Melvin Major: Fathers And Children

by Charles McGuigan 12.2014

Aristotle said it best: “Nature abhors a vacuum.”  Whenever there is a void in our lives we fill it, consciously or otherwise. Too often, people try to fill that hole with anything that’s available, things that can create a deeper hole, a hungry mouth that demands to be fed but regardless what and how much you feed it, it is never sated, for it is an abyss, a vast yawning gap, without end.  But sometimes, if we’re lucky enough, the very thing that replaces the emptiness is what we needed all along and we can actually become the very person that was missing from our own life. Through that transformation we are then able to fill the voids in others and become truly human.

 Melvin Major sits at his desk in the rear office at Fin & Feather, the last independently owned full-line pet store in the region where customer service is flawless, where all sales associates have deep knowledge of the products they sell, which are generally less expensive than they are at the big boxes or grocery stores. 

Melvin’s beard and hair are white and his eyebrows form perfect arches like circumflex accents above his eyes. He is telling me about the Lakeside of his youth.  There were three grocery stores, two full-service hardware stores, three pharmacies, two of which housed lunch counters, and an array of other shops and restaurants. It was a village unto its own, a sort of Mayberry—slow-paced, easy going, and everyone knew one another.

He grew up in his grandmother’s house where he still lives today, just nine-tenth of a mile from the front door of Fin & Feather. They kept chickens and ducks, guinea fowl and rabbits, and the back yard was filled with gardens. “We had it all,” says Melvin.  A man who lived across the street raised chickens from chicks all the way up to broilers and at any one time might have as many as ten thousand chickens in coops he kept behind his house. 

Melvin’s household was made up of his mother, grandmother, uncle, and, of course Melvin. But his father was not there. He had left his wife while she was pregnant and returned to his home in New Jersey. Melvin would not see this man until many years later. “I didn’t know my biological father until I turned eighteen,” he says. “I can’t really describe how it was. It was nice to meet him but it was no Eureka moment. I saw him four or five times after that and there was never really any bond.”

Just shy of his fifteenth birthday, Melvin applied for a part-time job at Fin & Feather. He was hired to work weekends and began learning the pet shop business. “It was the closest job I could find within walking distance from home,” he says. “The only other choices were working for the drug store delivering prescription on your bicycle, or for the grocery stores bagging.”

He took to business like a swordtail to water. While still in high school he met a woman, a teacher named Mrs. Humphries, who taught graphic arts and mechanical drawing.  “She was from a relatively well-off family and very well educated,” he remembers. “And she would take a lot of the kids under her wing and take them to her house for dinner.  She was one of the most memorable teachers I ever had. 

She played a big role she in my life. She taught me and a lot of other people the right way to do things. She showed us the right way.”

After high school graduation, still working part-time at the pet shop, Melvin began attending RPI where he studied general business. And then the former owner of Fin & Feather offered to sell the business and Melvin bought it. “It was only 2,000 square feet at the time,” he says. “We are now a little over 7,000 square feet. I have owned it for the past 45 years.”

In those intervening years, hundreds of young men and young women have worked at Fin & Feather where they found more than steady employment. They found a second home.

After Melvin purchased the property at 5200 Lakeside Avenue, which now houses the Pond Center, he began a ritual that lasted for about twenty years. “It was originally a house and the building was built onto the front of it as part of a business for the fellow who owned the house,” he says. “I used to cook breakfast for the employees there on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It was just part of a perk. I enjoyed cooking and fixing breakfast and giving the employees a chance to get together and just relax before they came to work. One year I cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner for an employee and his friend that couldn’t get away to go home for Thanksgiving.  I made soups and stews and barbeque, a big crockpot of stuff so they could eat on it during the day throughout the week.”

And it that same house, on the second floor, Melvin created an apartment with two-bedrooms and a bath. “I’ve let our employees who were college students and needed a place to stay live there. To all my employees I’ve always expressed how important it is to get a good education and when they started school I would work around their college schedules.”

When I ask him why, he grins and uses words he might have heard from his high school teacher, Mrs. Humphries. “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Melvin says. “Sometime people don’t have advantages that they need and it’s just the right thing to do to give them an advantage.   I think it helped some of them. It certainly gave them an opportunity to get ahead.  And many of them they did.” Among those who have worked for Melvin over the years are men and women who are now doctors and lawyers, teachers and engineers. 

A few of them even started their own pet shops. Mark Maphis, who came to work at Fin & Feather as a high school kid, remained working at the store for 25 years. “He lived in the house here while he was going to college,” says Melvin. “He lived there afterwards while he was working here and only moved out when he got married and they bought a house. “ Mark later went on to found Fin & Feather of Ashland, which is not in any way affiliated with Fin & Feather Pet Center in Lakeside.

 He pauses when I ask him if he taught all these young people valuable life lessons.  He slowly shakes his head. “I don’t know that they’ve learned anything from me directly,” he says. “I think they’ve learned how life can treat you and what you can accomplish in life if you work at it. I don’t feel that I’m an instrument of teaching; I feel like I’ve facilitated their ability to learn.” 

Melvin does tell me that any time one of his long-term employees leaves the shop, he feels a certain pang.  “They become part of the family and when they leave it’s like a child leaving your home,” he says. “It is hard, but it’s also normal.”

Periodically one of his old employees does return for a visit.  “I see a few of them,” says Melvin.  “Just recently there was a boy that worked here in the mid-seventies. He’s been down in North Carolina for years, raised a family down there, and he was coming through town on business and stopped in the store out of the clear blue just to say hi and talk about old times. I liked that. In all the years I’ve owned Fin & Feather I’ve never had a bad kid.” He smiles at his own words.

When I ask if he has any regrets, Melvin says, “I’ve led a good life. I’ve managed to run a successful business. I’ve kept a roof over my head. I think we all could say we’d like to change some things, but it’s petty. My one regret is not having kids of my own.”

One of Melvin’s many “kids” enters the office, and as Melvin exits, I begin talking with him. His name is Darrell Perkins and he is taking over ownership of Fin & Feather.  Like Melvin, Darrell came to work at Fin & Feather when he was fifteen years old.  He continued working there when he studied finance at VCU where he earned a degree. “I’ve worked in this shop half of my life,” he says. “Even during college I worked forty-plus hour weeks here.  When I graduated I didn’t really want to leave.”

The reason for this was Melvin Major. “He’s great, probably the nicest guy you’ll ever meet in your life,” Darrell says. “He’s like a second father to me. He lets you learn the hard way. He won’t come out and tell you, ‘This is how it needs to be done.’ He’ll kind of let you do it on your. He’ll give you advice and you can either use it or not.”

Darrell remembers a few years back when he wanted to try doing of online advertising. “That didn’t pan out and Melvin was right from the get go and it didn’t work at all and it was a waste of money and that makes you think twice,” he says. 

More than a boss to him, Melvin has been Darrell’s confidante. “I would come to him with any problem I ever had, even if was personal,” he says. “Any problem at all and I would come and talk to him. When my wife was pregnant with our daughter he was the first person I told. I told him before I even told my parents. I think very highly of Melvin and I don’t know how much he knows that.”

What Darrell does know is his good fortune in having connected with Melvin in the first place.  “I don’t know how it happened,” he says. “It just kind of formed and developed and he put a lot of trust in me and I’m very, very grateful for it.”

He considers taking over the store in its entirety. “These are some big shoes to fill,” Darrell says. “I’ve been pretty much running everything from day to day for the last three years. Buying the store is in the works. There is no rush. It’s a gradual thing. But I can tell you this: Melvin will be here forever. I’ll probably have a La-Z-Boy up front when he needs it and he’ll be just sitting right there and saying hi to everybody. He loves seeing the people and talking with them. And they love talking with him.”

When I talk with Melvin later and mention the possibility of retirement he shakes his head. ”My health is steady so I don’t want to stop working,” he says. “I don’t want to be the old fellow that sits at home and stares out the window. The business is handed over to Darrell, but I don’t have plans to get out of it. As long as I’m able to come to work and see people I will always be here. Watching my customers grow up has been a good part of my life. I mean when you start seeing the second and now the third generation come in here, it’s a source of pride. I think of my friends that I went to school with that have retired from corporate type businesses and they’ve enjoyed getting away from there. But the people that I know that I went to school with that had their own businesses or were doctors or lawyers, they’re still working. They don’t want to retire. They have a relationship with the people they’ve served over the years.”

Melvin strokes his beard and the underside of his chin and looks to the future for Fin & Feather and the thriving business community that has re-emerged in Lakeside. “Despite the way the world’s going with the internet and big boxes I think small businesses of all types are going to survive,” he says. “Because there’re always going to be people that want personal service and want to see, feel and touch what they’re buying.”  He mentions Early Bird Biscuit Company & Bakery that opened just up the street this past summer. “It’s phenomenal,” he says. “You go in there and the owner’s always smiling. He’s happy; his staff is happy. And I get a tickle out of it. They get so many clients in there on Saturday that the owner stands outside, takes the order, goes inside and brings stuff back out. Independently owned businesses treat customers like humans.”

And their employees like members of the family.