Shop connects repairman to the good life

Hughes Springs – Before opening his shop repairing band instruments, Jim Sinkule worked as a trapper on the Platte River in Nebraska. Way before.

“I was 12,” he said. “My step father taught me to trap so that was my first job.” He ultimately had 25 traps. He got up before school to run his trapline along the river. He ran it again after school. And he’s worked somewhere at something since then. He didn’t say how it happened that he’s descended of Swedes who arrived on the American plains and first lived in a dugout, only that he was adopted and by the Czechs who gave him their name and a good start.

He’s still got four of the 25 traps from his first enterprise hanging amid other things he likes on his shop walls. “I learned to love the outdoors from my stepdad,” he said. “I learned to love kids the most of music with the instruments I’ve repaired. I have a good time – my conclusion is, it’s best for a man to love whatever he does.”

Retiring at 75 from a career working in band instrument repair shops, he went right back to work, this time for himself using plans a year in the making.

It was cheap land, 30 acres near Avinger that reeled him into rural East Texas, then later into town. He says he’s lousy with money, that he can’t pass garage sales, always hoping he’ll find some cast-away instrument. He can’t play music, can’t read a note, but he can run scales on anything, a requirement for testing and making precision repairs.

Besides collecting and trading instruments, he collects and trades cars. “When I was in high school I was into auto mechanics and all my buddies were into band,” he said. “After four years as an electrician in the Navy I came home and went to the union hall to get work. They asked if I had any family in the union, when I said I didn’t they said it’d probably be a couple of years before they could find an opening for me.”

An old buddy hooked him up with a music store looking for an apprentice repairman.

“I started out cleaning instruments and kept learning,” he said. “Musical instruments make sense to me – it’s all mechanical.”

Besides repairs, he hit a nice lick in the summer, picking up 20 new silver plated student trumpets from a California store closing its doors for a song, making money selling them for $650. He’s got two left. The other 18 deals made customers and new friends. Word gets around.

“The same instrument anywhere else is going to list around $1,200,” he said.

A Mopar fan, a vintage Dodge man presently holding title to a “little 1967 Dodge Dart that’s bad to the bone” and a 2006, 525-horse six speed Viper pickup with 22,000 miles that’s “too pretty to drive.” Both it and the Dart are on the market.

Real estate tempts him. Cashing in the farm, he and his wife have bought three buildings in downtown Hughes Springs. They live around the corner from his shop in one that was once a funeral home. “Out here,” he said, “you can find these old buildings for a fraction of what you’d pay for the same square footage in the city.”

It works for his niche market business, which isn’t dependent on local trade and walking traffic.

“I’ve got business from a dozen schools around,” he said, “and students from more.” He’s into aggressive service, an organizer offering scheduled instrument checks, regular maintenance. It’s growing, sometimes at a hectic pace when he gives regulars one-day turnaround on pickup, repair and delivery.

He’ll work day and night, when needed. It’s quiet in town in the evenings, uninterrupted hours passing putting him into the work that’s grown easy over the years. He got a surprise last year when the International Band Master’s Fraternal Phi Beta Mu named him recipient of their Outstanding Contributor to Bands Award for the State of Texas, he suspects at the recommendation of school band directors coming to know him and his work.

“Nobody ever really said anything specific,” he said, “they just called me to come to a ceremony in a banquet room at a Marriott.” He put on his suit, went and got his award, said a word and came home to his shop with nothing else changed.

“Life’s a pleasure,” he said. “Come back and visit more.”