Farmer Jones Carz – Closed 2012

Flashback to early 2013 and some bad snapshots! Farmer Jones Carz was a Calgary institution for decades, a used car dealer selling el-cheap-o transportation and doing it in an unashamedly quirky style. They sold vehicles that no other self respecting lot would touch and seemed truly proud of the fact. Junk carz r us! Their iconic sign with its slow-witted-looking chubby farmer in coveralls, with a sprig of grass in his teeth, became a well known landmark.

Everything must come to an end though and in 2012 this business closed.

This an old post with old photos but we’ve tidied things up a bit. The original article got badly corrupted due to a system crash but rather than simply restore from a back up, we thought it needed a do-over anyway. This trouble affected a lot of older posts this way but most were no longer relevant in their current form anyway. Some will never be seen again and others given a second life as new posts.

The office at Farmer Jones is now gone and the former lot tidied up. Now there’s trees and potted flowers. It’s called the Inglewood Pollinator Park and for one is home to a seasonal pop-up market. At the time of our 2013 visit, a sign suggested the land the would be home to another residential/retail complex of some kind, but I guess those plans fell through.

Farmer Jones ended up being one of the last holdouts from “old” Inglewood and with it gone, so has some of the original character of the community vanished. Think seedy pawn shops, dark second hand stores, auction houses, bottle depots, a dive hotel, and other similar type businesses. The ones you’d expect to find in older depressed and run-down areas of town.

Inglewood has experienced a renaissance of sorts and is now quite trendy (meaning expensive). Now it’s home to coffee houses, upscale eateries and boutique shops. Condos too and lots of new stuff replacing the old. Farmer Jones looked more and more out of place as the community around it gentrified.

The little office building got torn down soon after our visit. The old sign out front had already disappeared by this point and where it went is unknown.

You’d often see ads for Farmer Jones in the local papers and they always stood out. They’d include silly catch phrases and were always poorly spelled. Deliberately…for example…

“Cash 4 Carz…Cash fer Carz…I hate munny, I luv carz…Stoopid buyer on duty” and so on.

There were many others and all in the hillbilly vernacular.

They decorated their lot with garish signs and often had ratty old stuffed animals inside the cars. Add in some balloons, flags or other bunting of a tacky nature and drape it over everything. You get the idea.

Farmer Jones dates back to the early 1960s and prior coming to this spot in the late 1970s, had other lots scattered in town, some of them run concurrently. We know of a second, a block or two east and on the same street here in Inglewood, but on the opposite side. Their lots were always filled to bursting with cars and access to the middle ones must have been a real challenge.

The stepfather had a strange attraction to this place and back in my teen years he often purchased cars here. Every single one proved to be pure junk, but beggars can’t be choosers as they say. The company did provide financing for those with risky credit and this perhaps the main attraction to the old man. His name was so in toilet that he had to have a co-signer when paying cash.

Mike would often curse the cars he bought from here and yet he kept going back. Time and again. In particular a very junky Ford Cortina comes to mind and it broke down so regularly that you could set your watch to it. Patch it together, and pray, then next week, repeat. That thing belonged in only one place and that’s a junk yard.

Nothing much had changed and right to the end old junkers populated the Farmer Jones lot. From a newspaper account: “We’re not dealing with the higher-end stuff. I try to keep prices between $1,000 and $5,000 or $6,000, max.” says Ray Senecal (owner). It’s from a Calgary Herald article done about the time the business closed. They filled a need when cash strapped folks required wheels and helped those who would normally be turned down.

The owner talked about moving to somewhere else in that newspaper piece, but nothing came of from this.

Changing demographics, rising operating and site costs and cramped quarters were all, no doubt, contributing factors to it closing. Farmer Jones questionable reputation (whether deserved or not) or the general distrust by the public in such businesses as a whole likely didn’t help either. The biggest factor of all and perhaps the final blow had to be the death of my stepfather. He bought from them religiously and at times likely their best customer.

Much like the beaters they sold, nothing lasts forever.

Fast forward to today and Farmer Jones Carz is a distant memory, the charismatic owner was murdered a few years back, and Inglewood is far more sterile and minus that edgy vibe that once defined it. Gone is the character and soul. Used cars dealership don’t exactly have stellar reputation to begin with and Farmer Jones was no exception, but it’s places like this that made the neighbourhood special.

We truly regret not photographing Farmer Jones while still in business. What a funky place and worthy of some attention. We’re bad that way and it’s not the first instance of regret for places we should have documented but failed to do so before they vanished.

The Farmer Jones office building dates from about 1960 and once housed a drive-in burger joint (Burger Island) for many, many years.

Note the interesting ghost signs on the wall of the building in back. There’s an advertisement for Fred Deeley Cycles and which is barely legible. They were a large dealer of pedal powered conveyances and sold motorcycles. Deeley operated out of this building from the 1940s and into 1970. The sign shows that Fred Deeley Cycles as a firm dates back to 1914.

Deeley has big presence on the coast and their Vancouver store operates today under the name Trev Deeley Motorcycles.

Right beside is an ad for a bicycle brand called Rudge and these were presumably sold at Fred Deeley. It proudly proclaims “Ride A Rudge, The World’s Most Reliable Bicycle Since 1869”. They were a prominent and well respected British brand. Under various owners Rudge cycles were made into the the 1960s and perhaps even later. They also produced motorcycles for a time.

Some sections of these signs are badly faded, however a picture from thirty years ago turned up during research and they were more easily read back then.

There’s a third sign, very faded, which advertises candies and pastries. This must be in refence to the Olivier Candy shop which used to be located in this building and according to the sign they had outlets in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and Winnipeg. This may be newer than the others. Olivier later moved to another Inglewood location but now they’re in an industrial park. They’ve made candies for well over 100 years.

An odd group of Ford Festiva cars are spotted beside a building across the street and investigated. Most were late 1980s or early 1990s models with one “newer” example in the mix. What they are doing here is anyone’s guess and one has to ask question: why? They’re a base model throw-away car, not seen much here even when new, so parts and service must be hard to find. Their owner sure had the market cornered.

These cars and the building vanished not long after our visit and the lot incorporated into a condo complex.

The quality of the photos presented here aren’t the best but since the subject is long gone, it’s all we got. We didn’t have the experience back then, nor proper gear, so please be nice.

Know more about the subject: (new tab): Farmer Jones Carz Calgary.

They’re saying…

“The strange ability to make even the ordinary seem interesting.” Avenue Magazine.

Random awesomeness…
Polish Hall Coleman Alberta (1927).
The Lost LAV: Which Way to Wainwright?.
Little Green Mart.

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Date of adventure: February 2013.
Location: Calgary, Alberta.
Article references and thanks: Old phone books at the Medicine Hat & District Geological Society, City of Calgary and old newspaper ads.

Above the car lot – “Ride a Rudge…”

Candies and pastries…in high contrast so it can be read more easily.

I hate munny…I luv carz!

Cash 4 Carz.

Blast off!

Like anything here was worth stealing.

The Farmer Jones office was demolished soon after this photo.

Enough Ford Festivas to last a lifetime.