It’s the stools that are the first clue that this isn’t any ordinary plumbing shop. Three strides in from the front door, there is a wide wooden counter with four barstools bellied up to it.
Behind the counter, men—and sometimes a young woman—bustle back and forth, pulling merchandise and talking to customers and each other.
“It just made sense,” says office manager Patrick Aranda. “The people who come in here, they work hard. Why should they have to stand there waiting for us? And the counter—it’s long and wide because our customers tend to bring their items in with them. They’ll plunk down a length of pipe with an elbow pipe joint attached and say, ‘This isn’t working.’ They gotta have room for that equipment.”
That overriding concern for the customer starts at the front door at Aranda Plumbing and Heating, says owner Ray Aranda, and explains why the local business is still going strong after 61 years and into its fourth generation of Arandas. Ray, 71, is the current paterfamilias, but he wasn’t the founder—of the plumbing business or the family. That would be his father, Eulogio G. Aranda.
A tough little guy
Eulogio G. — he always added the G., his son said—was a carpenter by trade who’d learned a good deal of pipefitting working in the California shipyards during World War II. When he returned home to his small house at 527 Cortez after the war, Eulogio took a look at the post-war building boom and decided to establish himself as a plumber.
“He was young, just 32, and very aggressive. He was determined to make a good living for me, my sister and our mother,” Ray said. “He opened a little shop right at our house in 1947. I have to give him credit. He never went to high school, but he was very educated in common sense, and very hardworking.”
Ray was 10 years old and the only son. He became the shadow at his father’s side on weekends and during the holidays, learning the trade as well as any apprentice.
“Me and my dad had a real beautiful relationship,” Ray told the Journal. He chuckled and added in an aside, “One of the advantages I have over the Home Depots and the big stores is that I was there when a lot of this town was being built—first (developer) Allen Stamm, and then Bellamah, and then the Candlelight addition—I always had an idea what’s in them houses.”
That familiarity stood him in good stead when disaster struck. In 1955, at age 39, Eulogio G. had a major stroke. Ray was 18 and just finishing up high school at St. Michael’s. “He wasn’t expected to live. He was paralyzed and couldn’t speak. My mom said, ‘What will we do?’ And I said, being brave, you know, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll open up the shop.’ And I did, the day after his stroke, and I’ve been here every day since.”
The story has a semi-happy ending. “My dad beat the odds,” Ray said. “He lived until 1992, and gradually he got better. He just got well by faith and determination.”
Growing family firm
Eulogio G. still needed Ray to run the business and go out on plumbing calls. After Ray married Raquel Padilla when he was 21 and she was 20, the couple moved the business to its current location, 600 Cortez, up the street from the Aranda family home. Ray and Raquel basically took over the business, living at 602 Cortez until they merged that building into the corner shop in the 1980s.
Married at St. Anne Catholic Church two blocks away, they built their family around the business and vice versa. Their three sons, Nicholas (“Nick”), now 50; Charles (“Chuck”), 49, and Patrick, 44, grew up in a situation that melded work, fun and family seamlessly.
“It was such a closed neighborhood, in the sense that our whole world was right here,” Patrick recalled recently. “We went to St. Anne’s Catholic School and came home to the business. We did our homework in the back of the shop and if Pops asked us to work in the shop — mop anything up, sort some pipes, whatever — we did that, too.
“It was a kinda neat environment,” Patrick said. “We walked home for lunch, and that was great. It gave us a break from school. And we always knew where our parents were, and they always knew where we were.”
Eventually, the boys grew up. Nick became a mechanical engineer and has his own business, as well as a career in the New Mexico National Guard. Chuck and Patrick stayed with the business, Chuck as a plumber on the mechanical side and Patrick on the business side.
Raquel, who had been wife, mother, bookkeeper, inventory clerk and anything else the business needed, began taking shorter hours after Patrick came in as office manager a couple of years out of high school in 1983.
About that time, the family built a compound of three houses out at Eldorado subdivision and let the store completely subsume the family home at 602 Cortez. Ray had been itching to expand into a retail plumbing supply inventory, anyway. “I always played store as a kid,” he confided. “It took years to build this store.”
After so many years in the business, he knew what items to stock. Over the past 20 years, Aranda Plumbing and Heating has built a reputation as the place to go for the supplies needed, and maybe a little advice as well.
“I’m very people-oriented. I’ll share my knowledge with younger plumbers and with customers, too,” Ray Aranda said. “I get calls: ‘By golly, Mr. Aranda, I did exactly what you told me and boom, it’s done!’”
He chuckled. “I also salvage from older houses when we work on them,” he said. “Fifty years ago they made more quality materials than they do now. I’ve got a little stockpile of older parts. If someone wants to renovate some old, quality, stuff, I may have parts for them.”
The plumbing service side of the business doesn’t suffer. Besides Chuck making calls there is Juan Martinez, who has commuted from Canjilon for 24 years to work for Aranda, the only plumber who isn’t in the family. “Although,” Ray mused, “Juan is practically like family by now. He must be happy with the way we treat him, huh?”
And Chuck’s 20-year-old son Chris has joined the family firm as an apprentice plumber, being trained by his father, grandfather and Juan, so the family business is moving into a fourth generation.
Family matters
It’s a source of pride for Ray that the little backyard business his father started sustains his family today. “It’s been a real challenge for me. This business has been real good to this family. I’m leaving it to my boys. Hopefully, they’ll appreciate what a little business can do if you take care of it.”
What the boys appreciate, Patrick said, is the loyalty of Aranda’s customer base. Working in a family business is not always easy, he said. “Mom trained me in the office management. Timemanagement-wise, she was just awesome. A real multitasker, and that trait I inherited from her.
“A family business is tough, sometimes, emotionally,” Patrick said. “The personalities are there. You have to really know the boundaries, and know their space. We manage, with the other employees (the only other non-Aranda worker is office/stock assistant Dion Casillas, a five-year employee).
“The customer is key,” Patrick added. “That’s what we all learned from our dad and our mom.”
Tragically, Raquel was killed in an accident three years ago. It nearly killed Ray, too. “She was everything, to me, to the family, to the business…” he said softly.
But he pulled himself together, paid enough attention to his health to lose a lot of extra weight and this year made a rather momentous decision. Ray surrendered his house at Eldorado to Chuck, which left Patrick to move his family into what had been Chuck’s house, and Chris, his wife and baby to live in what had been Patrick’s house. And Pops? He returned to the old neighborhood, fixing up a small bungalow at — 604 Cortez.
“I was lonely out there by myself,” he said. “It was too far out of town for me. I left Santa Maria de la Paz and came back to St. Anne’s. And I live right next door to the business. No excuse to be late to work.”
Aranda Plumbing and Heating Inc.
CALL: 983-7391
WHERE: 600 Cortez at Hickok
HOURS: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; 8 a.m.-noon Saturday; store only Sunday
