Jim Frank tried to retire, but it never worked.
“I really wasn’t good for retirement,” he said.
Frank, 82, retired for the first time in his 60s. After returning to work and retiring again, he now publishes the local magazine Frank Talk.
In 2001, he and his wife Patricia Frank started the magazine, which is found at the front counter of businesses like Finish Line Family Restaurant.
“We have carried it since its inception,” Finish Line owner Lisa Slade said. “There’s a little bit from nuts to bolts, to a bunch of different stuff in there. I think people enjoy seeing what’s in there, and they look forward to it coming out.”
The Franks only produced 400 copies of the magazine for its first edition, but after six weeks, they were distributing 10,000 copies weekly. Frank Talk soon gained 35 writers from across the world, including Australia and Japan.
“They all wrote columns every week. At the time we were running 24 pages and ads to pay for it,” Frank said. “The magazine was free.”
As the internet rose in popularity around 2009, it drove many papers out of business, but Frank Talk seemed immune to the changes. Advertisers, however, went elsewhere, and the Franks had to start charging 50 cents per magazine to cover the production cost.
At Frank Talk’s peak, readers could find the magazine in 120 locations across Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Eventually, the couple had to scale back production due to rising costs. Since Frank does his own deliveries, gas prices made delivery more expensive.
Some customers took the magazine without paying, which Frank said also contributed to scaling back distribution.
“The darned part of it is that people really wanted the magazine and would take the magazine, but several of them would not pay,” he said. “You wouldn’t think 50 cents would kill them, but evidently it did.”
He also said COVID-19 restrictions shut down businesses that distributed Frank Talk, further reducing the magazine’s circulation.
Readers today can find the magazine in 50 locations, including Finish Line and Kroger. He and his wife, along with their friends and family members, are its main writers.
“Family members write for us, and they’re by far our most popular writers. Our granddaughter Olivia, for example, she started writing when she was four years old,” he said. “We published it as a four-year-old column, and now she’s grown into a very intelligent young lady. She’s been writing for us ever since the first issue.”
The magazine pays for itself, but to make an income, the Franks use it to advertise for their travel business, Frank Talk On the Road. The business charters buses for trips across America.
“The first trip we took we filled the bus, that’s 56 people,” Frank said. “Until COVID we had been running about 15 trips a year as far out as Las Vegas, virtually all over the country in a bus, and all of Canada.”
The Franks were planning to take customers on a Caribbean cruise in 2020 when COVID hit. The business is still recovering, Frank said.
“The trips were providing us with a decent income in addition to our social security. But all of a sudden, the trips dried up,” Frank said. “We currently have a great trip going out in June that I think is the first one we’re going to have enough people to run since the pandemic.”
They are planning the June trip to Elkins, West Virginia, to enjoy train rides and explore the mountains. This fall, they are planning to take a longer trip across Canada to Montreal, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.
Frank’s storied career began in Mason City, Iowa when he was in high school. As a 15 year old, he worked as the janitor for a local radio station.
“One night I was working, and the gentleman that was on the air yelled at me and said, ‘You know how to run this board?’ He said, ‘I’ve got to leave, my wife’s having a baby.’ I sat down and actually opened up the microphone and started talking. I called myself ‘The Wild Child,’” Frank said
The station’s owner talked to Frank’s parents and got him a job running “The Wild Child Show.” He worked on the stage at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa during the last performance of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson. Early the next morning, all three stars died in a plane crash.
From there, Frank worked in stations in Keokuk, Iowa; Lafayette, Indiana; and Harrisburg-Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He picked up the nickname Jack O’Lantern, playing a character born on Halloween. He found himself running entire stations by age 25.
“They hired me and gave me complete power. I could fire the manager,” he said. “I did not fire the manager, he was good.”
Frank went on to build a new station in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania and bought one in Toledo. In his early 30s, he started a consulting firm. He soon grew tired of that, so he bought a motorhome and traveled.
“After about a month my wife was sick and tired of me being gone,” he said. “She was bored at the house. Big house, but she was tired of cleaning and taking care of the kids. So I went out in my wisdom and bought her a Baskin Robbins ice cream store and a couple of donut shops.”
It was too much work, so they didn’t own the stores for long, Frank said. Patricia became involved in animal advocacy, serving as president of several humane societies. Frank became a partner in a construction company in Bowling Green, Ohio. He helped the business build more than 150 homes in the but, in 1981, high interest rates shut the business down.
So he moved again, this time, to Vineyard Lake outside of Brooklyn, Michigan. His neighbor was Don Fitzsimmons, the son of Teamsters leader Frank Fitzsimmons. Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975, likely a victim of the mafia, according to BBC.
“The FBI, when Hoffa disappeared, came up and dragged our lake looking for his body,” Frank said.
Frank thought about retiring in Vineyard Lake in his early 40s, but never did. Instead, he launched a business creating redwood furniture after building a six-sided picnic table for an acquaintance.
“We had a list of about 40 products, and I actually designed all of them,” Frank said. “I even designed tools to build them. I still have an automatic sander.”
His company had one factory in Brooklyn and another in Iowa. It amassed dealers in more than 25 states. When the spotted owl became an endangered species in 1990, redwood became more expensive. The business couldn’t continue, so Frank retired.
After retiring for the first time, Frank wanted something to do, so he worked for the City of Hillsdale as a code enforcement officer and communications director.After four years, he said the city ran out of money for his position, so he retired again.
But people sent more than 600 phone calls and emails asking him to return, so he did – with Frank Talk.
“I said to my wife, ‘You know what, I think I’m gonna write my own magazine.’ She said I was nuts, and I said, ‘Well, I think I’ll try it anyway.’”
Frank said he doesn’t have any plans to retire soon.
“I don’t plan on retiring in the foreseeable future if the travel business gets going again,” he said. “Hopefully this article will spur more college people to join us.”
