A local paint store is important. It’s like a hardware store or lumber yard, each lending a town grit, texture and lyrical architecture, linking one generation to the next.
I’ve always been a fan of Sequoia Paint Co. I’ve bought good paint in other places too, however paint stores are like barbers. You find one, you settle in and when you go in for a trim, you don't have to tell them you want the No. 2 clippers because they are already fishing them out of the drawer underneath the mirror.
Given how some of us cling to the familiar, I was reassured when I heard that after 58 years, Sequoia owner Jim Elder had sold the store to Galen and Krista Harris. “Sold” rather than taking more dramatic measures. The Harrises (in their 50s) are as local as Dewar’s or Stinson’s. Galen is a longtime painting contractor and Krista a preschool teacher. Their 20-something boys, Blake (who will join the business) and Logan, are graduates of Ridgeview and Bakersfield Christian, respectively.
“I’ve been buying paint here since 1987,” said Harris, who worked for Jim Williams Painting for 12 years before going out on his own. “I’ve known Jim for a long time.”
Elder started Sequoia in 1962. He’s 93 now and there weren’t a lot of succession opportunities in his family so it made sense to hammer out a deal with an interested party and that they were local and knew the paint business was even better. The negotiations took a year, some of them on a friend’s boat in Oxnard.
Elder is a character even for characters. If he wasn’t from Texas or Oklahoma, he somehow absorbed both the accent, inflection and speech patterns that distinguish the region. Elder always remembered your name and if he didn’t, he’d make one up that may or may not have been flattering. He wasn’t afraid to laugh, or rather cackle. Elder was proud of his business successes, especially ones where he got a good deal, and he wasn’t shy about discussing them. You could come away from a conversation and think he had more money than Bill Gates and maybe was twice as clever.
I loved the paint. I don’t know if it was really better than anywhere else but they made it in Bakersfield across the street from their store on 19th and Baker and it seemed better because you knew where it came from.
I’m also a sucker for businesses east of Union; many of Bakersfield's best businesses set down roots there and some never left. Like its east Bakersfield brethren, Sequoia was the kind of store where time stood still. Step through the door and it could have been 2007, 1997 or 1967. Hard to tell but you knew where you were when you stepped into the office and there was a big, rectangular box of Smith’s doughnuts on a plain table next to a coffee machine and, if you were lucky, you just might get a maple stick.
Rarely was there a line but if somebody was in front of you, it was usually a guy in freshly washed, paint-splattered overalls buying paint for the day and enjoying a bit of conversation with Big John behind the counter. When it was your turn, they’d always throw in a couple of extra stir sticks making you feel like you had won the paint lottery.
Time stood still at Sequoia’s, but when you are buying a business as the Harrises did, it may be time to make time and change things and so they are: deep cleaning, stripping the floor and painting it with a heavy flake and a clear coat, repainting the walls and ceilings and freshening up the displays. Harris has a crew of six going to town on the store.
“Sequoia was tired,” he said. “It’s got good bones and loyal ag customers like Wonderful, Grimmway and Bolthouse, Kern County schools and loyal homeowners but we want to reach out to paint contractors and homeowners who may have forgotten about Sequoia or never heard about us to begin with.”
Sequoia has strengths, Harris said. Elder had formulated a special paint for cold storage facilities because normal paint would turn yellow and peel quickly when in contact with the gases inside the buildings. Sequoia’s paint has proved invaluable.
Freshening up the product line includes developing some new eggshell paints (eggshell refers to the sheen) as well as cabinet paints. Harris has already talked to Bruce Barta, who has been the paint chemist at Sequoia for 40 years.
“We’re also working with Mike McCoy at the Kern County Museum helping them with paint for the only wooden rail car of its type left in the world that used to run downtown,” Harris said.
Some things won’t change. Dorene in the office is staying as is Big John, who has been behind the counter for 40 years and although he is struggling with some health issues he is a gamer and keeps showing up.
Every town needs them — barbers, beauty shops, bakeries, card shops, mom-and-pop restaurants and paint and hardware stores. It is a way of appreciating a town’s identity. A way of measuring our own.
January 31, 2021 at 04:30PM
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HERB BENHAM: A fresh coat for Sequoia Paint Co. - The Bakersfield Californian
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Herb
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