Ford and Chrysler, pillars of America, have left Lompoc.

But Perry's Auto, on the same block for 74 years and apparently the oldest locally-owned business in town, is busier than ever.

A fluke? A throw of the dice?

Many young men don't want to hang around and run the old man's business. Or if they do, they don't want to run it like their father did.

But Guillermo Perry had a son, Bill, who had a son, Mike, each of whom wanted to stick around.

And both were old school. Bill became the best automotive rear-end man in town and ran the business for 50 years. Mike, in his early 50s, runs it now.

Bill's father, born Guillermo Pereira (or Pereyra, the family is not quite sure) had $400 to invest. He had saved it from his job at the Lompoc Ford garage and a part-time gig driving a school bus into town from Santa Rosa Road every morning.

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Guillermo was accustomed to taking a gamble. He had crossed the Atlantic from the Azores on a cattle boat at the age of 12 - by himself. Then he worked his way west from Boston.

In 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, he took his $400 and opened his own business on the west side of South G Street, one block down the alley from where Perry's Auto stands today. A taqueria is there now. The shop was not fancy. It had dirt floors for 30 years.

Young Bill was 8 when the business opened, but before long he began to hang out there, too. He and his father would work on the cars and farm equipment of the Lompoc Valley farmers. It didn't matter if they could pay. A pig or a cow or a basket of vegetables would be OK. So would a wait for payment at harvest time.

Bill is 82 now. He has been retired 10 years, but he comes in every morning anyway, even though now he needs a walker to get around. He sits on a chair between the coffee pot and the end of the front counter. More than 100 fan belts hang overhead.

Ask Bill about his dad and you might expect a story about fishing, or discipline, or mechanics, or seven-day weeks. He replies in a flash, but not as expected.

“He was a helluva Christian,” Bill says.

Christian?

“We were poor ourselves, but he'd see a kid walking down the road with no socks and he'd take him to the store and buy him clothes.

“I remember a valve job he did for a family of five kids for free. And that was two days' work.”

When the surveyors came to lay out Camp Cooke during World War II, they slept in the back of Guillermo Perry's garage. For free.

Camp Cooke brought thousands of soldiers, many with cars that needed repair, so the business prospered as Lompoc grew. Bill became his dad's partner in 1947. The older man died in 1963.

Under Bill's direction, his dad's charity and honesty continued, even grew.

Bill helped found the local youth football league in 1967. The business still supports every youth sport in Lompoc and especially the Special Olympics barbecue on Labor Day. The pitmaster is Mike Perry.

Perry's charity isn't just for outsiders. When Mike became owner 10 years ago small businesses nationwide were abandoning employee health plans. So what did Mike do? He signed up with a health plan.

Lompoc farmer John Silva has done business with the Perry's for years.

“They are the most honest shop you're ever going to find. Mike is the most generous man I've ever met. He treats his employees well and so he's been able to keep the top mechanics in town.”

Mechanic Mark Sherman has been at Perry's for 29 years, John Rupa for 28. Two other employees confided privately to the Record, “This is the best job I've ever had.”

Retired mechanic Al Howerton competed with the Perrys for decades, but he has only praise for them. “They are good people and they take care of business fairly,” he says.

“We've never been turned in to Consumer Affairs in three generations,” Bill Perry says, smiling, and the state agency confirms it has no record of any action against Perry's.

Farmer Silva remembers hard times in the past and how Perry's Auto always did business.

“They would carry people on the books for months or years at a time. All the old businesses used to do that.”

There may be other local firms with the same charity and honesty, but nobody else has a 74-year track record to prove it, not Ford, not Chrysler.

September 2, 2008