Robert Dale Robinson, a native of Liberty who can trace his DeKalb County heritage back to Adam Dale, arguably the first settler in the area, seemed an unlikely candidate to end up owning an Indiana grocery store, but his path eventually brought him back to a home a few hundred yards from the house where he was born.

"The house I was born in (which still stands on Robinson Road) was built before the Civil War. I was always told that two Confederate soldiers hid out in the loft of the house when the Union troops came through Liberty. I used to walk these hillsides and pick up Civil War stuff when I was young. Bullets and things like that. We used to use mini-balls in our slingshots. There was still a lot of that stuff around."

He went to school in Liberty, and though he quit before graduation to help on the farm, a lack of a diploma never slowed him down.

"My brother was in the Navy during World War II," Robinson told the Review. "When the war was over he was on reserves for a while. We had several acres of corn on Smith Fork Creek when I was a junior in high school. My brother got called back up when the Korean War started, so that left me and my brother-in-law, Buford Vanatta, to deal with that corn crop. So I had to quit, or I thought I had to. I used that as an excuse, anyway."

He dated his wife Roberta in high school, and she lived on Dry Creek.

"We used to call it Fourth and Plum. Four miles up Dry Creek, and plum back in the holler," Robinson joked. "We have three sons, Charles is the oldest and Mitch is the middle son, they both graduated from Indiana University. Brian is the youngest. He graduated from MTSU and got his masters from Washington State, and is an art professor at Motlow."

The couple was married, and soon found themselves headed north.

"We got married as soon as Roberta graduated in 1952, and there weren’t any jobs around here," he shared. "You could go to Nashville and find work, but it didn’t pay as much as it did up north. After World War II a lot of people went north looking for work. That’s where the industry was. Joe Murphy was my best friend, and I went to Indiana to see him. Joe was already working for a telephone company that his uncle owned in New Richmond, Indiana, about 20 miles outside of Lafayette. I found a job at National Home Corporation, a place that sold prefabricated homes. I rented an apartment and came back home and sold my 1948 Chevy and bought two tickets on a bus for Lafayette. We put all our clothes in two suitcases and two paper bags, and took off on that bus."

Life up north was no picnic at first.

"I didn’t have a car for the first year," Robinson said. "I rode the bus to work until I got acquainted with some friends who would come by and pick me up. We saved our money, and the first vacation I got we came home on a train. We bought a 1950 Pontiac when we got here, and when we got back to Indiana I began working some part-time jobs as well as the job at the factory.

"Once I had a car I could get around and pick up odd jobs. I got a job with a farmer helping him drain a swamp. We were just digging it with shovels. I worked for Modern Cleaners for a while part time. I saved my money, and worked myself into a supervisor job. I had several people working under me, and I was on salary, but I just got to where I hated my job. I just didn’t like to get up and go to work anymore. I had worked there too long."

That when Robinson decided to make a big change.

"We were driving through the country one day five miles outside of Lafayette in the town of Dayton. It was just a small town, and the only store had a sign in the window that said ‘bankruptcy sale.’ I got out and read the sign, and called the number. They told me the guy had 13 stores, and he had gone broke. The store was selling on sealed bids.

"I was in my late 30s, and I thought, ‘You know, life’s too short to be doing something you don’t want to do.’ So I went down and talked to my banker. I had borrowed money to build a house by then, and to buy a car, so I had good credit, but I didn’t have much money."

His banker took a chance that Robinson had the grit to run his own business, and gave him good news.

"The Banker’s name was George DeLong. He was an older man, and he asked me what I had on my mind. I told him the situation, and he asked me if I had ever worked in a grocery store. I told him I had worked part time in an Eisner’s store stocking shelves. I sacked groceries, put up bottles, swept floors, whatever needed to be done." he said.

"He told me there was a lot more to running a store than that. I told him I knew, but I believed that I could learn it. He looked at me and said ‘I believe you could, too. We’re going to loan you the money.’ There’s no way that would happen now. I put a bid in, and when they opened them up I was the high bidder."

That was only the beginning of a long road to getting a store open.

"Then there I was with a store. I didn’t know much about running a store at all, but I learned as I went," Robinson explained. "I had to go in and clean the store out. They had just padlocked it after the bankruptcy and left everything inside. It was a big mess. I had to take all that stuff to the dump, and I had to find out who worked on equipment to get it all back up and running."

Then things began to take shape.

"I cleaned the place up and painted it, and moved stuff around, made it look pretty good," he said. "I named it Robinson Dairy. That was the best move I ever made, buying that store. I sent two boys through college in that little store. Being the only store in town really helped. People would have to go into Lafayette just to get a jug of milk while it was closed."

Although he had taken the leap into business, he did not quit his day job.

"I didn’t quit at National Homes for a while, I ran the store and kept my job," he said. "Roberta was in charge during the day, and when I got off work at 3:30 I would come in and work until eight or nine o’clock. Later on I quit National, and traded four weeks paid vacation, 13 paid holidays, a little more than 40 hours a week, and the security of being there so long for 14 hour work days six days a week, but I no longer dreaded going to work. I looked forward to it."

Robinson said he thinks he enjoyed the grocery business so much because of his outgoing nature.

"I like people," he said. "I get along well with people. You see families come along, and kids grow up, and you feel like you’re a part of them just because they trade with you. That’s the way it was when I came home and bought the store in Liberty, too."

Like the Indiana store, the move back to Liberty happened somewhat by chance.

"I came down on a fishing trip in 1975, and I stopped at the store to get some gas," Robinson revealed. "I was inside and just asked the owner, ‘You wouldn’t think about selling this store would you?’ They agreed to think about it and give me a call. About a week later he called me and said he might consider selling it. He said he didn’t want to sell the building, but he would sell the business. He gave me a price, and I took about a week to think about it. I had the store in Indiana, and had some property up there I had to sell, including our house."

The Liberty store, which he renamed Robert’s Shop-Rite, proved to hold a new set of challenges.

"We were running a small convenience store, and the one here was more like a supermarket," he said. "At that time it was the newest store in the county, and it was the second largest, next to Pic-Pac. It had a meat department, and I didn’t know anything about cutting meat."

He said he soon discovered that while you can go home again, you might not be recognized.

"Now, you can buy a grocery store, but you can’t buy a business," Robinson related. "Roberta and I felt like our home was here, and our families were here, but we’d been away for nearly 30 years, and we talked a little different. People said ‘You’re not from around here are you?"

The lack of familiarity was affecting his business, and he had to find a way to pull it out.

"People were driving right by my store and going somewhere else, where they knew the owner," he said. "I knew I had to have something that was a little bit different to get some customers in the store. I thought that if I catered to the housewife, and found a way to get her in my store to buy meat, then I’ve got a chance to sell her something else. Meat comes in three grades, so I started selling prime meat, and I cut the price to sell it just as cheap as I could.

"I wasn’t making much on it," he continued, "but it was bringing people into the store and giving me the chance to sell them something else while they were there. Another thing I did was sell my gas as cheap as I possibly could. I got the men coming in to buy gas, and that gave me the chance to sell him a pack of cigarettes, or chewing gum, something I could make money on. First of all, you’ve got to get them to stop. You can’t sell them anything if they’re driving by on the highway."

He said his time since his retirement has been occupied by his collecting hobby.

"After I sold out and retired in 1994 I needed something to do, and I got started collecting old license plates. I couldn’t afford to collect old cars, so I collected the license plates. I have been to license plate shows as far away as Indiana, and I like to go to yard sales and flea markets. I collect arrow heads, Civil War memorabilia, and antiques too."

His father was the late J.W. Robinson.

"He sold McCandless products," Robinson said. "They were sort of like Watkins, kitchen products. It was a company out of Minnesota, and they sold household products and flavorings and things like that. He would go from door to door, which was more like holler to holler back then. He did that for years after he hurt his back hurt and couldn’t farm anymore.

"When he visited these homes he would always give the kids a piece of chewing gum, Juicy Fruit or something like that. Before long he became known as "The Chewing Gum Man." All the kids loved him. Later on he went to work at the Alexandria shirt factory doing janitorial work at night."

His father preached as well.

"He was a good Christian man, and he would preach on the street corner in Smithville on Saturday evenings. Back then everybody would come to town on Saturday. He would be preaching on the sidewalk, and usually had a lot of people gathered around. He was ordained to preach at Upper Helton Baptist," he said.

"His father was Stephen Robinson, and he was a preacher, too. He and his wife Laura (Fuson) had 17 kids. She always said having all those kids was just like putting out a big wash, it takes all day. He was the pastor who started Elizabeth’s Chapel and Cave Springs Baptist churches."

His grandmother’s passing shares a unique connection to another local woman.

"My grandmother Laura was born in 1867 in Wilson County," Robinson said. "She died Jan. 24, 1946 in the house I was born in. Walteen Parker was born in the house my grandmother died in on the same night she died. My grandmother was in one room and she was in the other room. That’s unusual."

His grandfather Stephen’s father was James Robinson, who died along with a brother in the Civil War.

"He and his two brothers were from Round Top, and went off to fight in the Civil War," Robinson informed. "They went to Nashville and joined the Union army. They stayed in the same unit for the entire war, but about two weeks before the war was over they were guarding the military governor, Andrew Johnson, when Small Pox broke out in the camp and killed my great grandfather and one of his brothers. He was 28 years old."

His maternal grandfather was Thomas Cooper, and was married to Lorita.

"He lived here at Forks of the Pike, too. He was a carpenter, and built his house (which is still standing) around 1900."

Robinson said he was proud of his tenure at his Indiana church, Calvary Baptist, and his involvement in its growth.

"When we got to Indiana there was no Southern Baptist Church there," he said. "There were Northern Baptists, and Catholics and Lutherans, and everything you could imagine but Southern Baptist. We went to a Northern Baptist Church a few times, but it was different than what we were used to. We kind of got out of church for a while.

"Then we visited an Evangelical Mennonite Church our landlord attended. It was more like a Southern Baptist than anything I saw up there. We got involved with that church and stayed there for a while. They had a bus ministry, and I would go around on Sunday and pick up the kids.

"We really liked it there in that church, but one of my friends, who was originally from Dunlap, told me about a Southern Baptist Church that had just started in West Lafayette. He asked us to come over and visit them. We did, and they were meeting in a rented house. I wasn’t a charter member of the church, but I joined soon after it began. I watched the church grow from its beginning in that house to become a large, successful ministry. We didn’t have any family up there, and that church was our family. That church really meant a lot to me. We stayed there until we moved back to Tennessee." The Robinsons now attend Salem Baptist.

Robinson said that if he was recalled fondly for anything in his life, he would like it to be that he helped his fellow man when he was in need.

"I guess I’d like to be remembered for being a Christian and caring about people. I’d like it to be remembered that when I ran a store that I tried to help people. We gave people credit, and sometimes we lost money, but you get the satisfaction of somebody coming up to you later and saying we’d really helped them out when they needed it. Helping your community is one of the most satisfying things you can do. I think I’ve helped a lot of people over the years, and that is its own reward," he said.

"The best advice I could leave for future generations would be make sure your life’s vocation is doing something you like to do. No matter what it pays, make sure you enjoy what you’re doing, because it’s not the money you get satisfaction from, it’s what you’re doing. I think the happiest people are working people who enjoy what they’re doing. If you enjoy digging ditches, that’s what you need to be doing. Whatever it is, find something you enjoy." Robinson concluded.