Family-owned business earned place in Petaluma’s heart

It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago when Petaluma was a town filled with small retail shops, men’s and women’s clothing stores, corner drug stores and more, each offering a distinct service or product.

One by one, those businesses were mostly absorbed into today’s mainstream big-box stores, gone forever like the once common television repairman that also sold and installed rooftop antennas. With a few exceptions, those places are remembered only in photographs and nostalgic memories or by their distinctive products – just stepping into a bakery, a shoe store, or a tire shop left an indelible imprint that we were in the right place.

Ternes Drive-In Office Equipment in Petaluma was such a place. Just a few steps inside the front door were displays of typewriters and office machines for every need, and nearby were the accessories-typewriter ribbons, carbon paper, assorted envelopes and other office essentials. Family owned and operated from the time Frank Ternes first opened its doors in the 1930s until it closed in 1998, the store provided sales, maintenance and repair services to a wide range of customers.

When World War II broke out, Frank Ternes had to make critical adjustments after his entire stock of typewriters was confiscated for government use, prompting him to take a civil service job at Hamilton Field repairing typewriters. After the war, he resumed business as the Woodstock Typewriter Agency at his original location at 136 Kentucky St. In 1951, the business was moved to 110 Liberty St. where it replaced a paint store and was renamed Ternes Drive-In Office Equipment. That’s when his son, Chuck Ternes, who enjoyed the mechanical aspects of typewriters, began puttering with the machines until he became proficient working on them and begin to take on the bulk of the maintenance services.

Providing typewriter maintenance was a large part of the business, since the main competition – the several typewriter and stationery stores in town – were mainly focused on school and office supplies. Among the Ternes’ notable clients was the city of Petaluma and its schools, with the business providing all the machines in the typing classes, as well as products for long-term customers Two Rock Ranch Army Base and the Coast Guard Training Center.

The business was passed from father to son during the mid-1970s when Chuck Ternes, who had worked for his father since he was 11 years old, purchased it. Working closely with his wife, Beverly, Chuck Ternes doubled the building’s original size, hired additional service technicians, added outside sales personnel, and watched the business thrive.

Hard working and business-minded, Chuck Ternes was a seamless successor to his father’s trade. Though he’d considered working in a nature-related field in the forestry service or pursuing a career as a game warden, Ternes found he could work indoors and still enjoy the outdoor lifestyle he’d grown accustomed to as a kid fishing the streams and hiking the hills surrounding his family’s vacation property in Anderson Springs. The outdoor life appealed to Ternes, who was raised on the edge of town and frequently ventured out D Street extension, rifle in hand, towards San Antonio Creek to hunt.

As a 10-year-old in 1950, he watched as professional movers carefully transplanted his parent’s Sunnyslope Avenue house, along with the one next to it belonging to his grandparents, to the southwest corner of Sunnyslope Avenue and D Street in order to make room to build the new McNear Elementary School on their property. Ironically, when he attended sixth grade at McNear School, his classroom (Room 13) sat exactly where his house had been.

The early 1960s were important to Ternes, who had graduated Petaluma High School in 1958. In 1962, after a six-month courtship, he married his wife Beverly and began pursuing his interest in electronics. He obtained his Ham radio operators license and began teaching amateur radio electronics at Petaluma Night School. As a hobbyist, he’s communicated with virtually every country and every island in the world and has provided valuable assistance during extreme emergencies, including the Alaska earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.

Despite having built a solid reputation, insidious competition from big-box stores, which proved to be responsible for the shuttering of many a stationery store, was the death knell for Chuck Ternes, who closed up shop in 1998.

Although the times changed, the unforgettable rat-a-tat sound of the typewriter and the soft dinging of the carriage return bell will forever be etched in our memory along with those of our favorite businesses from long ago.

(Harlan Osborne’s column Toolin’ Around Town appears every two weeks. Contact him at harlan@sonic.net.)