Slow Burn

Cigars and spirits line many of the shelves at the Nostalgia Shop in downtown Columbia. But since the business was founded 30 years ago, it’s been home to a bevy of other pieces of the past.

Most of Tim Flynn’s stories about the early days of the Nostalgia Shop start the same way.

“We were so broke,” said the 58-year-old who co-owns the cigar and spirit shop with George Liggett, 57. “We were young and naïve.” The Nostalgia boys drove to New York for an antique fair in 1974 and made a stop at a seed company in Dalton, N.Y. The company was trying to unload thousands of unused seed packets from the ’20s that featured intricate designs on them.

The Midwest men knew similar items were selling like mad throughout the country. All they had to do was buy a set, and they’d be raking in the dough.

"We were so broke, we couldn’t buy anything," Flynn said. "I guess it was like finding a gold mine but not being able to buy the land it was on."

It’s the story of the Nostalgia Shop’s life: Flynn and Liggett buy what they can when they can. Any money they make gets put back into the business.

"The business came first," Flynn said. "We never have been able to live high on the hog from our business."

It’s a system that seems to be functioning for the Walnut Street institution, which began in Rocheport more than 30 years ago on a shoe-string budget.

Flynn, an unmarried, wiry fellow, is eager to advise those thinking about heading down a similar path and starting their own business.

"I wouldn’t advise it," he said with a laugh. "If either of us had gone to business school, we’d probably have been discouraged from going into business."

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There’s more to a good cigar than many might think - ask Garry Phillips.

A 41-year-old serviceman in Columbia, Phillips is in the Nostalgia Shop every two days to pick up a fresh set of smokeable sticks.

"Every morning, I start off with a cup of coffee and a cigar," Phillips said as he bought a batch on Wednesday. "It gets my day started."

"I do the same," Flynn said, standing behind the store’s wooden countertop and large gold cash register. "It’s all about relaxation."

Relaxing is paramount at the 819 E. Walnut St. storefront. Rich wood engulfs visitors as soon as they cross the store’s threshold. Bottles of wine, vodka and scotch stretch out before them on wooden racks and shelves, while cigars and tobacco products populate the checkout counter to the left with prices that cost mere cents to sets that cost more than a hundred dollars.

Two sliding glass doors signal the store’s signature walk-in humidors, where the humidity is a perfect 70 percent and the temperature is 70 degrees year-round thanks to a soft-brick floor and separate air conditioner.

"The whole idea was to have a location that was a destination in itself," Flynn said.

The walls are lined with containers of pipe tobacco, miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s and Makers Mark and vintage advertisements such as a Ronald Reagan poster that reads, "You need not inhale to enjoy a cigar."

It was a love of vintage advertisements that brought Flynn and Liggett together in 1972. Flynn was working toward a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia when he met Liggett, a sociology graduate student, and discovered they both had a passion for antique signs.

In a few months, the pair bonded and opened their own Rocheport store.

Not that they’d ever stay there.

"We couldn’t just wait for people to come into our store," Flynn said. "It was like a treasure hunt, and it still is."

The pair logged more than 250,000 miles from 1972 to 1975 while traveling to shows to buy things for the shop and sell their own wares across the country. And they had plenty of follies along the way.

A Las Vegas County sheriff bullied the duo into forking over $35 for "fire code insurance" by threatening to burn their table with his lighter.

After driving from Missouri to Chicago, the pair had to walk all their merchandise across a snowy field and into a downtown convention center after not being able to pay $3.75 for parking.

When Coke put out 75th anniversary bottles of the beverage, the Nostalgia boys drove to Atlanta to buy some of the booty. When they got there, Coke officials said they couldn’t take checks. Flynn and Liggett drove back to Missouri, got cash, turned around and went back to Atlanta. They bought 40 cases, or 960 bottles, of the commemorative containers, went to their hotel and left the haul in their van. Then they heard it was going to be well below freezing that night. They went back out to the van and brought the cases up three flights of stairs one by one. The bottles, which retailed for about 50 cents a piece, now sell for $10.

"Man, I’m surprised we got out alive," Flynn said. "So, yeah, what a long, strange trip it’s been."

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The trips didn’t last forever, though.

The boys got restless in Rocheport - when they’d go on a trip, the store would shut down - and began looking for a new location that would give them some staying power. As they surveyed surrounding towns for a common business model that equated to longevity, they made a startling discovery.

Next to every courthouse seemed to be a business as old as dirt.

"They all carried one of three things - the A.T.F. license - alcohol, tobacco and firearms," said Liggett, who also owns the Grand Cru. "Firearms. If we knew anything about them, we’d sell them."

In 1977, the shop moved into a storefront where the Boone County Government Building is now. In 1978, they moved to their current Walnut Street locale.

"It’s taken us 30 years to get to this point," Flynn said looking around his old shop. The contractor would "come in and build until we were out of money."

Of course, the Nostalgia Shop then is nowhere near what it is now. As the boys tried to get their footing in the hustle-bustle world of business, the shop tried anything and everything to get customers in: coffee, novelties, magic supplies, posters and confectioneries.

Flynn called in the shotgun method. Throw a lot of things out there and see what hit.

"We tried a little bit of a lot," he said.

Cigars and spirits didn’t make their debut in the rented shop until 1980. While working a Washington, D.C., convention, an older dealer caught sight of Liggett, whose wife does the store’s books, smoking a cheap cigar and gave the Nostalgia owner a Cuban.

"It was a love story from that point on," Liggett said. "It’s a natural marriage. You know what goes good with a good cigar? A good bottle of scotch."

What goes well with a cigar store? A wooden cigar store American Indian. Even if a passerby doesn’t know much about the Nostalgia Shop, he or she might know the wooden landmark. Flynn said he has worried about offending folks in the past but has since had American Indian friends say it’s OK to honor the cigar shop custom.

"They realize it’s historical," he said about the statue, a ’78 reproduction that has been a part of the Walnut Street landscape since the early ’80s. "You have to be aware of those things, but this is nostalgia."

Two things keep the statue in place. One, a thick chain anchored to the base, and two, Ashton, Liggett’s 5-year-old, 167-pound Austrian German Shepard who lives at the store by day. Jeremy, a 19-year-old Amazon yellow nape, rounds out the business’ eclectic crew.

"They’ve both been here practically every day since they came into our lives," Flynn said. "In the evening, Jeremy the parrot rides on the back of Ashton out to the car."

More than 20 years after the shop became the cigar store, the men have gone from amateurs to aficionados. As customers stream in and out, Flynn is quick with a joke and an answer to any question they might have.

It’s what keeps bringing Phillips back.

"I get the best service right off the bat," Phillips said about the men that turned his habits around. "I used to smoke those box cigars. Those aren’t cigars."

What shoppers won’t find in the Nostalgia Shop is traditional American cigarettes such as Malboro or Lucky Strike. Although Camel’s line of exotic blends and other specialty brands have made it onto the counter, Flynn isn’t happy with what cigarettes have done to their industry.

"It’s basically the sweepings off the floor for the most part," Flynn said. "It’s been homogenized and juiced up by the company."

Three different tobacco components must "marry" for the perfect cigar to come together, Flynn said. The filler is the stuff inside, the binder holds the filler together, and the wrapper covers it all up.

For Flynn, there’s no comparing a cigar and a cigarette.

"It’s like saying a Slim Jim is a steak because they’re both food," he said. "People who don’t smoke think they’re all the same."

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It was a gamble for the Nostalgia Shop to build its first walk-in humidor in 1984.

"When we did build our first humidor, people thought we were out of our mind," Flynn said. "I think there will always be a certain part of the population that enjoys tobacco."

It put the shop on the cusp of the coming boom. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, cigar smoking more than doubled between 1990 and 1998 and reached a peak of 3.7 million new users in 1998.

"A lot of people are just smoking for the enjoyment of the tobacco," Flynn said. "That’s my theory."

It’s a theory that might be facing a timely test soon. In recent months, proposals have surfaced to outlaw smoking in Columbia’s restaurants and bars and to raise the state’s tobacco tax.

Renee Kelley, a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, said the passage of both would help smokers quit and children never start.

"We know that it can have a profound impact on a profound number of people that smoke," Kelley said. "The fact is that Missouri has one of the highest smoking rates, and we have the second-lowest tax."

The average cigarette tax in the United States is 95.3 cents, and Missouri’s is 17 cents per pack, according to Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. In 2003, cigar sales generated more than $2.3 billion in retail sales.

Flynn said cigars are a safer choice than cigarettes because of the lack of additives. "A cigarette smoker, they won’t let go of that thing," he said. "If it’s just the nicotine, pipe smokers and cigar smokers would be chain-smoking."

Kelley doesn’t agree. "Nicotine is the substance in tobacco that causes addiction," she said. "Most cigars have as much nicotine as several cigarettes."

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Regardless of whether the smoking ban or cigarette tax passes, the Nostalgia Shop won’t be going away any time soon. Flynn laughed at the thought of retirement.

"I actually do look forward to going to work every day," he said.

For as rough as he is on his younger self and the decisions he made, Flynn said he wouldn’t take any of them back. Although he wouldn’t disclose how much his business made, Flynn said - like his wines - it’s gotten better with age.

"The truth is our business paid for our livelihood since the beginning," he said. "Even though we’re living a little better than we were in our 20s, it’s still one year at a time."

With his three air conditioners running - one for the store, one for the humidors and one for the wine cellar - a stack of newspapers and a friendly smile, Flynn doesn’t see his time at the store ending soon.

Liggett and him have even made plans to keep themselves coming in.

"We made this place wheelchair accessible, so we can wheel in when we have to," he said.

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Reach Greg Miller at (573) 815-1723 or gmiller@tribmail.com.

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