Husker Variety Store

I'm Randy Gokie, I'm one of the owners of Arf Gokie Variety Store here in Ackinson, Nebraska. The business started almost 30 years ago now as my own and my partner Mike Skolovic's. Today it's an LLC and is owned by five people, w And t Just Caddy Wampus from where were for years. For three years were absent from our own building and had a great space in somet It's just a small version of the Variety Store. Today we back in our own building and t Just a year ago, Patty Skudler and I and Joe Skudler and I bought t It just seems It really moves my soul. And of course after opening here, the support has just been phenomenal. People are having fun at our Soda Fountain and that's what the whole purpose is. I find the Soda Fountain to be such a very important piece of the whole business model for especially RF Gokie Variety Store. RF Gokie Variety Store without a Soda Fountain is very much W. Woolworth without a luncheonette. I mean, they just go together. For those of you old enough to know what I'm talking about, you'll get that. And it draws people into the store, it draws community to people of all ages. They sit, they visit, they see their friends and hopefully they enjoy some ice cream treats served in a way that maybe was more common years ago than today with attention to the glassware and to how the ice cream is presented and hoping to enable people to slow down just a bit in our very, very busy world where they can just c You ask why stay in Holt County, why live in Holt County, why return to Holt County? Of course, I did go away. I was one of the guys in I t In its beautiful simplicity and I mean simple, not in a pejorative way at all, but life here is really simple compared to the rat race of the city as I found it even in the 1990s. Now I can't imagine what that lifestyle would be To me, if the whole world could be more, have the possibility of listening to each other'stories, I t I heard it said, or read just the other day, that if we could know each other'stories, there would be no enemies and in a small town you do know each other'stories and that's to me makes it so rich and plus I'll be honest, doing business in small towns is easy. I can do my shopping for my ranch, for t I can do that all in a half hour and I pull up in the front of the l That doesn't happen any other place except these kind of communities so that's definitely why I say we are probably limited some maybe by I can't go to the opera or whatever but It's as a closest to Mayberry if those of you old enough to know what I'm talking about that we can get