Spearfish Lake Appliance
Spearfish Lake Appliance is a storefront home appliance store in downtown Spearfish Lake. By 2009 it is housed in the newest building in downtown Spearfish Lake and expanded into Spearfish Lake Furniture and Appliance.SQ51 and HP1
History
It's been around a while - Dr. Herman Luce arrived in Spearfish Lake in 1955, and it was there then.HP1 In late 1972 Gil Evachevski bought the Spearfish Lake Appliance store just to get out of the house,AF5 however his daughter Jennifer remembers that "I don’t think it was us kids driving him nuts as much as it was boredom".SQ23 The major product lines are washers, dryers, stoves, freezers, refrigerators, microwaves, and the like. There was a display of hot tubs in the back.SQ14 Not only do they sell, but they deliver, remove the old appliance(s), if any, and do service calls.
Obviously the original appliance store was in a multi-story building since the House of Mayhem occupied part of the upstairs space.BB16
Danny Evachevski, Gil's younger son, had grown up around the family store, done odds jobs there even in grade school, did delivery and repair and even some sales while in high school, and had been left to more or less manage it on several occasions, one of which was while his father went off to Vietnam on the Henry Toivo project (as told in the book Absent Friend ) while Danny was on his holiday break.AF42
A Nevada divorce requires six weeks of verifiable residency inside the state.SQ1 Danny rented a motel room at the Sagebrush Motel in Antelope Valley and spent the last five of those six weeks working as a bartender, waiter and bouncer across the highway at the Redlite Ranch Bordello. He phoned home a few times during his stay and one topic of discussion with his dad Gil was his plans once his divorce was final, which were to come home and start over. A few days after he arrived home he returned to part time at the store and the planning discussions got considerably more serious and detailed.SQ14
Over the next several weeks Danny became more and more involved with the store, as well as working as a part-time railroad brakeman. He and Gil discussed and concluded that the building is too small, had insufficient parking (and the street parking is metered), the electrical wiring is old, the roof is old and leaks, and more. The biggest problem is that the store's cash flow can fund only one salary.
The obvious solution is to expand the product line, but that will require more space, hence a bigger building. Purely by chance Danny discovers a piece of prime vacant property in downtown Spearfish Lake and an adjacent vacant old building. With financing arranged by Jennifer Evachevski and Phil Wine the group purchases both properties and merges them. Once that is done Danny, Jennifer, and Phil have Clark Construction demolish the old building and build a new building which becomes Spearfish Lake Appliance and Furniture.SQ48
The New Store
The new building is "... on Central, at the corner of Second. Though there are meters downtown, there was some free parking at the store"HP3 Blake and Jennifer move their recording studio out of the basement of their house and into a portion of the new building. The House of Mayhem also moves there.
Danny takes over the new store completely, however Gil still helps out with monitoring the store and with service calls now and then.SQ51 and HP7 As president of the Chamber of Commerce, Danny occasionally hosts meetings in the store. At one meeting Dr. Luce commented, "At least with this being a furniture store, there will be places to sit down."HP1
The group retains ownership of the old store, and uses it as a warehouseHP8, or rents it out. One of the temporary tenants was Spearfish Medical Support Service, which is headed by Laura Hutchison.HP11
Danny sold some 'scratch-and-dent stuff and closeouts' to Monica Laughton for less than wholesale when she was burned out of her house and lost everything. He said he got a tax break on it so wouldn't lose.OC26
