By KAREN PARKER | County Line Publisher Emerita
In April 1973, you may have been tempted to stop in at Lind’s Home Center in Cashton and purchase a new range for the kitchen.
In those days, it was called Cashton Hardware, and that new range likely set you back only about $200. At home, you may have turned on the burner to fry up some bacon for a BLT. The bacon went for 78 cents a pound; the bread, for 28 cents a loaf; and less than a dollar would have bought the lettuce and tomato.
If you picked up a La Crosse Tribune, the front page alerted you to massive Mississippi flooding expected to occur in St. Louis that week, while in Washington President Richard Nixon denied he intended to throw his staff under the bus. He did so anyway in an effort to avoid any implication of his own involvement in the Watergate scandal.
With all that as a backdrop, Paul Lind decided it was time to strike out on his own. Early in his life, he had farmed with his parents near Viroqua, and then was employed by Flugstad-Bernett Hardware in Viroqua. They had turned down an invitation to buy Cashton Hardware from the Lee brothers. But Lind saw an opportunity, in purchasing the business in 1973. The three Lee brothers stayed on for years with Paul Lind as owner.
DuWayne Lind was 14 at the time, and in 1989, he took over the business from his father, renaming it Lind’s Home Center.
“I have never held a real job,” he jokes. His son Aaron has now joined the business after becoming disillusioned with the politics in his teaching career.
It also has not escaped him that the real 50-year anniversary is actually in April, but who is counting?
Whatever the case, as small- town businesses dry up and blow away like autumn leaves, it is refreshing to find one that evidently will be here for a time.
Stop in and congratulate the Linds this weekend. After all you could win a $500 shopping spree. Okay, it may not buy as much as it would have in 1973, but who would turn it down?