photos.
As we were flipping through a dust-covered album the other day,
I came across a shot I had not seen in years, and it stopped me in
my tracks. It was a picture of my grandpa working on one of his
tractors in his shop, bundled up in a jacket and hat in the middle of
the scorching hot summer just outside of Visalia in the San Joaquin
Valley. At the time the photo was taken, he was in the final throes
of his battle with terminal cancer.
Glenn L. Pratt
(1920 - 1994)
Nothing could keep Grandpa out of his shop. From the time he
dropped out of the sixth grade until the moment he drew his final
breath, he was a cotton farmer. Like most people of his generation,
he believed in the importance of a handshake. He believed in his
neighbors. He believed in hard work. And he understood that the
key to running a good business was to continually innovate. That’s
a word he would have never used himself, but, looking back on it,
that’s exactly what he did. He almost never bought new machinery;
instead he opted to keep his old, fully-paid-for equipment going.
When something could not be revived for another season, he
often improvised and fabricated whatever he needed himself. A
combination of notes, numbers, and diagrams scratched out on
a yellow legal notepad by his massive, grease-stained right hand
soon enough became a reality out in the shop.
When I was a kid, about the same age my daughter is now, I remember listening in on discussions between Grandpa and his brother Louie. They would
debate about the best way to build this or fix that. They would talk for hours about finding a better ball bearing for the harvester. Honestly, I didn’t care
what they talked about, and I certainly didn’t understand much of it. I just wanted to be around it. I wanted to soak it in. These were big, important
men talking about big and important things. It was cool, and I wanted to be like them.
As I reflect on that photo today, it brings about a flood of emotion. I think about my wife and my kids, who never had the chance to meet Grandpa;
I think about my many cousins back in the Valley and elsewhere who today apply the lessons learned out at the shop when we were younger; and, I
think about how I can see a little bit of Grandpa in the local small business owners I am so privileged to work with here each and every day.
As publisher of this magazine, I wear many hats. But, one of my most favorite things I do is visit with our advertisers. Sometimes I feel like a seven-year-old
kid again as I learn about their plans for their businesses and what they are doing to innovate. Those conversations leave me with a strong faith that our
small business community will continue to lead the way, probably not with some big, complicated high-tech invention, but in small, incremental steps, on a
daily basis, with the same grit, dedication and ingenuity that Grandpa displayed in his shop as he built his business, one ball bearing at a time.
Live the SLO Life!
tom@slolifemagazine.com
SLO LIFE
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publiSHer
Creative DireCtor
Contributing
DeSignerS
Contributing
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pHotograpHer
Tom Franciskovich
Sheryl Disher
Trent Thibodeaux
Casey Miller
Jeanette Trompeter
Nancy Fox
Danielle Dutro
Brenda Stickel
Danielle Dutro
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