Gardner Watson property sold, contents up for grabs
TUPELO – Inside what was once the Gardner Watson Ice and Video store on Rankin Boulevard Extended in Tupelo are the remnants of the business that once had just about everything — appliances, videocassettes, and, of course, ice.
But Charlie and Peggy Gardner Watson, who are both in the 80s, are ready to let it all go. In fact, they have to get rid of the remaining contents, as they've sold the property and close on it next week.
For seventy-two years, the Watsons were in business. Their roots stretch up to Arkansas.
"My parents were in the appliance business in Arkansas, and were fixing to go on vacation and a guy came in and said he was looking for somebody for Tupelo and to run the business there," Peggy said. "So, they said they would stop by on their way to Florida. They stopped and met Hollis Kinsey — the president of Pepsi Cola here — and they hit it off. They turned around and made arrangements for Tupelo."
Peggy was in the seventh grade at the time and hated leaving friends and her school behind in Newport, Arkansas, and even went back for her senior year to graduate with them. Then she met her future husband, Charlie, and they moved to Tupelo to run the store.
Peggy's parents had bought out the other partners in the appliance business, and Gardner Watson was born. The business sold Whirlpool, Frigidaire, RCA, Maytag and other major brands of the day.
From appliances came the ice business after the request by Frigidaire to set up an ice machine to attract customers.
The machine could make about 20 bags a day, but business was slow at first. So Charlie reached out to a nearby service station to see if they'd like to sell ice. They did, so he put in a large deep freezer at the store, and the ice-making and delivery business was born.
Before long, Gardner Watson had customers not only in Northeast Mississippi but also up to Selmer, Tennessee, down to central Mississippi, and over into west Alabama. It even delivered ice to more than two dozen Walmart locations.
Besides bags of ice, Gardner-Watson sold blocks of ice for snow cone machines. The Rankin Street facility made 20-, 25- and 50-pound blocks, while the downtown ice plant made 300-pound blocks. That old facility downtown was torn down two years ago.
The Rankin facility will likely be demolished, too, but Peggy isn't privy to the details. She's busy trying to empty the place before next Friday.
Not only are the shelves and racks from the video store for sale, so are the remaining contents of the appliance store, the former ice plant and quite a bit of stuff Charlie has accumulated over the years that really had no connection to their businesses.
Need a deli meat slicer or hot dog cooker? They've got them. A full set of restaurant-style plastic tumblers is for sale. There's a tanning bed and desks and chairs. Or, maybe you'd like the burner and kettle to make some caramel apples.
"I got that for $700," Charlie said. "I had a relationship with the carnival people, and got it from them one year. But I'd take ice to them whenever they came into town."
Much to Peggy's chagrin — and amusement — Charlie kept adding more stuff he found.
"He'd go to auctions and just buy the things he liked," she said. "He just loved buying and collecting things."
As co-owners of the Silver Moon Club, there are items there that made their way to storage on Rankin, like a buffet bar table.
"We have stuff we had over there come over here, and it looks like we'll be taking some back over to the Silver Moon Club," she said with a laugh.
At Gardner Watson, ice-making made up the bulk of the business. Charlie went on to buy the ice plant in Oxford, as well as several smaller ice plants, to meet the demand.
"I started making 30-something bags a day to 50-60 a minute," he said. "We were making thousands of bags a day and selling all over."
Not that the video rental business wasn't big. It was, especially in the 1990s. What started in a small part of the building grew quickly and Charlie had to add on.
"When everybody started advertising they had 500 movies, had 5,000," he said with grin. "I didn't need to advertise — people knew."
The video rental business grew into its own, and Watson later added stores in Booneville and Verona.
But with Blockbuster and Hollywood Video opening stores, Gardner Watson saw its video rental business decline. It closed in the late 1990s. In fact, some of the new movies for rent the day it closed are still listed on the display behind the counter: City of Angels, Hope Floats, Quest for Camelot and He Got Game, for example.
With those days long past, and the remnants of those businesses — along with Charlie's auction finds — are up for sale to whoever wants it.
"We're giving away 90% of it," Charlie said with a smile. "We've got so many friends, we can't charge them."
Peggy said while the Rankin property has a lot of history with the family, it's time to let it go.
"It's been years since we've been down there really," she said. "We're not quite retired; we're still around and we'll be at the Silver Moon Club. "
