There may be many phrases to describe Larry Haskins, but probably none would be more accurate than to say he is not afraid to work.
Haskins, now 80 and still working every day, started early and has never quit.
“I have basically worked since I was 12 years old,” he shared last week. “I started out working in the back of a laundry truck, handing laundry up to the drivers, delivering to people.
“A long time ago,” he said, “they went out to people’s houses to pick up laundry and delivered it back.
“That’s when gas was 15 cents a gallon,” he added with a laugh.
“I went to school many a day with pasteboard in the bottom of my shoes,” Haskins recalled. “When I was raised up, I didn’t have but one pair of pants. My mama washed them every day. She said we don’t have much, but we can stay clean.”
While Haskins never took up the trade, he remembers his father’s skills as an automobile mechanic.
“He could listen to a car, tell you what was wrong with it,” Haskins said. “He could actually shut down an automobile by touching all the sparkplugs. I’ve seen him put his tongue up against the fender and let the sparks jump off his tongue.
“He just did that for show.”
The long-time owner of Haskins Furniture and Appliances said he and school didn’t mix well. His family moved to Macon from Dodge County when he was 2, and he went to school at Lanier … for a while.
“I quit when I was in the eighth grade, when I was 16,” he said.
His brother, Julius ‘Dude’ Haskins, owned the truck stop just inside Jones County on the Macon Highway. Larry Haskins found a place to begin his life as a businessman.
“I started working at the truck stop when I was 15,” he related. ‘When I was 16, I was running the night shift 12 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Haskins worked at the truck stop for about four years. It was during that time that he met the future love of his life, Minnie Branch, and he at one point literally chased her down.
“I worked at the truck stop, and she traded with us,” Haskins shared. “We were a service station at that time. We washed windshields, checked the water, checked the oil, checked the tires. And she got superb service, a little over everybody else. She’d been the spark in my eye for a while.”
Haskins recalled the special occasion that got them started.
“I remember it was Valentine’s Day 1964,” he said. “I was actually looking for her to come in the truck stop that night, and I saw her car go by. I chased her down, stopped her on R.L. Wheeler Road and gave her that box of candy. We started dating after that.”
They married Dec. 26, 1966.
Haskins left the truck stop in 1964 and went to work for Gilbert Furniture Company in Macon. He stayed with that firm until it closed in the mid-’70s. He moved to Maxwell Brothers and worked there for a short time. At one point, he told his supervisor he was going into business for himself with a partner, Gene Harvey.
“He told me, ‘Larry, you don’t have enough money to go into business for yourself.’ I said, ‘Well, I am going to try.’” Haskins and Harvey opened Gray Furniture Company in 1974 in a building adjacent to Tastee Freez. Harvey left in March of 1975 to pursue his family’s farming business, and Haskins was on his own. He said it was slow at first.
“When a new person comes into the business community, people question him,” he declared. “It was in ‘74 when the recession hit. I figured that my business was going to be slow.
“Yes, it was going to take me time to build a business,” Haskins acknowledged, “but everybody is going to be slow, too. If I make it through these hard times, people are going to say, ‘Hey, he’s here’s to stay.’ Well, 50 years later, I’m still here.”
Haskins at the outset was not in the appliance repair business. He knew that people needing appliance repair went to Fred Gaultney in Clinton, who had retired from Sears in Macon. Haskins had his own refrigerator that needed work, and he took it to Gaultney.
“He said, ‘Larry, this is common sense. I see you have common sense,’ and I said I don’t have book sense, but I have got good common sense.” Haskins recalled that Gaultney told him he should get into the business.
“He said it’s a good business and all common sense stuff. He said, ‘if you run across something you don’t know, you call me, and I’ll walk you through it.’
“That’s how I got into the appliance repair business.”
Haskins’ philosophy in life is “anything worth doing is worth doing right,” and that outlook led him to another arena. He may have dropped out of high school, but that did not deter him from serving his community in the education field. He ended up on the Jones County Board of Education.
It wasn’t like he sought it out, however.
“I was drafted,” he pointed out. “Lint Jordan (former school superintendent) came to me and asked me to do that.”
Haskins doesn’t recall if Jordan knew he never finished high school.
“He knew me as a person. That’s why he asked me to run.”
Haskins was appointed to fill an unexpired term in 1981, then ran in 1982 for the first of eight fouryear stints before retiring in 2014 after 33 years of service.
“Being a dropout of school, I was interested in folks getting their education,” he said, but quickly added, “I don’t think getting an education is the most important thing in the world.
“If God said, ‘Larry, which one would you rather have, book sense or common sense?’ I’d take common sense any day. Because I don’t have any book sense.”
Haskins considered at one time running for tax commissioner, and that position would have required a high school diploma or GED equivalent. He went to night school for a long time, he recalled, then decided to go for the GED.
“That’s a six-hour test. Six hours. I took all the six hours,” he explained. “They give you one test; give you a time table to take it on. Then they give you another test and give you another timetable.
“There was this kid; he exited after the second hour,” Haskins reflected.
“After my second trip up there, I said, “that kid already through?.’ He said, ‘yeah, but you’re gonna pass. He’s not.’
“I did pass.” Haskins earned the GED in April of 1989 but decided not to run for tax commissioner due to his obligations as a business owner. He continued selling and repairing appliances, and Minnie started helping in the office around 2010, he said, adding that she retired from Southern Bell after 42.5 years.
The two had three children: two sons, Todd and Keith, and a daughter, LeAnn. Tragedy struck in 2016.
“LeAnn died in the middle of the night,” Haskins said. “She was 38 years old.”
The autopsy took close to four months and offered no help as to what happened to their daughter.
“The autopsy report said natural death, cause unknown,” Haskins recalled, explaining that she was found dead in the bathroom by her husband. “That was the final word. Natural death, cause unknown.”
Since that time, the Haskins have become more active now at the church where they have been members for some time, Immanuel Baptist Church. Haskins is the church treasurer and a Deacon. They work with others to reach out to youngsters in the community. He noted that as many as 115 young people have been fed on Wednesday night, and the average lately has been in the 60s.
“We feed them two ways,” Haskins reported, “food and the word.”
He said it is more of a challenge today. “We need to get to our kids. They are a different breed today. The kids are hard to reach, especially with them in an environment of drugs and stuff all the time,” Haskins pointed out. “They come in there and tell you right quick, ‘You ain’t my boss, you can’t do this.’” The church volunteer attributed the drop in the number attending to discipline.
“We’ve tried to enforce some rules,” he commented. “If you can’t go by the rules, you don’t need to be coming. We can’t have disruptions.
“Some of the kids are coming for the right reasons,” Haskins observed. “Some are coming for the wrong reasons, just to get out from home, eat, and have a good time.”
Meanwhile, despite his age, Haskins hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down.
“I’m working harder than ever, trying to keep up with all the business,” he said.
Asked what the future may hold and when he may retire, Haskins had a simple answer.
“God only knows, and as long as my health holds up, I’m going to keep going.”
