A Country Boy From West Virginia
by Tony Taton

Back in the 1960s our Real Estate firm, John A. Rowling, Inc. had eight offices scattered around Sanilac and St. Clair Counties.

One was in Marlette and the branch manager hired a man from West Virgina named Ace Wilson and his nickname was Acey-Ducie. How he got this handle no one knows.

Acey was about 5'8" and weighed 165 pounds, and wore a felt hat with the brim turned up, like the men on Hee-Haw on TV. He chewed tobacco and wore suspenders, which held his trousers up to his small ribs. He nearly always wore a white shirt and wiped the tobacco juice on his sleeves.

If Acey liked you, it was forever and if he didn't, he tolerated you. I was his buddy and when he needed help, he came to me to guide him along the way.

Mrs. Wilson was wheel-chair bound since her teens and had other illnesses also, and Acey looked over her like a mother hen does her chicks.

When he took the real estate test he couldn't pass it, so his friend Ward Atkins, a legal attorney, signed an affidavit for the state and Acey got his license.

Wilson had a way with the farmers and listed and sold a few large farms, and finally he got his brokers license and set up his office at the A & W stand on Van Dyke Road, meaning, he ran an ad in the Detroit News using the phone number of the A & W, who answered his calls and took the names of the callers. Acey would then call them back, make an appointment and meet them at the A.

If they wrote an offer, he took it to his friend, Mr. Atkins, and had him close it for him. Some people called the man a dumb hillbilly, however, Acey was anything but dumb, for he came to Michigan with an old car, a sick wife and a few bucks in his pocket, after a few years, he saved his money, rented an old home and made quite a mint.

His wife died and Acey had her cremated, had a memorial service, and put the ashes in an urn and put them away until the day he headed back to his beloved hills.

Before he left he had teeth fitted for him and with a new suit, he looked pretty spiffy, for I met him before he went home to wish him good luck while I was at Carl's Shop House on Grand River in the City of Detroit.

Acey showed me his checkbook and he had a multi-figured amount in it and he laughed and said, not bad for a dumb hillbilly from the hills of West Virginia.

He shook my hand, thanked me for my assistance with his learning and bid me farewell.

This mountain man was truly a diamond in the rough.