Brothers behind 92-year-old Warholak Tire Service in Detroit are getting out of business

It felt a lot like a wake Tuesday in the little lobby of Warholak Tire Service, except the caterer was Dunkin' Donuts and the two surviving relatives kept having to excuse themselves to mount another radial on a rim.

Polish immigrant Onufry (Fred) Warholak Sr. founded the shop in 1931 on McGraw Avenue in Detroit, a few steps east of where Ford Road taps out at Wyoming. The shop was a Sinclair gas station then, and much of Ford Road was dirt.

Ninety-two years later, Fred's grandsons were on the clock and growing older by the minute. "I hate to cut you off," Paul Warholak, 66, was saying into the phone behind the counter, "but we've sold the business. Go with the Defender 2. That's a better tire."

The doors closed a few hours later. If all goes as planned, the sale will close Thursday.

The new owner plans to keep the name, because he's no fool and nearly a century of goodwill is priceless. But he'll likely knock down the house alongside the shop that Fred Sr. built from bricks salvaged in Corktown, and there's talk of adding a cannabis store on the three-quarter-acre plot where Paul and his brother Mike Jr., 68, could still rummage through the shelves and find wheels for a Model T.

"Life goes on," Paul said after he hung up. "We're all close to 70, doing the manual labor we did in our 20s."

The Warholaks had reached the end of the road.

People tend to get misty over departed restaurants and taverns, places connected to high times. Barber shops and beauty salons, too, if they've been around long enough. Nuts-and-bolts businesses usually expire quietly, and again, the big red letters over the three bays will still read Warholak Tire when the new guy unlocks the doors Friday.

Word had spread, though. Sam Patrick, 61, the area sales rep for NAPA, had swung by in the morning with boxes of donuts, cartons of coffee and enough jugs of apple juice that he was offering them to well-wishers and customers as parting gifts.

"I'm going to miss these guys," he said, but at least he had warning. Mikael Adams, of Dearborn, was literally staggered when Mike Jr. told him there weren't enough hours left in his working life to handle everything Adams wanted done on an elderly Lexus.

"I've got to sit down for this," he said, and he did, on a brown sofa about as experienced as his 2006 sedan.

In heavy traffic, the shop is five seconds from the Dearborn border, which made it convenient for someone with college kids and half a dozen cars in the family.

"It's not only the time," said Adams, 46. "It's the honesty. It's the honesty and the work."

Mike Jr. is the more sentimental of the brothers, but also the more wry.

"In about two years," he said, "I'm going to have to buy tires on my own, so I don't feel that sorry for you."

Old dreams and long-gone cars

Fred Sr. was 18 when he found his way to the United States, and 37 when he opened his gas station. Never one to waste a good demolition, he installed a tin ceiling from Corktown that still hangs above a shelf of eclectic gifts from patrons, among them old radios, oil spouts and a tuba.

Geographically, the shop was the gateway to Detroit's west-side Polish neighborhood. Metaphorically, it was the gateway to the middle class for a parade of descendants, among them Mike Sr.

Just to set a timeline, there was an auto plant across McGraw when the shop arose at the corner of Merwin Street. It made LaSalles, then DeSotos.

A block or so west, where the Ford-Wyoming Drive-In has been around long enough to be called venerable, stood an airstrip called Haggerty Field. Mike Sr., a mechanical wizard who could fix machines he'd never looked at before, used to trade aircraft repair for flying lessons, and by age 20 he was a licensed pilot.

That has nothing and everything to do with a pair of brothers who were still busting tires long after the tires started busting them back.

Mike Jr. majored in political science at Michigan State and envisioned a career in the foreign service, but the pull of working with his father kept him in the shop, six days a week for 42 years.

Paul never even bothered to daydream. "To be honest with you," he said, "I always knew I would end up here. I wanted to work with my dad."

Mike Sr. died 14 years ago after a tussle with dementia. His kids soldiered on.

Now, Mike Jr. said, "I've got arthritis in every joint you can think of. I wake up sore and go to bed sore."

Still, it took someone else's vacation to make the brothers listen to the offers that arrived almost monthly even without a for sale sign.

Detroit has a moratorium on permits for used tire sales, but the shop has a license and 9,000 new and used tires stacked to the ceiling, which helps explain the allure of the business.

Roy Leedy, 67, has helped wrangle all that rubber for 47 years. He took a week off in April, realized how good he felt away from the shop, and said, "I've gotta go. Sorry."

Maybe he's on to something, his employers thought. Maybe they should pay attention to the Fisk Tire statues, the small one on the office counter and the landmark 7-footer on the roof.

The Fisk mascot, created for an ad campaign in 1907, is a boy in pajamas with a tire over his right arm and a candle in his left hand. The tagline said, "Time to Re-Tire."

Rolling into the future

At one point, the shop had a payroll of seven. More recently it's been three men eligible for Social Security and Mike Jr.'s son, Michael, 32.

Michael opted out of work the last day to catch a Billy Strings concert in Grand Rapids. Nostalgia is for old guys, and his dad wants him to chase his own dream, not his ancestors'.

He'd like to work in management at an entertainment venue. Fingers are crossed. Paul already has plans; he'll move to Oregon in a year or so to be near his two daughters and a pack of grandchildren.

Mike Jr. said he's told at least 50 people that they should get together for lunch, so that will keep him busy for a while. Widowed long ago, he lives in Sylvan Lake with a buoyant and creative girlfriend he met when she was a customer, "and I've got 42 years' worth of Saturdays I have to make up for around the house."

He likes to hunt for mushrooms, a nice connection with nature and his outdoorsman dad. He likes to hike.

He didn't take many souvenirs from the shop — one is a 70-pound anvil, and make what you'd like of that metaphor — but he knows he'll miss the area and the people he's come to know.

Once, the customers all had roots in Eastern Europe. Now they're from everywhere. The new owner's ancestry is Middle Eastern, and that's a comfort as Mike Jr. walks away.

The shop has been the American Dream, he said, and now it's someone else's turn to wake up with it.

Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com, or via X at @nealrubin_fp.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rubin: Owners of 92-year-old Detroit tire shop move on