Long gone are the heydays when he palled around with Pee Wee King and Johnny Cash and moved 150 cars a week at his Seventh and York lot, but 81-year-old Bob Ryan’s doing just fine, thank you very much. After all, he was, is and will always be “The Smiling Irishman,” with a downtown alley named in his honor, a rough-hewn TV commercial that’s a gas to watch, and a premier spot in each year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.
“I ride in a ’62 Chevy Impala convertible,” Ryan says. “I’ve had it since it was brand-new.” When Mayor Harvey Sloane initiated the St. Paddy’s parade in 1974 (it traveled west on Main Street then), Ryan and his Impala were there. As the green-wearing procession shifted locations through the years — to Limerick to J-town and finally to Baxter Avenue/Bardstown Road — he and the Chevy have been ready-steady participants. “I get the biggest hand all the time; I’m not braggin’,” Ryan says.
He opened his used-car dealership — the longest-lived lot in Jefferson County — in 1953 after moving here from his hometown of Cleveland. Selling cars wasn’t all he did. For 10 years, 1958-’68, Ryan also hosted a country-music radio show broadcast from his car lot, first on (now defunct) WKLO and then on WTMT. His guests? “I had Gene Autrey. I had Tex Ritter. I had Johnny Cash. I had Patsy Cline,” he says, along with regular appearances by Louisville’s own Pee Wee King and his Golden West Cowboys.
Here’s how Ryan recalls his radio contract: “I said, ‘You don’t have to pay me nothin’. You just let me mention all I want about my car lot while I’m on the air.” No problem in that era.
He pulls down a 1963 photo of Muhammad Ali, cursively scripted “To Bob Ryan from Cassius Clay, next champ.” “I sold him his first car,” says Ryan, “a Cadillac.” With all the bells and whistles? “Oh yeah.”
The lower level of his timeworn sales office is covered wall-to-wall with photos of ’50s and ’60s celebrities who dropped in: Raymond Burr, Jayne Mansfield, Clark Gable, Hank Williams, Count Basie, the Everly Brothers.
Business isn’t real good these days. “I’ve scaled it way down,’” Ryan says. “I used to sell a lot of cars. I don’t try as hard as I used to.” But he says he wouldn’t miss a St. Paddy’s parade for the world.
You have to ask — could the parade ever be the same without him? “I hope not,” Ryan says. “I hope I’m a big part of the parade.”
