Priscilla Richardson

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Some people travel when retired. Buchanan's L.N. Watts traveled before he even finished high school.

His father, the late Louis Nelson Watts Sr., knew how to fix cars. So in 1948, as L.N. (Louis Nelson Watts Jr.) tells it, his father left Roanoke to open a garage and store in the Arcadia area. Soon L.N. became a mechanic's helper, working with his dad. "I got most of my handwork skills from working on automobiles," L.N. said. "I had to help him when I was growing up. 'You gonna eat, you gonna help.'

"Around [19]53 or '54, a lot of people had '51 Fords. It had a flathead engine that would throw a rod. One year Daddy and I averaged putting at least two rebuilt engines a week into cars. A lot of people were traveling through. He'd leave me tearing one down, he'd go to Roanoke to get a short block, bring it back. He got so he trusted me to do what he wanted done.

"We'd transfer the parts and put it back, sometimes be 2 or 3 in the morning before we'd finish, to get people on their way. This is something very few people do now; they put a new motor in. But we did a bunch of them. That's how I got good with working with my hands."

So the Watts family business hummed along until its close in 1962, when the interstate took the property. The elder Watts started over with a laundromat and gas distributorship in Buchanan, while L.N. started his career as an upholsterer. "I did a little bit of everything, but furniture is my game. I like it."

Now 65, he retired at 62 from his last employer but still runs his independent upholstery business as he always has. "I'm not working like I did when I was 20, but I'm carrying on. I want to keep going as long as I can."

Going on trips became the key to his young life. Every few years, Watts Sr. would close everything and take off to California with the family to visit his sister. They rode in a 1947 Dodge. Of course they had no worry about breakdowns.

"Daddy would shut down for at least a month -- a week to get there and a week to come back. Mama would take enough food with us for several days. She'd cook on a two-burner Coleman stove that burned white [no lead] gas. We'd start at 5 to 6 a.m., stop, fix breakfast, like scrambled eggs and light bread, with sandwiches at lunchtime. For supper, we'd have something like cube steak and a vegetable boiled on the stove.

"It was like a weeklong picnic. With five kids [L.N., a brother and three sisters] and two adults, we didn't have the money to go to restaurants every day. We might go every other night. At night, my brother and I slept in the car, my sisters and Mom and Dad would share a motel room. I guess we were kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies, but we got to see a lot of the country.

"We went by Grand Canyon, that impressed me. Saw the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert, and Hoover Dam. After we got to California, we'd go on side trips. We'd go up to Yosemite, and always went to the San Francisco Zoo. My uncle and aunt lived in Oakland so we'd go see the Golden Gate Bridge. We went across the country four times. It was unusual for that time. It was a good experience."

After the last trip, he got a job, and then married Sue Layman, now a popular caterer. Turned out, she's the only person to call him Louis. "I was L.N. to everyone else." They just celebrated their 44th anniversary. Working "twelve- to fourteen-hour days got kind of rough at times. But it paid off. I educated two girls."

L.N. has also made time for church work and other traveling with Sue. But he'll never forget those trips to California in a car with "suicide doors." What are they? Car doors that open with hinges toward the back. Think about it.