Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Take Gravois Road (Route 30) southwest to Dittmer, and look for the oversized “Tattoo. Piercing” sign (on the left) and Dittmer Community Church of Christ (on the right). Cruise by the Dittmer post office and keep an eye out for an oversize pink pig with its snout sometimes near a gazing ball. You have arrived at Pat’s Concrete, a garden statuary—and bargain hunter’s—Eden.
“The prices are what a workingman can afford,” says Pat Sowash, the eponymous founder of said establishment.
The cash- or check-only prices listed on the wall of the Quonset hut are color-coded. For example, blue yarn is $10, yellow $15, black $20, white $25, red $30, on up to pink for $65. Applying that key, we found that a small garden urn is $15, a concrete bench $25 or more, a birdbath $25. Some of the fountains are pricier, like the lovebird fountain for $125. Near the checkout counter, small statuary costs a buck; some of the steppingstones go for $2 each.
This business started more than four decades ago, when Sowash told her husband she was bored and wanted to go to work. He didn’t cotton to the idea; instead, he gave her a sack of plaster and three molds. “He said, ‘Have fun with these,’” Sowash says. She did. Then, at a family reunion, her relatives insisted she should sell them. So she did, at the Fenton Fina gas station. But after 18 years, she cast about for a new career—home nursing care, day care. Nothing stuck.
“I went back to something I enjoyed,” Sowash says. She returned to casting—but this time, it was in concrete. In 1990, the family moved to Dittmer and opened the shop, with its long front yard. When Sowash was caring for her sick husband before he passed away, her daughter and son-in-law, Patty and Mike Johnson, started running the business. Their daughter, Kathy McNamara, helped. Then Sowash sold it to the Johnsons.
Now, 74-year-old Sowash comes and goes when she pleases. “I’m just here to look pretty,” she says. “I like being here. It’s part of me.”
Pat’s Concrete, 8038 Route 30, Dittmer, 636-274-1516, patsconcrete.com.
For a gallery of more photos, click here.
