Weldon Haddix is 82 years young and has been a successful business owner in Albany most of his adult life.

Last Saturday, at midnight, Haddix Gas and Electric, one of the longest continuing operating businesses in Albany and Clinton County, was no more.

Haddix, who is also the owner and one of the Funeral Directors at Haddix Funeral Home in Albany, is currently planning on continuing to keep the funeral home open and serving the community.

Haddix decided to retire from the gas and electric appliance business that his father, Pryce Haddix, started in 1945.

The physical store location used to be in what is now Deb’s Corner Stone Restaurant and moved out to a building on Tennessee Shortcut Road around the year 2000 according to Haddix.

“Dad went in the business in about ’45,” Haddix said. “He started with a General Electric business and Hot Point was made by GE, but they wouldn’t put them together when Dad was in business. It took me about a year, but I was finally able to put them together.”

Haddix said his father started out in the appliance business and wired houses at the time.

“In fact, we wired Jack Ferguson’s building down there,” Haddix said, referring to the Ferguson Brothers Hardware building that ceased business on the same day, June 30, after a decades long run.

Before Haddix came back to Albany, he said he worked in Indiana at a 2,000 acre farm. When that farm went out of business, Haddix came back to Albany and started working for his dad in the electric business.

The building Haddix moved to in the late ’90s and early 2000s, according to Haddix, used to be a concrete block manufacturing plant.

“It was back in the ’50s,” Haddix said. “I remember it because I was in high school.”

One reason Haddix said it’s the right time to retire from the gas and electric business is because he’s getting up in age, he said.

“I’m 82 years old,” Haddix said. “Once I get done here who’s going to take over. It’s time to get out on terms that I want out on. If I got out here and broke a leg or my back then someone is going to have to take over.”

Haddix has two employees, Terry Stearns, who drives the truck and fills up the tanks, and Glenna Allen who runs the store and take care of the bookkeeping.

“We hired her in about 2000 and she only wants part time work,” Haddix said. “She is working at the funeral home now on stuff for over here. I just thought it would be the best that I get out.”

Haddix said he plans on keeping the funeral home and has his farm to tend to.

“I’ve not priced (the funeral home) it or anything to anyone,” Haddix said.

Haddix said he sold the gas business to Porco Fertilizer which included the building, property and all of Haddix’s clients.

“I don’t see anyone coming to Albany and expanding with appliances,” Haddix said. “People can travel anywhere they want to go now. I’m going to miss the people and the traffic. In the winter time it got bad especially if Terry got sick. I wouldn’t have anyone to deliver. I just don’t have anyone to take over.”

With this day and time with technology, cell phones and internet, there doesn’t have to be as much interaction with customers as there used to be. Haddix said he misses those who used to come in and have conversations throughout the day.

“I already miss that because nobody comes in anymore,” Haddix said. “I had a lady in the valley and she never did know what she owed me. Sometimes I’d have to tell her she didn’t owe me anything. I just kept her in gas.”