LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / September 6, 2000

RESERVE – Carlo and Iris Palermo have come a long way, separately and together, and have sliced out a little piece of heaven for themselves on River Road.

Palermo, born and raised in Garyville, is an entrepreneurial person, who has always preferred to be his own boss. By his count he’s started at leastseven businesses and has no plans, at age 75, to consider retirement.

“My daddy was a truck farmer who raised seven kids,” Palermo said, sitting in the midst of his current venture, Carlo’s Thrift Shop and Gifts, located a stone’s throw from St. John Theater and next to one of his other ventures,Connie’s Grill.

At the tender, yet mature age of 19, Palermo launched his first business, Messina, Kelly and Palermo wholesale meat company in New Orleans. It served60 groceries in the greater New Orleans area and led directly to his returning to St. John the Baptist Parish in 1953 to start his own grocery and meatmarket near the old Belle Point Dairy.

Carlo’s Meat Market, however, fell victim to the economic crunch during the Godchaux Sugar strike in the mid-1950s, and he accepted a job at A&P in New Orleans.

“They moved me all around, and when they told me after six months I had to go to Gretna, I quit,” he recalled.

He and his wife, Connie, raising nine children, returned to Reserve and opened yet another grocery, this one on East 13th Street. They operated there foreight years.

By that time Palermo was ready for a larger place, and he heard the Club Cafe building in front of the present St. John Theater was available for rent,so he moved in there. A year later, the place burned down and Palermo losteverything.

The stubborn streak a mile wide continued to assert itself and they persevered with yet another grill, then bought Mack’s Grill, which they operated for another 20 years.

His wife, Connie, died in 1985 after 48 years of marriage and, three years ago, Connie’s Grill was handed over by Palermo to his daughter, Cheryl, who continues to operate it, assisted by Palermo and his oyster-shucking skills.

Palermo, as his present wife Iris says, “was too good a man to let stay alone,” and they married four years ago.

She had worked at LaPlace Elementary for 13 years as a productive manager and also carried a second job at K-mart, a leftover occupation from when she was struggling to make ends meet while her first husband, Wayne Perilloux, struggled with his own heart trouble. They had raised nine children in theirmarriage. He was later St. John Parish’s first heart transplant recipient, buthe died in 1992.

“It’s our strong belief in God which has carried us so far,” she said.

Palermo and Iris Perilloux married in 1996 and, more as a way to stay busy and involved, opened his thrift shop.

“It was an old barroom,” Palermo recalled. Indeed, he’s become something ofa local historian, and visitors often pick his memory and his scrapbooks for bits of local items of interest.

Carlo’s Thrift Shop opened Dec. 1, and it’s filled with everything from babyitems, Saints memorabilia, Christmas decorations, paintings from local artists and porcelain dolls. Furniture, old records and vintage clothing arealso available.

“I don’t have time to retire,” Palermo said.

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