Tommy Bowles

Tommy Bowles has great experience in the local automotive business. He grew up in Mooresville and raised his own family in town as well with his wife, Rhonda.

Mr. Bowles, how long have you been in Mooresville?

I have lived in Mooresville…I was born here in 1961.

Would you mind sharing some of your background?

I finished Mooresville High School, spent a little bit of time at Central Piedmont Community College, I went to work in my family’s business. And then, after working there for three or four years, I kind of started my own branch of the same type business. And then in 1988, we combined – my dad, my brother, and myself combined the three businesses together to form Bowles Automotive, which ran from 1975 to 2007, when we sold.

What changes have you seen in Mooresville’s business?

Gosh, changes. The population has probably tripled, and that’s just in the corporate limits of Mooresville. It’s probably ten or twenty times as far as the outlying areas and the Lake Norman area. I don’t know what the biggest change would be. I guess it would be the going away of the old “Mom and Pop” businesses, and the corporate big boxes taking hold. I guess when our demographics grew to a certain point, all of the mass-marketers starting looking at our market. And when we had enough people and enough commerce to support it, they moved in. And unfortunately, that was a bad thing for the little hardware stores and appliance stores and stuff like that. It’s just the changing of the times.

Has it affected Mooresville’s culture at all?

I think it has. I think we have become a more transient society. Folks will live here for a little while and then move on. Their job may move them on, they may want to move on to “greener pastures,” you know. Everybody’s chasing the dream. That’s a lot different from when I grew up because pretty much, you grew up in town and you lived the American Dream of 2.3 kids and a white picket fence, and you retired here, you know. It has become more of a transient society, I would say would be the best definition.

Okay. What are some of Mooresville’s best traditions or greatest moments, in your opinion?

Greatest moments…I don’t know. When I was in grade school, we had the Centennial celebration. And that was pretty cool, you know, because you got to see all of the old ways that things were done, and I guess it was a fair amount of change from then up until the Centennial.  But I guess it’ll be twice as much different when we celebrate the bicentennial.

Do you have any other favorite memories of Mooresville?
Favorite memories of Mooresville…the downtown area, I think, is probably the most memorable, with the State Theatre, how we used to go downtown and watch the movies. It was a walk-in movie. And we’d walk up and down the streets. On holidays and stuff, people kind of migrated to Mooresville. And when I became a teenager, we all did what was called “cruising,” which was driving from one end of Mooresville to the other end. We’d turn around at the Tasty Freeze at the north end of town and the What-a-Burger at the south end of town. And that was our youth entertainment, so to speak. There’s been a lot of fossil fuel wasted from those two places, there has. I think that nowadays, as kids will congregate at the bowling alley or congregate at a business, is a much better way of fellowshipping. I really do.  

What kinds of things do you see in Mooresville’s future?
Mooresville’s future…I see a wave of commerce that has washed out [from] Highway 150 to the Lake [Norman] area. And with the gravitational pull of the moon, I believe that that wave is going to return back to the old town Mooresville. I think you’re going to see a lot – especially with present economic conditions – I think you’re going to see that a lot of people are going to start looking back to those little, small shops, little, small restaurants and stuff. I personally feel like the downtown area is going to grow. Mooresville slates the southeast side of Mooresville as their high residential growth area. Well, if that’s the case, then all of those people that are in the “bedroom community” [commuting to Charlotte] on this side of town are going to have to journey right through downtown Mooresville to get to all of that big box stuff. I don’t believe they’ll make that journey. At some point in time, I believe they’ll say enough is enough. And they’ll say, we’re just going to shop locally. We’re not going to go fight that traffic out there and do that anymore. We’re going to try to do more local. And as commerce moves like that, eventually as you look at other areas, it will swing back at some point in time, especially if the residential growth is on the other side of town. It will…I guess the best way to describe that would [be to] say, “A rising tide floats all boats.” So when economy is good, everything seems to flourish.

Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Absolutely, absolutely.