One of the buildings that survived the 1949 fire in Black Diamond still stands today, a relic of the past with an early history that’s been long forgotten.
Cool Hand Luc’s Treasure Shop stands proud beside the Black Diamond Hotel, a wooden structure that served the community in various capacities for longer than residents can remember.
Early recollections show Max and Irene Zach bought it from the Rosses in 1929, the year Black Diamond was incorporated as a village, but no earlier history is written in public documents to explain how the building got its start.
According to the In the Light of the Flares history book, the Boomtown style building served as Zack’s Grocerteria and Confectionary, providing residents with groceries, a butcher stop and dried goods until 1945 when the couple sold the business and moved east.
During its run, milk was 10 cents a quart and butter was 35 cents a pound.
The Zachs described Black Diamond as primitive in those days, with a privy at the back of the lot, no running water and an outside pump that had to be primed with hot water in the winter, according to their recollections in In the Light of the Flares.
The family eventually hooked up water to the kitchen in the back, but still had to take the used water out.
The Depression years were not easy for business, so the Zachs took a chance on expanding the business and installed plumbing.
As a result, business improved considerably.
Throughout the decades, the building served as a variety of different shops under different names, often representative of ownership, including Lowry’s, Bradley’s, Reed’s and Carlson’s, all operating similar businesses.
The Price family took over in 1962 and called it Bill and Jackie’s Groceries & Meats.
Son Jim Price said his family moved to Black Diamond when he was three years old and recalls spending his childhood in the store.
“I worked in the store sorting bottles in those days,” he recalled. “Everybody used to bring their bottles to the store. That was my big job in the early years. That’s where I went after school and worked.”
Jim, an only child, spent his older childhood years stocking shelves, looking after customers and putting out produce.
He remembers his dad cooking stew on the kitchen’s old gas stove and oiling the wooden floor until they were black and shiny.
Bill and Jackie’s Groceries & Meats, which specialized in cutting both game and farm meat, had plenty of competition with Blakeman’s and Miller’s grocery stores in Black Diamond and two grocery stores in Turner Valley, recalls Price.
After his parents sold the store to the Carlsons in 1977 to retire, Price followed in their footsteps and owned various grocery businesses and gas stations in Black Diamond and Turner Valley.
Bill and Jackie spent their retirement in Black Diamond, and last year moved on to long-term care facilities in the Foothills.
In the building’s more recent decades, it served as a flower, gift and clothing shop, and most recently as a second hand store operated by Luc Bayard.
Bayard began Cool Hand Luc’s in 2012, renting the building from the Black Diamond Hotel and selling second hand items - what he calls “lots of good old stuff” from rotary phones to eight-track tapes.
“I’m a recycler,” said Bayard. “Some call it a museum and some say that it’s wonderful because it reminds them of the past and they hate that now it’s a throw-away society.”
Bayard had an early start in business, helping his mom with her grocery store in Quebec when he was a teenager.
In recent years, Cool Hand Luc’s has been struggling, but Bayard is keeping a positive attitude.
“I’m working very hard on staying - I’m not a quitter,” he said. “I’m here for the long run.”
While the 90-plus-year-old building is showing its wear, such as a sinking floor, Bayard is doing his best to keep it standing.
He’s even brightened it up with a sky blue paintjob and hopes to see it stand for a few more years yet.
“It’s a heritage building,” he said. “It’s the only one that didn’t burn down in that big fire in 1949.”
