Country Stores

Photo courtesy of Diana Metreaud

                                                     

      This sign, like the business it advertised, has about faded away.  Once a  fixture in every small town and rural cross-roads, the Country Store served many purposes for area citizens.  The array of inventory reflected  Garrison Keillor's fictional Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery's motto: "If Ralph doesn't have it, you can  darn well do without it."

    Usually well stocked with items such as groceries, shoes, meats, gasoline, appliances, hoop cheese, and the ever-present drink box these stores thrived particularly in the era when difficulties of transportation made the distance to  "town" longer.

   Stores also served as community gathering places for socializing, catching up on 'the news', card playing, and with the advent of television, 'the place to be'. Winters were made more  tolerable with the pot-belly stove warming the place.  Depending upon a person's reputation, some stores extended credit until either 'payday' or the sale of  crops.  In a network radio program that broadcast from  the 1930's til early 1950's, Lum and Abner operated a "jot 'em down" store in a mythical Arkansas town.  The name originated when merchants would jot down a customer's credit purchases.

  Sometimes in the cotton mill towns of the  piedmont towns in the American South, a merchant functioned as 'the bank' on payday. I remember long  lines in Mr. C.E. Durham's store as mill operatives waited their time.

   My dad drove dry-cleaning routes through central North Carolina in the 1940's until 1954.  That was when I learned another services the stores provided: they were 'drop off' centers for area residents. One in particular that I recall from my summer travels with dad: a stop at Mr. Markham's store meant getting my supply of black licorice candy.  Many years later, just prior to his death, I drove dad around his former territories.  This was what remained of Markham's Store in 1992:

             Recently, the picture below appeared on social media of an acquaintance. Taken likely sometime in the 1930's, the photo shows Mr. R.J. Moore's store in the mill village of Bynum, NC.  For many years, my maternal grand-father served as postmaster in the adjacent post office.  Working in proximity for many years, the two men developed a close relationship. In their later years, Mr. Moore told my grand-dad how much he appreciated their friendship - - - he said, rather than postponing until the time of one of their deaths.

   Something that precious is nowhere to be found on the  shelves of a store.

Photo courtesy of Larry Pickard, Down Memory Lane

         Satchel