The Shively/Glode family celebrates 90 years operating Shively Hardware
The 1925 bill of sale to the Shively Hardware Company. The document states the cost of the sale is $1 plus paying the bill list on the back of the document. The list can be seen on page 6.
The back side of the bill of sale that indicates the full cost of the Shively Hardware sale.
Shively Hardware will celebrate 90 years of business this year, and owner Mike Glode remembers its beginnings through family history.
The east end of the building, Mike said, was the beginning of the store but it has since expanded to what we know now. The location on Bridge Avenue, according to Mike, was the first commercial building on this side of the river. The original general store in town, owned by J.W. Hugus, originally sat where the Snowy Mountain Brewery now sits. After the bridge was built, Hugus moved across the river, opening Hugus Hardware in that spot.
The first Shively generation to come to Saratoga started with tuberculosis. Ed Shively was married in Oklahoma and left his wife to come out to the dry climate which was, at the time, the only treatment for tuberculosis, Mike said. "He ended up in Grand Junction picking peaches," Mike said. "He just had to have something to do."
Shively, an orphan, was living with an uncle who was in the lumber and hardware business so when he needed work again, Shively made his way to a hardware convention in Denver. There he met Bill Tilton, who owned the hardware store in Saratoga at the time. Tilton hired him, and the whole Shively family moved out in 1918.
When Tilton lost money due to personal reasons, he said to Shively, "if you can come up with $5,000, I'll give you the store," according to Mike. He borrowed money from an uncle back in Oklahoma, and that is how it all got started.
"The reason we date it to 1925 is because that's the original note that he signed," Mike said. "They didn't end up buying the building until the 30s."
The Glode name entered the family with Mike and Joe Glode's father John, who was originally from Woonsocket, R.I."He graduated from high school and decided to join the CCCs (Civilian Conservation Corps)," Mike said. "He ran away from home, literally, and went to Worchester, Mass. and got on a train. When he got off the train, he was in Casper, Wyo. at a CCC camp."
John was a high school graduate, which was rare at the CCC camp. He ended up working his way through the University of Wyoming, where he met his wife.
"The two of them kind of had the same story. They had no money and they had to go someplace else," Mike said.
Mike and Joe took over in the late 1970s, and E.J. Glode will be the fourth generation to take over the family business. "My dad and uncle are still productive. People still like them and still want to buy from them," E.J. said. "I think my grandfather worked until they took his driver's license away."
"I see 10 years from now, as long as I'm still healthy, and everything that my main office will be up north," E.J. said of his plans. According to E.J., he has been focusing on mayoral duties more in the past few months and has not come up with any specific plans for down the road.
"I've got some great cousins around. I anticipate that maybe one of the cousins would move back," Glode said of future Glode/Shively generations moving into the business. He hopes to keep it in the family. However, he noted that there are tremendous employees working with Shively now, and though they have never moved outside the family yet, it could be possible.
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