On Dec. 3, a confederation of Los Angeles Harbor Area car clubs hosted a toy drive in conjunction with Toberman Neighborhood Center at Ray Deeter’s Tire Town. The net haul was two flatbed trucks and a car cab full of toys. “We don’t count the toys when we receive them. We just put them in boxes and deliver them,” Jose Guerrero, a gang intervention worker at Toberman, explained. “One guy, Mike, dropped off eight to 10 bikes and another guy dropped off about 10 skateboards for all age ranges of children.”
Project Street Legal founder Donald Galaz, an advocate for putting vocational skills back in public schools, is the one who suggested honoring Ray Deeter’s Tire Town for their role in supporting the community without drawing much attention while doing it. Galaz noted the effort is being pushed by a confederation of local car clubs, including Pirate Town, the San Pedro Car Club, The Saints Car Club, the Lets Cruise Car Club, The Crazy Life Car Club and others.
“We’ve taken a page out of the Legends Car Club’s playbook,” Galaz noted. “We watch those older guys because they’re all friends of ours. They are our mentors. We have uncles and cousins who hang out with them.
They probably played baseball with Ray Deeter growing up. This is a typical Harbor and Pedro story. So, we, who are coming up in the rank and file of the car clubs, are following what the Legends did.”
Galaz noted that he and other car club members supported a Legends event before the Sunday toy drive. There’s a car culture calendar to ensure there are no conflicting events. They (meaning the next-generation car clubs) have been picking up the Legends’ baton for the past five years and spreading the largess to different parts of the Los Angeles Harbor Area.
“Our breakfast with Santa is getting a little bigger,” Guerrero explained. “So we try to donate a little bit more to what we donate to Toberman, but we’ve been doing it for the last three years. It seems like every year just gets bigger and bigger.
“That’s the thing with the lowrider car community,” Guerrero said. “They try to give back … all the clubs. They’re not out there doing bad things. People don’t realize that those cars aren’t cheap. They’re not trying to mess them up. To be out there doing something dumb would be dumb. Ray Deeter’s [Tire Town] gives back … a lot. We are blessed to have them in the community,” Guerrero said.
“We’re blessed that they have the hearts that they have. They think about the community. I can’t say much else, but that. And the love they have for the community, doing their part like everybody else. Ray Deeter’s, it’s a great place for the community and we’ve been blessed. They’ve given back to the community as far as allowing folks to have car washes there, including the schools … I’ve seen schools over there sometimes. They’ve allowed a lot of fundraisers as far as car washes. What I’ve learned from this community is that if they’re working for it, then it’s legit,” Guerrero said.
Three Generations Deep and Counting
Ray Deeter’s Tire Town is a three-generation deep small business, started by Ray Leroy Deeter, a semi-professional baseball player who purchased a gas station at 11th and Gaffey in 1948, where Anchor Glass and Mirror is now. Ray John Deeter followed Ray Leroy. Ray Leroy purchased the property down here and it was a gas station that sold Chevron gas and other Chevron products. Back then, gas stations were identified by individuals who ran the service station rather than the oil refineries outfitting the tanks and distributing the gasoline. Deeter would work at the service station during the day and play baseball in the evening.
His team signed a player at his position for a big contract, enough so that it would cause him to ride the bench for extended periods. This caused him to give up baseball and turn his attention to business.
When Ray opened the tire shop, retreading the tires was one of the shop’s services.
“Number one is customer treatment. I don’t care if we make money or not, make the customer happy. “I don’t mean that seriously, but I say that to get a point across to everybody that we want people happy and they can tell the next-door neighbors.
“This has been around 75 years. People don’t even stay in business for 40-plus years. I think Slavko’s has been open longer than us.”
Ray is in the process of turning over the last keys of the legacy to Shawn, the next generation ready to pick up the baton.
“Things change obviously,” Shawn said. “I want to keep it the same as much as possible. You know, people come to talk and see the same faces. People really like that. Nowadays, you don’t call anybody to ask about their inventory. It’s all online. It’s not as personal as it used to be.”
Customers would text Shawn or the other workers directly. Much of the service begins and ends at a computer terminal. These days, customers can order tires online and have them delivered to a shop to be installed without ever having to consult the experts at the shop.
The Deeters like to be able to explain to the customer what’s going on with their vehicle and learn from the customer about their driving habits to get a better feel for their needs, Shawn explained.
“We had a fairly new employee,” Ray recalled. “He ruined a brand-new tire by putting it on and not having the full knowledge. He said he was willing to eat the cost if the employee learned from the mistake. He reasoned that an employee that learns is more valuable to him.
“We know a lot of people who are real assholes to their employees. One guy has been with us for 33 years and his brother’s been with us for 37 years. That doesn’t happen very often.”
They have three other employees with more than 20 years at Deeter’s.
“If you’re a longshoreman, we can expect that to happen. But at a tire shop? We make sure we take care of them,” Ray said.
What We Remember
Donald Galaz and his car club compatriot, Frankie Templador, said they supported Deeters specifically because it’s a mom-and-pop business. Galaz recounted the days when the Legends got permits to shut down a portion of lower Gaffey Street from 22nd to the bottom of the hill. The soap box derby was just one event among many Legends car show events, from dancing at the Sock Hop to cruising down the boulevards in classic cars during cruise night. Then there’s the car show on Sunday starting with the early morning soap box derby race after breakfast at the Lighthouse Cafe.
“We’d go watch the kids race their [soapbox] cars and then attend the car show later on in the day where we’d have our cars out too,” Galaz recalled.
Galaz also touched upon the special service Deeter’s is known for.
“We know the guys in there,” Galaz said. “We can go in there and tell him, ‘Hey, we want this tire, or that rim,’ or whatever and they’ll bring the combinations down so we can look at it. A lot of these big box stores, these corporate businesses, they don’t do stuff like that anymore. That’s why we like to deal with them a lot and give them recognition. The soap box derby was a good thing until that went away too.”
From the beginning, Ray Deeter rested his tire shop’s sterling integrity by taking care of its clients who were not as knowledgeable about their vehicles.
“You know how Pedro is. It’s a tight-knit town where everybody knows each other,” Galaz said.
Galaz remembers his dad buying white wall tires from Deeter’s when he was a kid, so going to Deeter’s was as much a habit as tradition. He said continuing to go back to that place was not just for the service, “but because they are locals just like us.”
The Deeters have always done stuff for the community, in good times and bad.
Galaz noted that the Deeters have regularly offered use of their property for car wash fundraisers, whether for school cheerleaders in San Pedro needing to raise money for uniforms, travel expenses for competitions, or for families who have lost loved ones and need to raise money to cover funeral expenses.
Over the past few years, Galaz and the local car clubs have increasingly stepped up their fundraising efforts and toy drives to support Toberman, especially since Lupe Rivera became the organization’s executive director.
“Lupe, she’s been completely overwhelmed with us,” Galaz said. “We’ve only known her for about a year or so, but she sees the work we do with the community … especially when she came last year to pick up the toys and shoes. She was almost in tears.”
Galaz grew up on Santa Cruz Street next to the Taco Bell on Gaffey Street. Toberman was his youth center and his Boys and Girls Club. Galaz recalled his youth in which both his parents and the parents of his friends worked.
“We were latchkey kids,” Galaz said. “We grew up in Toberman. We’d go there for youth programs, lunch and field trips.
“We would go to Averill Park and go ice sliding down at Averill Park. It’s only right that we do our part as adults to ensure that organizations like Toberman and businesses like Deeter’s are supported,” Galaz said.
The toys were given away on Dec. 16 at Toberman Neighborhood Center.