86 year drives 700 miles roundtrip once a week

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

‘I’m still the delivery boy’: The 86-year-old with a weekly LA-Mammoth commute
Jim Stevens takes the 700-mile round-trip route — and he loves it.

Every week for over 50 years, 86-year-old Jim Stevens has followed the same routine. He climbs into a delivery truck alongside his wife Judy and black cat Lucky and drives 330 miles north, from the family’s furniture store in Paramount, California, to the mountain community of Mammoth in the eastern Sierra. He listens to no music or podcasts, instead preferring the quiet of the road for his weekly 12 hours of navigating Highway 395.

Jim started working at Paramount Furniture as a teenager in 1955, before becoming the store’s owner several years later.

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Paramount Furniture started out as a typical furniture store catering to suburban Southern California. But in 1967, a friend of Jim and Judy’s bought a new condo up in Mammoth and asked them to furnish it. Not long after, Jim and Judy bought their own cabin, outfitting it in a “very lodgy-looking and mountain-like” style, according to Judy. Soon their business cards were being passed around among the wave of new second-home owners in Mammoth, many of whom were based in Southern California. That made it easy for customers to check out the store in Paramount, with easy delivery up to Mammoth right after purchase.

The Stevens family fell into a familiar routine: “Drive up Friday night, unload Saturday, ski Sunday then drive home, back to school on Monday,” said Greg Stevens, who remembers helping out around the store at 5 years old.

https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/la-store-delivers-furniture-mountain-towns-19988536.php

[magicarpet]

1. Jeez,... at that age of 86 years, he can't be lugging much furniture around.

[Dem2theMax]

2. I love this story! Thank you for sharing it.

I did the reverse drive for a while. Used to live in Mammoth. On my days off, if it was snowing so bad that it wasn't worth skiing, I'd get in my car and head to Los Angeles.

Wish I had bought a place up there when it was cheap. Now I can't even afford to walk through the town.

[JMCKUSICK]

3. What a wonderful story

Encompasses so much that we long for today.
Quality, integrity, character, craftsmanship, pride etc...thank you.