GRAND BLANC TWP, MI -- The books are all ruined.

The flames licked their edges, drawing a black border like a kid making a treasure map. The extreme heat melted the glue on their spines and sent the pages scattering every which way. Some turned to ash. Others cartwheeled through the wind and escaped the flames, blowing around the neighborhood like leaves in October.

The vinyl records are done for, wax carefully pressed decades ago melted into hot puddles.

The CDs are ruined, their little digital secrets lost forever.

The DVDs, the video games, the comic books: gone, gone, gone.

One crack of lightning on Wednesday night -- a flash, a random and violent act of nature -- destroyed tens of thousand of pieces of literature and music.

It also destroyed decades of local history. It ended an era. For the first time in 36 years, there is no Jellybean's in Genesee County.

Humble beginnings

It all started with a tax refund.

Ron Samek and his then wife, Teah, were music lovers, avid readers. They had an insatiable appetite for acquiring books and music. After they married and moved in together, their collections took over the house.

"At any given time, you could have found 3,000 books and 1,500 record albums on our shelves, bookcases, in boxes, in our attic, in our basement, just everywhere," Ron Samek told the Flint Journal in 1978.

That summer, armed with a $500 refund check from the IRS, they went ahead with an ambitious idea to sell their used books and music.

They found a small retail space downtown Flint, a few hundred square feet in the lobby of the former Reid Hotel for $100 a month. They used the rest of the money to beef up their inventory and scour flea markets for decor and equipment, like a $25 used cash register.

In September, 1978, Bonanza Jellybean opened for business. Teah picked the name, an homage to a sexual, feminist character in the 1976 Tom Robbins novel "Even Cowgirls get the Blues."

They both ran the store, but Teah put in most of the hours as Ron was a full-time Flint policeman.

Building a business

Before long, they dropped the "Bonanza." Too much of a mouthful, Ron Samek said. People had trouble remembering two words.

A downtown revival effort in the 1980s raised rent and they moved their shop to Dort Highway. They soon opened a second location on Pierson Road, which they closed after the landlord lost the building. They moved to Shiawassee County, opening a store in Owosso and opening the Fenton Road store. There was even briefly a Lansing store.

While other independent businesses shut their doors in the '80s, '90s and 2000s, Jellybean's pressed on. Crime and negative stigma swept through Flint, stores all around went out of business. The population took a nosedive. Tens of thousands of General Motors jobs left the area. Jellybean's pressed on.

They invested in more inventory, pampered loyal customers. When it became popular, they began buying and selling used video games and comic books. When the Internet sank other used music and book stores, they started selling their inventory online, too, shipping carefully wrapped packages to far-flung countries and towns they'd never heard of.

Though Ron and Teah have since divorced, they remained business partners and ran the stores alongside their many children, step-children and in-laws. It wasn't until 2012 that the tough economy forced them to close a store, the Dort Highway shop closed its doors in Dec. 2012, with the owners moving much of the merchandise to the Fenton Road shop.

There was still some Dort Highway merchandise in storage that wasn't lost in the fire, Ron Samek said. But most of the good stuff was already moved to Fenton Road.

The fire

Ron Samek is 70 years old. He retired from the police force long ago. He helps at the stores, but his children mostly oversee the day-to-day operations.

At 6 p.m. Wednesday, like usual, his daughter closed the Fenton Road store, locking the door and leaving for the day around 6:30 p.m.

About an hour later, the dark clouds rolled in.

Dan Bowman was sitting in his living room, watching the storm though the big front window when he saw the lightning bolt.

He wasn't sure if it actually hit the store or just nearby Fenton Road. But it was loud. It was bright.

"It just came straight down," Bowman said. "Big flash, big bolt. It shook the house."

The flash and the noise hit at the same time, Bowman said. It was frightening, disorienting. He kept his eyes on the store.

"Within a minute, there was smoke," he said.

He called the fire department.

Ron Samek was at his house in Owosso when the phone rang.

"I was in my pajamas with my wife watching a Harry Potter movie," he said.

A friend of the family -- a guy who plays bass in a band with Ron's son-in-law -- lives in the Flint area and listens to police scanners, Samek said. He heard the call go out: A music store on Fenton road was on fire.

Could be some other shop, Samek told him over the phone. Maybe that one over on Hill Road.

"He said it's on the 5400 block."

Time to change out of the pajamas. By the time Ron got to Fenton Road, the big flames were gone. But firefighters stayed until the early morning battling hot spots.

It was hard to watch.

Family members called, some showed up, many were in tears, in shock.

"I didn't fall apart until today," Samek said on Thursday. "Last night, I was really good. I was acting like a cop."

End of an era

Firefighters told Samek the lightning bolt went straight through the roof, through the floor and into the basement. Inside, it was like a bomb went off.

All four cinder block walls are standing, but the roof is a massive hole.

There will be insurance money, Samek said, but not nearly enough to replace the value of everything in the store. Even if it did, building all that inventory took decades.

At 70 years old, Samek said, he doesn't have decades.

They'll continue to run the Owosso store, he said. But the Fenton Road building will likely be demolished.

He wants his customers to know they are still welcome. He want them to know that credit slips will be honored. He wants them to know how much they meant over the years, how much fun it was to talk to them and get to know them and hear them talk about books and music and art.

What started as a fun idea for a business turned into a beautiful way to spend a life, to raise a family.

"Where you love to get up in the morning, and you can't wait to get there, and you didn't want to leave," he said.

As he surveyed the damage Thursday, loyal customers stopped by to see the damage, to offer condolences and see what's next.

Donn DeBoer bought books here for 22 years. The Grand Blanc man poured through aviation history books, thanks to Jellybean's. He bought children's books for his daughter here. When DeBoer and his wife took a missionary trip to teach in Tanzania, Samek donated seven big crates of books for them to take for the students there.

"There's a lot of valuable history here," DeBoer said.

Looking through the rubble Thursday, DeBoer found a small, colorful magnet among the burnt pages. Somehow, surprising, it didn't look burned and ragged like everything around it. It almost looked brand new. It was bright and colorful, with cartoon flowers and a few words.

"Back by popular demand."

DeBoer carefully placed the magnet on the burned windowsill, an unusual pop of color surrounded by fire damage.

Samek saw it and smiled.

Blake Thorne is a reporter for MLive-The Flint Journal. Contact him at bthorne1@mlive.com or 810-347-8194. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.