by Tiffany Leigh Kent

Don Carnal pulled a flatbed cart behind him as he quickly walked from the front cash registers inside the Valle Vista I.G.A store in Lee's Summit, Mo.

Moments later his graying head disappeared down the cereal aisle, where he pushed one side of his cart securely next to the bottom shelves and energetically climbed onto the flatbed. His hands immediately went to work, neatly adjusting the orientation of boxes as he added new boxed products to the top row.

"I hope I'm not a vanishing breed," he remarked as he smiled.

This age 50-something entrepreneur went on to compare his small grocery store to the roaring fierceness of an ancient dinosaur.

With mega stores cropping up all over the area, an antiquated description of his store only seems to fall in line with current reality.

One of only a few non-chain stores surviving in the area, Carnal's I.G.A. looks like a picture ripped from the pages of a 1960's novel set in small-town USA.

Yet there's something genuine about this dinosaur business, a sense of authenticity that is nonexistent inside the big super-department stores of the area. Those big-business counterparts may offer lower prices, but the friendly virtues of old-fashioned American-bred "equal opportunity" capitalism have vanished.

"Big business is taking over," Carnal acknowledged.

Big business, the term for an industry that birthed the newer term "downsizing." This new word describes an event that causes anguish on laid off workers' faces.

Big businesses, Carnal said, may hire 150 workers when only 100 are needed. In small businesses, like Carnal's, every worker is needed.

Paradoxically, the growth of big business has caused the American Dream to slowly wither and die. "It's so expensive to start a business now," Carnal explained.

In the 1960s, almost any American could open a small business. Now a would-be-entrepreneur needs money—and lots of it—to even get a small business loan.

Carnal knows. A few years ago he investigated the start up costs for a new grocery store in the Lee's Summit area. "You'd need three million dollars for a new store," he said. "And that's just for inventory. That's not counting the loan you'd need to take out for the building. Today you have to have a lot of backing and a lot of assets before you can even get a loan."

This modern monetary standard for business success is in opposition to the former business standard, namely a good work ethic. Less than two generations ago, hard work was what led to success. A person could start a business with only one asset: the sweat from his or her brow. A person needed little money to open a business in those days. Their business would in turn flourish in proportion to how much time was invested in it.

Everything has changed.

Yet Carnal is still a genuine supporter of the work ethic ideal. "It's at a young age that people learn to work. A lot of parents interfere with this by giving too much to their kids. I know. I think I gave too much to my own daughter. But a good work ethic is what successful people have going for them.

"This country would be a lot better off if more people had a work ethic. That's why it's so hard to find good employees today. So few people have a work ethic," he emphasized.

The work ethic is something Carnal has always modeled in his behavior. He has not taken more than eight consecutive days off from work in his life. He was in his 40s before he took his first vacation.

While most men his age have long ago initiated retirement, Carnal consistently puts in more than 60 hours each week at the store. Working weekends and evenings is second nature to him.

Thoughts about retirement have crossed his mind before; he does admit that. Carnal said he hopes to retire in four years, yet his enthusiastic smile causes a person to shake the head as an unspoken thought spins through the mind: "This man will only retire when he really wants to. His work ethic is too strong for him to leave on a whim."

Carnal, after all, is the boss. He's the man responsible for dealing with both happy and disgruntled customers. He's the man who puts out all the fires. "It's a hands-on operation," he acknowledged.

Carnal has actually considered hiring someone to take over the helm. He always quickly shrugs that idea off. "If I hired someone, they would not be as interested in things as I am. To them it would just be a job."

This locally-owned store is also run by a few of Carnal's family members. His wife and daughter both work at the store. A son-in-law helps run a second family-owned store located in Pleasant Hill, Mo.

The Carnal family work ethic took root when Don Carnal was just a boy. His father was a milkman and young Carnal was regularly working side-by-side with his father by the time he was 12.

"Working at age 12 or 13 was not uncommon back then," he explained. "The laws have changed. Back then kids worked long hours when they were young."

At age 15 Carnal went to work for Safeway in Lee's Summit, Mo. and began his life-long career in the grocery industry. Those first building blocks he gathered at his part-time job set the stage for a successful career.

Carnal never went to college. He never had any desire to go to college. "Back then you didn't need a college degree. You could get by on a high school education. Nowadays you need a college degree just to get a job. Today's college diploma is equivalent to what a high school diploma used to be back then."

His part-time job turned into a full-time position at Safeway immediately following his high school graduation in 1962. The following year he went to work for United Super in Independence, Mo.

The Lee's Summit United Super was opened in Sept. of 1969. Carnal was on the job in Lee's Summit from day one.

The landscape off 291 highway in Lee's Summit that now reflects a hurried bustle of traffic and a collage of new businesses was largely a flowing field of corn crops in the 1960s. The now highly used I-70 highway was just being constructed back then.

It was in this crisp and brand new territory that the new Lee's Summit United Super store was built. It was constructed right on the edge of town, just behind a new housing development called Valle Vista.

Carnal worked as the dairy-frozen-foods man the first three weeks the store was open.

Three weeks after the doors opened, Carnal was promoted to assistant manager.

"When you work in a small company, you can climb up the ladder a lot faster than you can in larger companies," he said.

Al Fantin and Blaine Bradley were the original owners of the United Super store.

Carnal gives them a lot of credit for his current success. He said that working for these two men was like being given the chance to pilot an airplane. "The pilot is who takes the plane off the ground. A copilot takes over after the plane is in the air." Carnal regularly "piloted" the business, which prepared him to purchase it and take it over in 1981.

Twenty-two years after his instant promotion from assistant manager to boss, Carnal is still piloting the store. His grouping of loyal employees reflect a silent testimony of his worth and treatment as an employer. Five of his employees have been with him for more than 15 years. Two other employees have worked at the I.G.A. for over nine years.

Another loyal entity has been his regular clientele. "I've watched people grow up," he said. "I saw them shop here with their parents, then I saw them shop with their spouses. Now they come in with their kids or grandkids."

This same clientele, which now largely represents the mid-40s and older age bracket, has remained a constant throughout the years.

In 1987 the store expanded, after purchasing thousands of square feet from a neighboring shop.

Less than a decade later, the store changed names to Piggly Wiggly. That Four-year stint ended with the latest name change: I.G.A. in 1998.

"A lot of people think a company is under new management when there is a name change. That's not necessarily true. In our case, the decor package and name changed, but it was still the same store." Carnal said that name changes are usually suggested by the wholesalers, who sometimes offer advertising incentives if a retailer decides to change its name.

The wholesalers are something unique to locally owned grocery stores. The reason discount mega stores can offer lower prices is because they are in a position to purchase products directly from the manufacturer, eliminating the middle man.

This in turn also eliminates jobs, according to Carnal.

Nonetheless, the lower prices available at mega stores has caused competition to swiftly change over the years.

"I.G.A. is not a big store. Our niche is the fact that we are a convenient size, allowing people to get in and out of the store quickly. We have excellent customer service and a variety of products that people want," Carnal said.

Among the store's assets is its fresh meat department. Unlike the meat sold in certain mega stores, which is shipped from butchers across the country, I.G.A sells fresh meat that is cut and packaged right in the store. "You can't get that quality at many other stores these days," Carnal said.

After emphasizing the marketing niche of his business, Carnal asked the rhetorical question, "Can a small business stay in business?" He gave the answer as he elaborated. "Yes. But that's because they are run by individuals."

His red smock and white shirt uniform seemed a sharp contrast to the idea of individuality, yet his uniform also reflected a by-gone era when entrepreneurs used to work side-by-side with their employees.

Carnal is not just the boss. He wears the hats of cashier, stock boy, sacker, buyer, peace maker, and literally every other title necessary to run a successful grocery store.

He knows how to do it all, yet his down-to-earth and friendly demeanor lets a person know that he is not a "know it all;" he is the type of person who humbly does it all because he was raised to develop that elusive American concept called a work ethic.

To the untrained eye, Don Carnal would appear to be an employee and not the boss. That's because he is more than an entrepreneur. He's a worker. He's a 50-something-year-old man who daily hopes he is not a vanishing breed.