Scott Landes once told a reporter he was “a Souderton boy through and through.” Known by everyone as Scooter, Landes marked 50 years in town as a small business running his bike shop. You may know the story of how he got his start back in July 1975, but when the Souderton-Telford Historical Society interviewed him, Scooter also shared a range of memories of growing up and working in town.
STHS: So, basically my assignment from the historical society was inspired by someone who saw you peeking out the door in the mural photograph in the restaurant.
Scott Landes peeks out the door of his first bike shop, at left, in the mural hanging in the Broad Street Italian Cuisine & Pizzeria.
Scott Landes: The first time we ate there, I took my wife. We’re walking out. I love these old pictures of Souderton. I did like a double take. I went, “Oh my gosh, what?” Then I said to our young waitress, “Hey, see that guy there? That’s me.” And she looked at me and said, “No way”.
I grew up here in Souderton. My father was an internist at Grand View (hospital, now part of St. Luke’s). I went to Souderton, went to Albright College, and during the Vietnam War, didn’t really know what I was going to college for, so I took sociology and had a social work degree. I graduated and didn’t really feel like going to the inner city and saving the world. And as I was going through school, I worked construction trades. I worked for R & M Musselman. I was a mason’s laborer. And then I was framing houses for a guy named Herbie Godshall after college. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.
I was 24 at the time and there was a fella, he was 40. We played on opposing slow pitch softball teams in the league, and I was riding my bike to games and stuff. And he was kind of having a midlife crisis, you know. I saw him one day, he said, “You ride a lot of bike. I’m thinking about doing a cross-country ride. How about riding cross country with me?” At the time not much was happening in my life. I thought about it for about five seconds and said, yeah, sure, let’s do it.
So, we planned this trip, and we each got a $200 one-way plane ticket to Los Angeles and boxed our bikes up and took them out to LA. He had cousins that lived in Hermosa Beach that picked us up from the airport, went back to their house, assembled our bikes, stayed with them for a week and kind of rode the bike paths in southern California. And the day after St. Patty’s Day, we headed east on our bicycles, pedaled through the San Gabriel Mountains and the Mojave Desert. We went through California and down through Arizona. I had an uncle in Scottsdale, Arizona, where we stayed for a night.
Then we went down to southeastern Arizona, and it was Apache territory. And it was the high elevation. It was still early spring, but in the elevation it was kind of 30 degrees and raining, snowing, sleeting. It was kind of nasty, nasty weather to be on a bicycle.
Our gear wasn’t that great. I had $130 CCM, we both had CCM bicycles. We got them through the Hatfield bike shop. And CCM is a Canadian company that makes a lot of hockey sticks and
hockey helmets and stuff. And for a couple of years, they made bicycles, and we bought bikes in the couple of years that they made bicycles, and it worked OK. Nothing great.
We had a kind of a map that was done up by AAA … a bicycle map outfit that I don’t think any of the people were bike riders. The best way to do it as we were going east was any town that was big enough to have a bike shop, we’d stop in and say, “Look, we’re headed east on a bicycle, this is our proposed route.” Most of the time they go “no, no, no, no you don’t want to do that. That’s a truck route, you’re gonna get squashed doing that.” So, we got some input from bicycle shop owners along the way.
He made it with me 12 days, 900 miles. He had developed severe knee strain. I’d look back and with every pedal, he’d be grimacing. It was just like Joe. He was so headstrong. He wanted to do
this so badly that he just pushed himself for a week or so longer than he should have. Finally, we crossed over from Arizona into Lordsburg, New Mexico. And it was the Saturday before Easter. And Joe said, “I’m done.” I said “Joe, you were done a week ago, it’s time to pack it in.
”So, we boxed him up. We had a motel room that night. A lot of nights we camped; we had all our camping gear with us. But we boxed his bike up and he went to the bus stop. And he just started his journey home. I call my parents, and I say, “Joe’s done. His knees are strained. He’s headin’ home.” “Well, when are you going to be home?” I said, “in about a month.” “Oh, you’re not going by yourself? Oh.” Yeah, it was a big traumatic phone call.
By that time, and maybe even because Joe was kind of slowing me down, I was acclimating better. If maybe I would have gone full bore, I might have quit after a week. My seat was just a hard piece of plastic. And that first week, settling back onto that each morning, the sit bones were just sore, and it was pretty uncomfortable. But anyhow, I was like, “You know what, I’m doing it.”
We were in Lordsburg, New Mexico, which was kind of right on interstate 10. And you’re not allowed to ride bicycles on interstates. You don’t really want to ride bicycles on interstates. But New Mexico was so desolate. All the roads to go east, small roads, kind of went north, south, north, south north. There was no direct eastern route.
So, I called the highway patrol and said, “Look, I’m on a bike trip. Can I ride this 120-mile stretch from Lordsburg to Las Cruces, New Mexico? Can I ride this 120-mile stretch of interstate?” And they said, “Well, if you’re nuts enough to, you can.”
The low point of the trip was Easter morning; the first time I’m by myself. It’s 30 degrees, raining, snowing, and sleeting again. I’m pedaling onto the on ramp of Interstate 10. Shhhhewww. I have a flat tire. I didn’t even get to the interstate, cars going by, “you jerk.” I go “yeah, thank you. I know, you know.”
The rest of the trip home was an adventure, staying in all kinds of crazy places. But the one thing I’d always do, especially if it was later in the afternoon, is, if the town was big enough, stop in a bike shop, and tell them what I’m doing. And a lot of times the owners would invite me home for the night and maybe ride 10 miles with me in the morning before they opened their shop. And so I saw a lot of young people working in the bike shops not getting rich but enjoying what they were doing. Riding the rest of the 2,500 miles alone, a lot of time to think, I was just thinking what am I gonna do? I didn’t really want to stay in the construction trades for the rest of my life. And I didn’t want to really do anything with my major. Hindsight is always 20/20, why didn’t I take business? But I didn’t.
I made it home. And soon after I got home, I sat down with my father. I said “Dad, I, …
(Before finishing the last sentence, Scott shifted to talk about the other bike store in Souderton).
Then having Minninger in town for 45 years. H. Lloyd Mininger was the Schwinn store in town. Actually, Mininger was it in town. The last building that he occupied was what’s now Bright Paths. And he was well established. That was the other thing, could this town support two bike shops. But I knew he was kind of on his way out. He was up in age. He had six kids that as they grew up, worked for him. But I think all but one of them moved away to other states. He was kind of a miserable old guy but successful despite his personality. The guy who worked for me for the first 15 years when I opened my store, worked for Mininger and he said, “You know what? During the summer, he used to make us sit outside. He closed the store from 11:30 to 1 o’clock, he went home for lunch, and he’d make us sit outside of the locked store. All these customers coming up and not being able to get in because he didn’t trust us.” He really was kind of a strange dude.
(Scott returns to the conversation he had with his father when he got back from his cross- country bike trip.)
I sat down with my father and said, “Dad, I think I want to open a bike shop.” And there was dead silence for about 30 seconds. And then he said, “Well, if that’s what you want to do, make it the best darn bike shop around.” I got kind of his blessing there. We went up to Union National and sat down with Charlie Hoefflich, and he co-signed a $10,000 business loan to start my business. And then I rented that building, which is now the Broad Street restaurant. 30 West Broad Street. Of course, it wasn’t that building then. It’s totally remodeled. I rented from Robert Alderfer, $250 a month rent. And I started the shop. I had no money other than just what I borrowed. The guy that I was working for, he allowed me to work for him for a year. I worked for him framing houses Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And I was in the shop on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, in that location. That’s how I started.
And then the next year, I just jumped in. I was still single; I was still living at home. So that made it a little bit easier. I coexisted with Mininger’s, and we both sold Ross bicycles. Ross’ bicycle factory was up outside of Allentown on Schoenersville Road, and they’d be open at 7:30. So I opened my shop at 9. If I was up there at 7:30, I could be back with a load of bikes by 9 o’clock to open, and Minninger did the same thing. I remember driving up 309, and we’d both be driving up, and he’d look over at me with a scowl on his face. Because I always knew I was competition now.
I was in that store, from ’75 to ’78. In ’78 I purchased the building next door. It used to be Mitzi’s Dress Shop. And when I bought it, I think Mitzi still owned it, but it was Saynor Draperies. She was renting it. The two buildings were both like 22 feet wide. But, of course, the shoe store was 105 feet long with a big full basement. The one I had was only 50 feet long with a very nasty little basement. I’d always tease Jakey Frederick, “Hey, when you’re ready to take early retirement?” He was in his 80s. “Give me first shot at your building. Okay?” But Jake hung in there till 1989. Because that was 150 years of Frederick’s Shoe Store in Souderton, 1839 to 1989. And he occupied that building for like 80 years.
Jake Landes, Scott’s grandfather, was a fixture in the shop, humming hymns from his years as song leader for Franconia Mennonite Church.
But in 1982 Mininger’s kind of closed down. He died, I think in 1980. And they had so much inventory that it was a couple of years before they just sold it off. I got the Schwinn franchise, which, at that point in time, was kind of a big deal in the bike business.From 1975, when I started, to 1982 when he died, my grandfather worked for me. His name was Jake, Jake Landes, and he was a creamery guy. He was a carpenter. He wore many hats. But he was the song leader at Franconia Mennonite Church for 60 years. When we were on Broad Street, right down the street was the deli shop, the Derstines had the deli shop. My grandfather worked Monday through Friday, no Saturday, of course no Sunday. We weren’t open on Sundays. As his pay for eight hours a day he wanted a ham and cheese on kaiser with butter and a Rosenberger’s orange drink from the deli shop, so that was his pay every day, and he was happy. He’d be in there scrubbing rims and humming hymns. And all these young people would come in, “Jake, Jake, is that you?” They recognized him from church. And he’d go, “Yes, now, now, who are you?” And they’d say, “Oh, I’m Don, Halteman.” “What for (fer) Halteman? Who’s your father, your grandfather?” Then he’d find out, and the guy would leave, and he’d go, “Ay, ay, ay, ay. He was such a naughty boy in church.”
In 1989, when it was the 150-year anniversary of Frederick’s Shoe Store, Jakey Frederick took early retirement at 93 and sold me his building. He was something else. He was cleaning out the building because Sanford Alderfer was going to have a sale. He was just ready to dump this box of old metal signs and stuff like from the ’20s and ’30s. I’d say, “Jake, no, no, don’t throw those signs away. They are not junk.” And he would say, “No, I gotta get on, Sanford might get something for me.” He probably had 400 pairs of antique shoes; there were shoe dealers from all over the country who came. He had some 1878 Russian mukluks; it had to be in a special order, so I hope he took a sizeable deposit.
But he sold me the building. And I think I was personally responsible for keeping him alive till he was 98. Because. to tell you what a good salesman I was, I had that 93-year-old man take back
part of the mortgage for me. Every month, I’d go up to his house. He lived up near the Souderton pool on Reliance Road. I’d go up to his house with an envelope full of cash. And soon after I gave him that last envelope and paid off my debt, he passed away.
When I bought Frederick’s, I renovated the building. I pulled all the shoe shelves down, all this wood that was in there for 100 years or more and made siding out of it. Of course, Jakey lived in town. He’d worked in the shoe store probably from age six or seven to 93. He shuffled down and looked in the door. And I was standing on a ladder with a crowbar pulling his shoe shelves down. He looked down and walked out, and I felt like I was tearing the man’s heart out. But he kept coming back every day. When he saw that I wasn’t throwing his life away, that I was reusing the wood, he liked that. The wood that I have in the store was all shoe shelves, because that wood was dry and straight as an arrow.
There were two wooden doors that he closed and put this big old iron bar over it. That was his lock. But on a nasty winter night before he closed, he’d walk down the steps, down 105 feet, put this bar over it, walk another 100 feet up the steps all the way around the block, down the hill on the icy sidewalk to get in his car parked right outside of that door. I put a door there where I can go in and out of my car.
He wasn’t big on change. I don’t know how many bins and buckets and cans were on the top of the shelves to catch the leak in the roof. That’s how you fix a leak, put a bucket underneath.
STHS: What was it like to run a small business through all those years?
Through the course of the business, it was always just pretty much me. I’d have one employee, and usually it was a high school or a college kid. And then, once they’d got out of college, they’d
move on. And it usually wasn’t too too hard, because a lot of kids back then, when they were all riding bikes, they’d kind of kill to work in a bike shop. I could see the ones who had the avocation
for being a mechanic and so forth. Later on, there was a period of time when kids didn’t ride bikes anymore. I remember parents and grandparents bringing their son or daughter in to buy any bike in the shop they wanted, and the kids would actually get mad at their parents or grandparents. “I told you I don’t want a bike” and go out of the shop. And we’d look at each other. “Can you believe this?” But that’s the way it was. So, it was hard to get people.
The business marked its 50th year earlier in the summer of 2025.
There’s an old saying, “How do you make a million dollars in the bike business? You start with 2 million.” It’s kind of a labor of love … because small business is hard. The first year that I passed it on, my sons purchased it from me, was our best year ever in 40, 48 years, 49 years. With COVID, everybody that had an inkling to get a bike got one, and now half of them are on Facebook Marketplace, because they’re back at the gym, afraid to ride on the roads.
I told my son you have your ups and downs, and you have to be careful what you’re spending. But it’s a fun business, because you’re selling a fun product and, and turning people on to the joys of cycling is pretty neat. It’s a green activity; it’s a low impact aerobic activity you can do late in life. Like I said, you don’t get wealthy, but I put three kids through college and bought a couple pieces of real estate. And I don’t need a lot.
STHS: So, who thought up the “Friends don’t let friends” slogan for your window?
Landes: I can’t take credit for that. “Friends don’t let friends ride junk.” My wife and I did a getaway weekend down in Savannah, Georgia. We were touring around the town, and there was a bike shop. It had that on the window. I said, “You know what? I’m far enough away from Savannah. I’m gonna steal that.” Yeah, I wish I thought that up, but I cannot take credit for that.
STHS: Where did you live during your growing up years?
Landes: I lived at the top of Main Street in a two-story brick house. I went up to Summit Street Elementary; I walked up through the park. Now it’s the police station and the borough building. I walked to Souderton High School from there. My parents bought it when I was born in 1951. And I was actually there until I was 24 years old, ’til I bought the building at 134 N. Main St., the building next to where I am. That building had an apartment above. I wasn’t married yet, so it was pretty cool. I’d get up in the morning and make breakfast, walk down the steps, and unlock the door, and I was at work. That was my commute.
After the three years up on Broad Street where I was renting, I said, “Dad, I’m gonna buy a building.” And he said, “wait a minute, son, have you looked at your business ledger lately?” But I just had a feeling. … I remember my mortgage on that building was $250 a month on a 20-year mortgage. I paid $350 a month … and I got it paid off in 18 years. I kept that building for 26 years. It was a good cash cow, and I didn’t really have to put much into it.
STHS: Did your father have a practice in town, too, in addition to his work at the hospital?
Landes: He did, in his basement. He went to Grand View Monday through Friday, eight hours a day. And then three nights a week he had patients that visited him in the basement. And my mom was just kind of secretary. He was chairman and chief of staff for a couple of years. He was on the board of the Penn Foundation and all this jazz. He was pretty well connected. And then when he retired, he semi-retired when he was 65, and went down to 40 hours a week. He worked at the VA Hospital in Allentown. He was a naval vet. And he was a physician up there and just drive up to Allentown back and forth each day, then the weekends off and no more patients. But I remember when I was little going with him on house calls, with his little black bag and stuff. It was a whole different scene for doctors back then. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew what I didn’t want to be. And that was a doctor, because I grew up in the hospital with him on his rounds, and just the sights and the smells and the sounds of the hospital, I didn’t like that too much. It’s more than a job, it’s a lifestyle.
STHS: How did you get your nickname Scooter?
Landes: My name is Scott. There’s a lot of Scotts that are called Scooter. But it was back in junior high school running around the basketball court. They said that you scoot around or whatever, and I kind of got it that way. Now nobody knows my name other than Scooter. So now, when I meet somebody and say I’m Scooter, they kind of look at me and I say, “I’m the old guy with a young name. I don’t look like your average Scooter, do I.” But it’s all good.
STHS: Do you have any special memories of growing up in Souderton? Anything that sticks in your mind?
I didn’t realize at the time how good I had it, and what a great community it was, and how we were so safe from all the bad stuff that was going on. I will always call this home.
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The Gazette is edited by Edie Adam. Email: newsletter@soudertontelfordhistory.org.
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