Around the Town: Roy Clay Buys Malakoff Trading Post

Roy Clay
Roy Clay

By Loretta Humble/Around the Town

I had a wonderful surprise this week. Ok, first let me tell you about my problem, then I’ll tell you my good news.

My problem is, I didn’t give a lot of forethought as to where I put my house. Some of you may know that I live in a house that I used to visit as a kid when it belonged to the Sheppard family, and which later passed on to the Conditt family. Six or seven years ago I bought it for a song, moved it to my part of the Sims family farm and paid way too much money to turn it into what my daughter Liz calls my Barbie Doll farm house. I had always wanted a little house in the woods, so I took great pains to get it nestled among trees, kind of behind a little hill. It never occurred to me to consider where water runs when it rains, or how hard it would be to deal with the sand it leaves behind. I never meant to have so many dogs, or that they could bring in so many pounds of that sand so often. It is awful. Grass won’t grow, small gravel and crushed granite gets washed away. Sand remains. Or maybe it is just that more sand gets washed in. I got desperate. I went to Malakoff Trading Post and talked to Keith Butler about river rock. I’d just put river rock all over the place with some flagstone paths here and there. He said he thought it would work and quoted me a great price. By the way, he told me, we are selling the place. I hated to hear that, but figured I’d better hurry up and get my rocks, since the next owner might not give me such a good deal. So Saturday morning I popped in there with one last set of questions for Keith.

But Keith wasn’t there. Instead there was a new guy. Somebody with a dark beard. He smiled and said “Hello Loretta.” Then I recognized him—It was Roy Clay. The Roy Clay who I love, who used to work at the newspaper when I owned it and Michael Hannigan was editor of the Malakoff News and Roy was editor of The Lake Country Gazette. Roy and Michael are two of my favorite young men in the whole world, and they have gone out and done beautifully well, both having done even more creative things and married wonderful women and are raising great kids. Now Roy has done something that has astounded me.

Roy has bought Malakoff Trading Post! This is just wonderful! I asked him if he knew anything about rocks. Maybe that was a little nervy, but he told me indeed he does. Since he left us those many years ago, he has spent 15 years in large scale construction. And for the last two years he has been doing something with rocks called dry stack construction. They do a lot of that in Ireland. He has a passion for old world stone craftsmanship. He knows stone carving. He says his first goal get real solid doing the basic rock business carrying on the good work Phillip Surls and crew did, then he wants to branch out into these more exotic things, things that aren’t available anywhere else around here. I’m really excited about this. I think he will do great.

I asked Roy if he would help me figure out what to do with my dirt and water problems. He said he sure would. I asked if he would come take a look. He said any time. I said how about now. He checked to see if he could turn loose, and said let’s go. He came out and took a look, said he would give it some thought and get back with me in a couple of days.

Plus, I have some other expert advice. Before I went out and found Roy, I had stopped at Don Hughes house to ask his advice. Don is a retired highway engineer, so I figured he understands about water flow and sand. He promised to come out and take a look Sunday, which he did. He walked around with me, and told me more stuff I would need to do than I could hold in my head. He was real pleased when he heard Roy had bought the Trading Post. Roy’s family and Don’s were neighbors when Roy was growing up. They have a really high regard for one another. Don promised to talk to Roy about his ideas on how to fix my problems. I am elated! We are going get this sand problem licked!

Another thing made me happy this week: Carl and I drove to Cooper Farms in Fairfield and bought a bushel of over-ripe peaches and have been eating them as fast as we can. Those things are like heaven, and are worth the drive.