Bobb Howard’s General Store & Auto Repair Shop has become famous in New Hyde Park for hearkening back to the years just after Sam Caplin opened it in October 1946.
The store now known for selling old-fashioned candies and toys available in few other places was then just a service station on Lakeville Road with few houses around it, said Eileen Caplin Wysel, Sam’s daughter.
It’s since become a New Hyde Park mainstay and opened an adjacent convenience store when virtually no service stations on Long Island had them, Wysel said.
But its “old-fashioned values” of “honesty, integrity, cleanliness and hard work” have remained the same, Wysel said, carrying the repair shop and nostalgia store to its 70th anniversary, which it will celebrate Saturday with free treats and giveaways.
“I guess people like us because we’re just honest,” said Wysel, 64, who runs Bobb Howard’s with her husband, Ronnie Wysel. “We’re not looking to make a fast buck off of somebody. We’re just honest and our customers are our friends.”
Sam Caplin and his wife, Gert, opened Bobb Howard’s, named for his oldest son, after growing up “tinkering with cars,” Wysel said. He worked hard and long, sometimes from 6 a.m. to midnight, she said.
The family moved from New Hyde Park to Westbury in the 1950s, but Wysel and her brothers, Bobb and Sandy Caplin, “literally and figuratively grew up” in the shop, watching New Hyde Park grow through the years, Wysel said.
Eileen and Ronnie Wysel took over the business about 40 years ago, and for a time her brothers ran a Bobb Howard’s transmission shop on Jericho Turnpike before Bobb retired in 2012, Eileen said. Sam died in 1996 — a month and a half before the shop’s 50th anniversary — and Gert died in 2012, she said.
“We love what we do,” Eileen Wysel said. “It’s blood. It’s our family legacy and it’s in our hearts.”
Eileen and Ronnie opened a convenience store at Bobb Howard’s in 1982 after seeing them attached to auto shops on a trip to Florida, Eileen said.
They were one of the first to adopt the model, she said, and then “everybody around us started following us.”
In 1993, Eileen felt it was time for a change and started selling pieces of Dubble Bubble gum for a nickel apiece.
It sold out within a few days, so she bought more and gradually added more old-time candies, such as red shoestring licorice and Bonomo’s Turkish taffy, as well as toys such as jacks, that bring customers back to the mid-20th century, she said.
“Most people like to remember their childhood and go back to their childhood and just go back to a simpler time, and we don’t sell candy or toys in our store,” Wysel said. “We sell memories.”
Companies looking to bring back old-fashioned products have reached out to Bobb Howard’s to launch them, Wysel said.
Customers enjoy the blast from the past, she said — some will dance in the store to oldies music while waiting for repairs to be done on their cars.
But the fact that Bobb Howard’s is a well-run and respected business has also contributed to its longevity, bolstered by Eileen Wysel’s strong attention to detail, said Jerry Baldassaro, president of the Greater New Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s not just about nostalgia, you can get that anywhere,” Baldassaro said. “It’s the quality of what they’re doing in addition to their customer service.”
A customer once told Wysel that for kids in New Hyde Park, shopping at Bobb Howard’s by themselves is a “rite of passage,” she said. But she still doesn’t let children spend a whole $10 bill at once, she said.
“I was very proud [to hear that], because everybody knows that in today’s crazy world, Bobb Howard’s is a safe haven for the children of the neighborhood,” Wysel said.
Bobb Howard’s will celebrate its 70th anniversary at 581 Lakeville Road from 1 to 4 p.m. with free egg creams, hot dogs, popcorn, giveaways, music and old-fashioned games, such as hopscotch and hula hoops.
