Brad Schmitt

USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

When he was a boy, David Swett and his brother used to stare into a display case in their parents’ store to look for the older meat. Because that was what they were having for dinner.

“I didn’t even know what fresh meat tasted like til I was 14 or 15," he said.

Swett grew up the last of nine children of North Nashville business pioneers Walter and Susie Swett, who did whatever they could to feed all those kids in the 1940s and ‘50s.

The couple ran a hot dog stand in Hadley Park, a cab business, an 11th Avenue bar called Joylands and, eventually, a second beer tavern at 28th and Clifton that morphed into iconic soul food restaurant Swett’s, he said.

The family house was crowded. David Swett slept in a bed with his brother. He hated being the last one to take a bath in the same tub water.

“By the time it was No. 9, it was messed up. The water was dark and cold,” he said, scowling.

All the kids helped with the family businesses as soon as they were able.

Swett remembers selling 5-cent hot dogs in Hadley Park when he was 6. About 18 years later, he was running the meat-and-three next to his dad.

And David Swett, 71, has been running Swett’s outright and expanding the family empire since his dad retired in 1979.

But it took him a while to get there.

First, he had his “bad boy” years at Pearl High School, where he stayed an extra year because shooting dice, playing cards, talking to the ladies and driving his 1960 Chevrolet distracted him from his studies.

Despite the distractions, Swett was a hard worker, earning the money with odd jobs to buy that Chevrolet himself. He always took time to pop into Swett’s to eat and to wash pots and dishes for the old man.

Swett kept scrubbing pots at the restaurant for the two years he spent at Tennessee State University before he got married in 1966 and started a job delivering products for a beauty supply company.

Two years later, Swett hit the jackpot. Sort of.

The federal government forced the Ford Glass Plant to hire more African Americans, and Swett got hired as a janitor for $14 an hour. But the regulations were such that the plant only had to keep blacks on the payroll for 90 days a year, so Swett would work for a while and be laid off for months at a time before working again, he said.

It was during that time that Swett’s parents had an opportunity to travel to Jerusalem with their church, a dream trip for his religious mother and father, who had never taken a vacation.

Swett and a few of his siblings volunteered to run the restaurant while his parents traveled.

And Swett was hooked. He never left, staying by his dad’s side for 10 years until his father retired.

His father helped his enthusiastic son adjust to being the boss.

“I was young and fired up and ready to go. I’m back there with the employees and I’m getting on them: ‘Come on y’all!’”

The elder Swett sternly pulled aside his son and gave him direction that he carried with him the rest of his career.

“You don’t need to be so hard if you’re gonna keep a crew here,” his father said. “You can’t just be hard to be hard.”

Swett worked six or seven days a week then, often coming in at 6:45 a.m. and staying through dinner.

He has relaxed on that front, too, hiring managers he trusts and working from about 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Swett often takes a couple of hours in the middle of the day to sit with about five friends and relatives – “the Committee” – to solve the world’s and each other’s problems.

“It’s free therapy,” he said, smiling. “And it gets very loud.”

Swett’s children have shown little interest in taking over, but that’s OK. Swett said he’s not going anywhere.

“Talk about retirement day. When you see the preacher up there saying my eulogy, that’s my retirement day.”

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.