Edward Leahey

By James Carroll

My earliest memory of Ed was in the early 1940s. Ed had gone off to war like most young men did in those days. My dad owned a grocery store on the new highway U.S. 78 or The Bankhead Highway. One day Ed came walking into the store assisted with a walking cane. He had been discharged with a medical discharge because of a knee injury.

It seemed that everyone liked Ed because he always had something funny to say. He wore nice clothes and kept them clean and pressed. Ed was a money magnet; money just seemed to flow in his direction. I don’t want to imply that he didn’t have to work for it because he worked hard for what he had. Ed used to walk around with one hand in his pocket rattling his pocket change. If he had a few bills he would fold them in half and stick those into his front pocket. He would occasionally take them out of his pocket and shuffle them.

Just a little while after the war Ed’s dad built a small Grocery store on one corner of his property. The store had a meat box and room for cutting meat. Joe Leahey had built the store for Ed to manage because he could see the management skills that Ed possessed. Ed operated the store for a number of years and was extremely successful.

Bill and Robert Davis who were boat builders used to come to the store a lot. Ed talked to them about the boat building trade and was very interested in going into business building boats. It wasn’t long before he built a boat shop behind the store and was building small pleasure type run abouts.

Leahey Boats outgrew the small shop behind the store in about six years and moved his business to a larger building on west 10th street in Anniston. He met and fell in love with the woman who operated a restaurant across the street from his shop and eventually married her. Ed was moving on up in the world and soon bought a beer store. It was beer to go only and the law was that you could not sell cold beer because they were afraid you might pop one open and drink it on the way home. It was not long before Ed bought the biggest air conditioner he could find. I went by the store one day and there he was in an overcoat and fur hat selling that room temperature beer.

Ed went on to buy a used car parts and auto body shop on North Noble Street in Anniston. Not long after that his wife died.

Along about 1969 I found myself in need of a job as Shirley and I had a new baby named Tammy.  We had only been married for the second time for a little more than a year. I went to Ed's Used Car Place and ask Ed if he had an opening. Ed ask me if I could replace the wiring in a wrecked car that had been damaged beyond repair and I replyed that I had never done that but I was willing to give it my best shot. Ed said to me that there was a used car place in North Atlanta which was about 125 miles away and they had a wiring harness but I needed to take my tools because I might need to remove the harness from the car it was in. I told Ed that I understand the instructions. Ed had just a few weeks before that, bought a new Cadilac Deville and handed me the keys to his Cadilac, along with $500.00 cash money to pay for the harness  and my lunch and other expences. After I finished the job and was on the payroll, Ed payed me well. All his employees, especially the ones who had turned the job down were paying attention to me and the story of the wiring harness. How could a man who had no experence come to their work place and make full pay right off the bat?

Wasn't he the one called Hicky MiDoodle at school? How did he deserve full pay?  

Ed knew something that others  should know; if you want to impress your peers send your least qualified employee in your new Cadilac,  to a junk yard to get parts for you.

After working for Ed for about a week a man drove up one morning and told Ed he needs a brake job on his car and I saw Ed looking around for someone to assign the job. Ed asked me how was my brake skills? Anyway he assigned the job to me even though I had omly helped another mechanic  on a couple of jobs. 

Fast foward to a time after I had retired. I drove a Nissan and the brakes would squeek when backing out of our driveway. My wife lold me I needed to do something about that noise. I asked her "how Are your brake skills"? We laughed about her helping me but she said that she would be glad to help me. The next day we did a complete brake job on our car including drum and rotors but not the cylinders as they were still good.