Wisdom from under the hood
Dennis Taghon on life, death and dealing with challenge
By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor
Dennis Taghon laughs a lot. There’s a reason for that. A tragic event in his life altered his perception of what’s important and how to look at life.
He has been working at Taghon’s Garage since he was a kid. “I began pushing a broom in fourth grade,” he laughs. Once he graduated from Glen Lake High School, he moved right into working full-time for his dad, Mike. Then, four years after Dennis took over the business in 2002, he moved it to its current site on County Road 677 south of M-72.
A very brief history of the Taghon’s 90 years in the auto business in Empire is in order. (See if you can follow this — the station moves around a little.) According to the Empire Heritage Museum’s Dave Taghon, Charles and Louise Taghon built the first gas station on the site where the motel sits today in 1926. In addition to selling Standard Oil gasoline, they ran a boarding house and had an icehouse there. (This was in the days before refrigerators, when everyone had an “ice box.”)
The station was eventually moved to Deering’s current IGA location. Fast forward to the 1940s, when son Fred bought the land on the southeast corner of M-72 and M-22 and moved the station there. Then, in 1958, Fred and son Dave built a new gas station on the northeast corner of the intersection of M-72 and M-22, where it sits today. Fred retired in 1980; so did Dave in 2002, when he sold the station to Blarney Castle.
In the meantime, Dave’s brother, Mike Taghon, took over the old gas station location on the southeast corner of that intersection and turned that into an auto repair garage. Although it has since relocated, the business is still run by a Taghon — Dennis, Mike’s son — Fred’s grandson and Charles’s great-grandson.
Family tradition means a lot at the garage. Four of the five who work there are family members. It also carries over into the way Dennis deals with customers. “Grandpa told me years and years ago,” he recalls. “‘You treat a hundred people right, and nobody hears about it; you treat one person bad, he goes to the bar and tells 40 people that night.’ I try to treat them all right.”
One part of Dennis’s business ethic is that he won’t yank the price up for tourists and down for locals; nor does he raise prices in the summer and lower them in the winter. Taghon says he bases his prices on his costs plus what he needs to be able to have a little something left over to feed his family. “We’re here to help people,” he declares, “but we’re here to make a living doing it.” He smiles. “So far it’s been working.”
Taghon says that new customers, especially those from out of town, often don’t expect garage mechanics to treat them fairly, but he understands. “Everybody who walks through that door has their own battles,” he observes. “We’ve all got different things. None of us are in control, although some of us like to think we are,” he jests — but he’s not really joking.
That last point was seriously driven home for Dennis when he lost his cousin, Roy, in 2008. Born just six months apart, the two grew up together as cousins and good friends. Then Roy — an expert snowmobiler — was killed.
“It was just a freak accident,” Dennis explains. Roy had been riding at high speed on what appeared to be smooth, open terrain near the Empire Airport, when his snowmobile hit a hidden mound, sending Taghon flying and resulting in his death.
Losing Roy has altered the way Dennis sees things. “It changed my perspective of life, just in the fact that — we’re not in control. He was doing nothing wrong — went to church, played the organ, got on that snowmobile an hour later, passed away — not doing anything wrong per se, just living life.”
Two more events that occurred immediately following Roy’s death hammered the lesson home for Dennis. “I was listening to the news every night,” he relates. “Within that same week, there was a lady [from] down in the thumb area [who was] down in Florida on vacation, and she was standing up in a boat. A fish jumped out of the water, knocked her over, she hit her head and died. A freak accident.
“That next Friday night, there was a young lady down in Oklahoma — a teenager — that was in bed. Friday night, a tornado came through, knocked a tree down into her bedroom and killed her — laying in bed! How many teenagers are in bed early enough on a Friday night, you know?
“It’s just that those three events — and in those news stories — made me realize that — we’re not in charge.”
For Taghon, realizing that he wasn’t in charge wasn’t frightening. He took it a different way — it allowed him to relax. “In a way it was freeing to a point that — it doesn’t matter what I’m doing or where I’m at — I’m not in control; so you might as well enjoy life a little bit.”
Take drag racing, for example, a sport Taghon loves. “People say, ‘Well, isn’t racing dangerous?’ Well, crossing the street to get your mail is dangerous! You hear news stories about people going checking their mail, getting hit by a car. Once I’m on the track, I’m strapped up in a steel rope cage with a fire suit and safety helmet. I believe it’s one of the safest places I can be, so I just go out there and just have a ball,” he laughs.
Roy’s death taught Dennis to let go. “I used to work day and night. It was all about trying to get ahead and all that other good stuff; and that helped make me realize, ‘You know what, there’s got to be a quality of life, not just a quantity.’ So it changed my perspective in a lot of ways.”
What about death? Is he afraid of it? “No, I’m not afraid of it. It’s just one of those things. It’s gonna happen. How and when and where — I don’t have a clue, and I’m gonna enjoy life until it does.” He laughs again. “Whether that’s right or wrong, I don’t know. But that’s — those three stories made a difference.”
Roy’s death also affected the way Dennis relates to people. “I see people coming in, in the summertime, and they’re on a four or five-day vacation, and their car quits, and ‘Holy smokes! This is a major emergency — life altering!’”
Dennis disagrees. “Well, a broken car is a minor inconvenience. Now, if they come up here and they’re a thousand miles from home and they break a leg, then that’s a little different story, you know? That’s life altering and changes your whole perspective. But — a broken car, a flat tire — those are minor inconveniences. Let’s just take a deep breath, figure it out, get it fixed and move on — get you back on your way.” Sage advice.
“People will let certain minor things ruin their day,” he continues, “and ruin their life — at the time. I’m sure they get over it.”
He won’t argue, either. “I get people comin’ in, they wanna argue, and they’re mad. I’m not gonna argue with them.” Instead, he tells them, “‘If it’s a problem, well, let’s take care of it. It’s not a matter of whose fault it is. Let’s figure out whose responsibility it is as far as the payment goes, and then we’ll go from there.
“Getting mad is a choice, and I choose not to,” he says with a chuckle.
Dennis lives with his family on 10 acres on Fowler Road. His wife, Elaine — granddaughter of Christmas tree farmer Eldred Esch — is a 4-H leader and full-time substitute teacher in the Benzie school system. “The Grand Traverse county fair is her passion,” says Dennis. The couple’s son will be a junior this year, and his daughter is going into the ninth grade. Both are into sports and 4-H.
When Dennis isn’t at the shop or at 4-H activities or rooting for his kids or running through the woods on his property with his dog, he’s racing stock cars. “I’ve been racing for 22, 23 years now.” Many members of his family enjoy it with him. “It’s a family fun sport,” he points out. “My daughter, myself, my dad, my brother Bart, my niece. It’s something everyone can enjoy from five years old to 105.”
Back out at the Taghon’s Garage, Dennis says they’re all just “trying to make it in northern Michigan — busier than hell in the summertime; and wintertime, you get by. But as it is, we don’t lay anybody off in the wintertime. In the summertime, we tend to be a little understaffed. But everybody works hard, and we get it done.”
