One of the best pieces of advice I ever received came from the owner of a men’s clothing store on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto.
In April 1954, a couple of months after I started working at the CPR, I’d saved enough money to buy some new clothes. It was payday, and on paydays I usually treated myself to a steak dinner at Lindy’s, a family restaurant at Yonge and Gerrard that specialized in reasonably priced steak dinners.
It was a lovely evening so I decided to walk from the CPR office at King and Simcoe to Lindy’s, which took about half an hour. A few doors south of Lindy’s there was a menswear store called Lynn-Gold, so I went in.
A grey-haired, well-dressed, middle-aged gentleman asked if he could help me. I told him I just wanted to browse. He said, “Well, take your time. Pick out anything you’re interested in and let me know if you have any questions.” There were no other customers in the store so I did take my time.
Looking carefully at the price tags, and keeping a tally in my head, I picked out what I needed and that I had enough money to buy. I took my selections to the man whom I thought was a clerk, but who introduced himself as the store’s owner, Max Gold.
He asked me my name and where I went to school. I told him my name and that I wasn’t a student but was actually working full-time at the CPR. He said, “Lyman, let me show you some different items that I think would look better on you and are of higher quality than these.” I watched carefully as he collected his choices and again I kept a mental tally of the cost. When he finished I said, “Mr. Gold, these are too expensive, they cost almost three times what I can afford right now.”
“That’s all right,” he said, “pay what you can now and drop in each payday and pay me what you can until it’s paid off.” Then he added, “Lyman, when you buy something cheap you may be happy when you pay for it, but you’ll be disappointed every time you use it. When you buy a quality article, you may be concerned when you pay for it, but you’ll be pleased every time you use it.”
He took a little yellow folded card from a drawer under the cash register, opened it, wrote down the date, the cost of the clothing, and the amount I paid that day. He handed it to me and said “I trust you to keep your word and that you’ll pay the balance when you can. I’ll acknowledge your payments by initialling them on this card.” Needless to say I was a loyal customer of Max’s until he sold the business a few years later.
What a wonderful life lesson to learn about quality, value, and trust when I was just fifteen years old.