Just a few steps to the east from Eddie Mahaffey’s service station toward the Masonic Building once stood what was known as the Albright Building. A smaller building adjacent to the larger one had been its retail companion on Main Street for many years. Around 1949, Tom Fancher opened a Radio repair shop in this small building and essentially cornered the market on this kind of work in Montevallo.
Beginning in the 1920’s as stations expanded the range of their broadcasts, radio became a popular form of entertainment and news for small town people who were close enough to receive a signal. Montevallo was close enough to Birmingham for radios to pick up some broadcasts, so there were radios of one sort or another in nearly every home. They ranged from relatively small models that sat on a shelf or table to elaborate furniture-grade consoles with large speakers that also contained record players and fit perfectly into the decor of the nicest living rooms.
When the first televisions started appearing in Montevallo homes around 1950, Tom added this new but similar technology to his skill set. Tom had a service truck that he used to make house calls for sick radios and TVs. The sets he worked on depended on glass “vacuum tubes” in order to operate and each one required a dizzying array of tubes in order to function properly. When Tom entered a home to make a repair, he hauled in a heavy, specially designed case that carried every imaginable type of tube that might be needed to replace one that had blown out.
When a radio or TV could not be repaired at the owner’s home, Tom loaded it into his truck and brought it to the shop. He had an extensive workshop at the back of the store where he performed the repairs. The front of the store was devoted to storage for old radios that had been traded in or that he kept around for spare parts. Some used radios were for sale and he did sell new radios and TVs. With the advent of TV, Tom had to become adept at installing outdoor antennas on the roofs of houses because picture quality depended on having a tall aluminum antenna that could pick up the signal broadcasting from giant towers atop Red Mountain in Birmingham. In the 1950’s, only two channels were available, channel 6 and channel 13. All shows were black & white, as were the TVs and the stations signed off the air each night around 11:00 pm. They resumed broadcasts around 6:00 am the following morning.
Tom and his wife Marie had met as teenagers when they both lived in the Bibb County coal mining town of Piper, just a few miles southwest of Montevallo. Marie’s father was a Yugoslavian immigrant coal miner. Tom was a descendant of the Fanchers who were a pioneer family in the area. At Piper he worked as a young man at the mining company’s commissary or company store. They moved to Montevallo when the coal mines were closed for good in the late 1940’s.
There was a narrow annex between Fancher’s radio repair shop and the Albright building that had housed a cramped office for insurance agents and similar businesses over the years. When this space opened up at some point after the Fanchers became established, Marie got the idea to start a gift shop in the annex and they cut a door from it into the larger store.
Her gift shop did well from the start and she expanded her inventory to meet the new demand. Within a few years they had to move out due to the coming of the Whaley Shopping Center, so they moved both businesses down Main Street about a block and took up residence in a space that allowed Marie to expand into all sorts of new types of inventory while Tom set up his repair shop in the back. After a few years of prosperity in this location they took advantage of a new opportunity to re-locate into the new Shopping Center where they became an institution on the Main Street retail scene.
Thank you Clay Nordan, Vice President of Montevallo Historical Society, for this information!