Pat’s blossoms in small town setting
March 26, 2013
Lapeyrouse Grocery serving Chauvin 99 years later
March 26, 2013
The last cigar someone smoked, and it was a chewed up one at that.
Then, there’s the liquor bottle, and the bottle of prescription medication with the ticket for DWI.
You name it and the Prices’ have framed it since they started their business 50 years ago in a backyard shed.
Jackie Price said it all started one day, with a conversation her husband Frank was having with her father. She said Frank was into oil painting, and her dad wanted to start framing some of Frank’s work.
“One said to the other, ‘You know, we ought to open a frame shop. I can’t tell you where the nearest one is.’
“Do you want to know the result of that conversation? We sold our boat, motor and trailer for $500 and we bought a hand saw, $50 worth of molding, and a drill. And so, the Frame Shop began in my parent’s backyard, in their shed on Railroad Avenue.”
Deborah recalled when she was a child, Frame Shop customers would knock on her grandmother’s door for service.
“She would greet them, find out what they wanted, and bring out selections of frames they could choose from. While they waited for their order, she would serve them, cokes, pies, sometimes, whatever she cooked for the day.”
Derek Maenza, a longtime Frame Shop customer, said that tradition continues today.
“This has always been the spot or chatter, to find out what was going on in town. When they added the coffee and pastries, well, it really brought the tradition started way back when, back to life.
“I love these people. I love to have my afternoon coffee with them.”
For 15 years, Jackie and Frank Price grew their business, in her mother’s backyard on Railroad Avenue.
After celebrating the teenage milestone, Jackie said they expanded operations into a shotgun house they bought for $50, when the State was clearing Greenwood Street to make room for the new E.J. Lionel Grizzaffi Bridge across the Atchafalaya River.
“We actually spent $200 to move that house into the backyard where the shed was.”
“We kept growing, both Frank and my father had carpentry experience, and then, there’s a well-known school called the School of Hard Knocks that we all attended, oftentimes seeming like we were in remedial classes,” she said.
Deborah, who is the only certified picture framer in the tri-parish area, said her parents moved the business onto Front Street in the mid ‘80s.
“You know, I took the reins of the company from my parents, because frankly, I couldn’t see their hard work and their legacy, in the hands of anyone else.
“I go to a lot of seminars and different business events, and the one theme that rings louder to me than any other, is entrepreneurship.
“I grew up in this business. I grew with this business. It was family and friends then, and it is now.
“Like anyone from Morgan City who graduates from college, I too wanted to get out of here, and make a go of it somewhere else. I didn’t the value in living in a small town.
“But after moving away for a while, I came back. I thought about my parents’ hard work, their age, their possible desire to retire, and I couldn’t imagine passing this building and seeing someone else operate it.
“This is a gathering spot. It’s not just a frame shop. Even my friends when they come home, they say, ‘Oh I can’t wait to go to the Frame Shop and catch up!’”
Jackie said she enjoyed reading the story about Pat’s of Chauvin in The Tri-Parish Times, because the start to their business was very similar.
“Buying dresses, cleaning out a bedroom and letting people shop – that’s a beautiful picture of the American Dream. Pat’s of Chauvin is the American Dream. The Frame Shop is the American Dream,” she said.“However, today I think you could call it the American Nightmare. It is so hard to operate a small business. Taxes, what’s lawful and unlawful about how to operate.”
“The biggest challenge we have, I think any small business has today, is staying in business.”
Deborah agreed with her mother. “Everyone who owns a small business has the same challenges.
And as you ride the tide, you also have to keep up with technology, which seems to be changing hourly.”
Jackie said that even if she didn’t like what she did, she wouldn’t have stayed in it for so long.
“The only low we had was in the ‘80s when the bottom dropped out of Morgan City.”
“But in short, I have to thank the customers we have – because if we didn’t have the people who have stuck with us all these years, we would not be here.”
Frank and Jackie Price, seen here working in the shop, opened The Frame Shop in 1963.
