The Old General Store!

Many of you I am sure have watched or remembered the old TV program The Waltons, and its quaint setting in rural Virginia.  Ironically it looks very similar to the community I grew up in also, and a dear friend and relative and I were talking about that the other day as she is a fan of The Waltons.  Her enchantment with the show manefested recently in an email we got from her which I thought was cute - she addressed it to "Dear Ike and Cora Beth" (myself and Barb, respectively) and signed it "Yours, Olivia."  Of course, if another person read that, said person would think that all three of us were a few apples short of a bushel, but we all understand each other and it's a fun diversion from the drudgery of city life and its insanity.  Anyway, in the course of that conversation, we got to talking about the old general stores from years ago, and interesting enough a couple of my co-workers and I had a similar discussion the next day (one guy I work with, a cratchety but likeable fellow named Jerry, is an old Ozark hillbilly from Missouri, so we have much in common as well!).  The short of the story is that it got me thinking about the general stores I grew up with in West Virginia, and I wanted to talk a little about that today.

Nellie Cox's old store in Kirby, WV - looks like I remember it!

As some who know me - mainly a lot of people I went to school with - would attest, I grew up poor of course in a single-parent home, and where we lived the nearest supermarket was a luxury to us.  However, in retrospect, we didn't really need them, because in the 1970's and 1980's when I was growing up, the local general store still provided a lot of our needs in those days.  From about the time I was 9 years old, I grew up in Hampshire County, WV, living first with my grandparents in the town of Augusta, just off US Highway 50, and later about 12 miles south of Augusta in the tiny hamlet of Kirby.  The primary feature of a lot of these towns were their general stores, and every small town had one (some had two or three, and many stores were also out on the highways too).  In Augusta, it was CJ Smith's Market on US 50, in nearby North River it was McBride's Grocery, and in between was Chuck's Market not far from the intersection of Dunmore Ridge Road and US 50 due east of Augusta.  Kirby had Cox's Store, my hometown of Hendricks had Sonny Hedrick's Market, and in the town of Rowlesburg where we lived when I went to high school there was Si Faris's store/bar/restaurant.  And, of course, if one descended into the river valley 3 miles west of my hometown of Hendricks, near the small community of Bretz just outside Parsons, there was Propst's Market too, where some of the best stick pepperoni could be purchased (Jim Propst, the store proprietor, was a bit of an entrepreneur though as he later branched out on the mountain in Thomas as well).   A lot of times too, it was customary on payday to hit a number of the little stores in the area, as some offered stuff the others didn't, so it rounded out our grocery needs for the month.   There was something about those little stores too that enchanted people like me back in those days, as they many times served as community centers as well.  A trip to the general store was often a treat, as it meant some sugary confection of some sort, or a piece of dry stick pepperoni, a good hunk of fresh longhorn cheese, or some other local delicacy, all washed down with a bottle of Frosty Root Beer or Frozen Run Birch Beer.  The latter was especially good on a hot summer day, after helping the folks work in the garden or goofing off with your friends - nothing like an icy cold birch beer to quench your thirst!

General stores were more or less a carryover of the old mercantiles of days past, as often you could order just about anything through one of them, an easy task being the proprietor of the store often knew you too and was more than happy to oblige.   As previously mentioned, even in my younger years getting to a grocery store was not often possible, and therefore the local general store got a lot of business from people around the area.  A lot of times, the proprietor of the store could get wholesale discounts on things such as 40-lb boxes of chicken leg quarters, chicken nuggets, fish squares, or turkey legs, and for under a hundred bucks a family could stock their freezer for a month with good meat.  And, if the family was financially lacking, it was no issue - stores extended credit.  The way that worked was that you would go in to the store, do your shopping, and the store owner would draw you up a credit tab for the amount you bought. Then, he (or she) would make arrangements with you to pay the balance at the beginning of the following month or at the next pay period you had if you had a job, which made things convenient.  Therefore, even when money was lacking, one could eat at least.  Another feature of the general store in those days was glass soda bottles.  Not only did soda taste better out of a glass bottle, but a kid with some scruples could make some money off the empty bottles.  When I was a kid in Kirby, WV, as a matter of fact, I used to collect soda bottles, cash them in, and that would be a candy bar, another soda, or a bag of chips.  Of course, I was a little more enterprising, as Nellie Cox, the owner of the store in Kirby, often kept those empty pop bottles on the store porch, and I would help myself to them and get a little extra money - I think Nellie knew that, but being she and her husband Lincoln were pretty well-off, she let a lot slide; God bless her mercy on me for that!  Most of the time though, an ample supply of pop bottles could be found in the roadside ditch, the creek bed, and in fields near the highway, as many people just chucked them out the window.  It was a good incentive for a sort of "Adopt-the-Highway" plan, as it paid dividends for us kids to keep the empty pop bottles cleaned up!

Those old general stores played a major part in this old West Virginia boy's life, and I do miss them.  As I have spent most of my adult life in the city, with the conveniences of shopping centers and supermarkets all over the place, there is something missing in shopping; whereas a trip to the store as a kid used to be a treat, and the older adults found the local store a good place to hang out and socialize, nowadays supermarkets here are so impersonal and callous that the clerks and baggers don't even know people who shop there everyday.   And the quality of food at a supermarket - here in Florida, these people would not know a good stick of pepperoni if it walloped them upside the head!  But, all is not lost - upon moving to Largo a few years ago, much to my delight I discovered a little place two blocks west of the house that still has the country store feel I remember.  It is the Amish Country Store, owned by Stu Opp, and it is a little taste of home.   And, Stu knows me now, and I can chit-chat with him much in the same way I used to with Nellie Cox, Sonny Hedrick, Ray McBride, and Si Faris at the stores of my youth back in WV.  If you are ever in the area, be sure to check them out.

The Amish Country Store, on 12th Ave SW in Largo, FL

This article doesn't fully capture the ambience as I wanted to concerning the institution known as the local general store, but I am sure some of you who grew up as I did will relate to it.   So, next time the city life gets some of you down, think about a nice hunk of longhorn cheese for a nickel and a 25 cent bottle of pop, and it will be comforting to you.   God bless until next time.