From the Desk of: Doug Ables
We started Ables Top Hat Chimney Sweeps back in the late ‘70s. I was working with my Dad painting houses in Brady after suffering from a series of strokes that blinded me in the right eye. His 50-year old family business was playing out as others were showing up on the scene using newer methods that the family was not willing to use. Without a job, I needed to find something new to work at. Looking through a Mother Earth magazine I found an ad for chimney sweeping. It intrigued me and I started thinking about it. We had just moved to Brady and I wanted to get the fireplace going in our home and began asking around if anyone knew a chimney sweep or someone who knew anything about chimneys. The first person I asked said, “No. I have never heard of one around here, but if you find one let me know.” Every time I asked around, I got this answer.
About that time I saw in the Mother Earth News an article about a man, Tom Risch, who started a chimney sweeping business and called it August West. Now he was selling packages of equipment to others who could do the same. I got up the nerve to cash in a life insurance policy my Dad had on me and bought the package. We were painting on the opposite side of town the day my equipment came. The UPS driver, a friend of ours, saw my Dad’s truck on his rounds and stopped and asked if he could put my packages in the back of his truck as they were taking up too much room in the van. He unloaded 30 boxes of equipment and just like that, I was a chimney sweep.
I opened the book that came with the equipment and started to “clean” my chimney. The fireplace had never been used and the chimney was brand new brick with an open top – there was no cap. It was summer so I could not fire it up to see if it worked.
I started practicing on those who told me to let them know whenI found a chimney sweep. Most of them took me up on my offer and I started sweeping chimneys. Of course it was not as easy as the magazine ad made it out to be. I had a small boat at the time and a trailer to carry it on. I put the boat in the yard and got several sheets of plywood and built sides on the trailer to carry the load of equipment: a huge red Vacuum, hoses, and tons of brushes. It turns out that most chimneys are a common size so I really only needed four brushes to get the job done. I parked my trailer under the carport to protect it between jobs.
I did the first few chimneys by myself but as I got busier in the fall, I enlisted my nephew to help when he came to visit. Then I enlisted friends and helpers from church. I always was looking for help and found many willing to pitch in for a job.
We started out cleaning chimneys from San Angelo to Copperas Cove. When we later moved to Cove, our service area expanded from Waco back to Brady. After dragging the boat trailer around Central Texas, we put the old family van into service as the chimney sweep van. After retiring the van with 250,000 miles on it, we upgraded to trailers for our equipment.
On top of being called on to clean chimneys, we also got calls to remove dead birds and squirrels, racoons, snakes, rats, spiders, lizards, bats, etc. from chimneys far and wide. As we worked. we began to notice that none of the chimneys had anything to keep the critters or the rain out. We started selling chimney caps and now rarely find a chimney without one.
Being a family business means the family worked the business. In the beginning, I handled all aspects of the business and my wife handled running the family – that was a handful with four children. Our oldest son, Shandy, was the first to help in the business. When he got married and joined the Temple police force, he handled a lot of our Temple business during his days off until the police work overloaded him and we handled the Temple area ourselves.
We moved it back to Cove and continued on covering the Temple area ourselves. Starting out in a trailer, our van was getting old and we needed a new car so we retired the van at 250,000 miles and put it into service as our chimney sweep van. It lasted another 5 or so years and we went to trailers.
Our main help soon became our grandsons. Joseph, the oldest, was the first to help followed by his brothers Sam and Isaiah and even sister Rebekah. All the older cousins – Jacob, Serenity, and Samantha – have helped on occasion. Daughters Candy and Diana have also helped in various capacities over the years. Micah, our youngest son, grew up in the business and learned a lot purely by osmosis before he was able to help. Once, when Micah was very young, a customer called complaining about their fireplace smoking. Hearing one side of conversation, Micah blurted out, “OPEN YOUR DAMPER!” Eventually, Micah helped more and more until he got the notion to join the Army and ended up at West Point. Even then, when he would come home on breaks or leave, he would sleep,eat, and clean chimneys.
Now, with Micah out of the Army and picking the business back up, the time has come for me to retire.
To be continued…