Ep. 301: This Country Life - The Country Store

some stories to share. The Country Store. The country Store was the hub of a lot of activity throughout a rural community. Times have change, and with less people living in the country, and with modern development moving the city limits further and further away from town, those places are becoming a thing of the past. I'm talking about them and what I think we're missing when they're going away, and what we can do to preserve everything that was

the country Store. I think you'll like it, even if you've never been in one, and after you listen you may realize that maybe, just maybe you have. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. Finus. That's pH I n I E. S. Finess Sly. My maternal grandfather had a head full of white hair and it had turned that way early in his life. Making him look older than he was now. One thing he was not was quote unquote an old man even when he was one. He was strong and smart as anyone educated beyond his

high school diploma, and was a reader of everything. He was self educating him cell pH on anything he could pick up and read at night before bedtime. Readers, Digest, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic, Progressive Farmer, and Western novels were his favorite. He was also the epitome of a Southern gentleman. He worked every day at the farm and at that

time our family store, Slies Grocery. Sunday after church would find him at the farm looking after the chickens, the hogs, and the cows, and put a lot of work into his farm and his business, and so that the folks that worked for him. He believed in doing things the right way, treating folks like he wanted to be treated, and had a low tolerance for anything else. Let me jump a whole generation later, and while I was occasionally attending college, I worked as a weekend dispatcher at the

local police department. The chief of police at that time in the mid eighties, had been the chief since the late fifties and he told me a story once about my grandfather and our store. He said he was standing outside of the police department talking with someone when a man from out of town walked up to him, nursing a black eye in a bloody nose. He claimed to have been attacked and assaulted by an old man at

a store on the edge of town. The man said the altercation was unprovoked and proceeded to explain to the chief the location of where the incident occurred. He had the man waited city hall while he drove out to my grandfather's store, reasonably sure that he knew who the alleged perpetrator was since everyone in town knew my grandfather. What he didn't know, since he knew my grandfather so well,

was what had actually happened and why now. Upon arrival, he said he remembered my mother sitting on the counter in the store, laughing when he walked in, my grandfather standing in front of the counter, ready to meet his fate, and my grandmother saying, well, finus, that temper of yours has landed you in jail this time now, my mother.

My mother said she and other folks who were in the store shopping when the fight occurred, saw the whole thing from start to finish, and were standing there waiting, ready to tell their side of the store. Here's what happened. The man, unknown to my grandfather, had asked for a tank of gas and a bill of groceries on credit.

My grandfather explained to him that since he didn't know him and he didn't have anyone with him that could vouch for his ability to pay him back, he wouldn't be able to help him out, but if he could get someone to speak up for him, he'd be glad

to help him. The man got angry and my grandfather told him to leave the store, and as he was leaving, he said he's had some very profane things to my grandfather, which probably would have been bad enough, but he made the mistake of saying it in front of my mother, who was just a teenage girl at the time, and my grandmother, who was a saint all the time. According

to the chief of police and my mother. My grandfather grabbed an axe handle as he walked by a barrel full of him that were for sale and that sat beside the door. As he walked out following the man, words were exchanged outside about his lack of manners, and shortly thereafter a lesson in manners was given and received. Sly's Grocery Store in Warren, Arkansas a place where you could get staples like groceries, gas, and educated on manners. No arrests were made more on that place than a minute.

But that's just how that happened. The big indoor mall, the strip mall, and all the other businesses that would become the modern day places to meet, eat and shop all have the country store to think. The rural business for exploring Europeans trading goods and services started soon after they hit the bank in search of a better life,

adventure and treasure. Everyone at one time or another had to make a Walmart run, and that started not long after May the thirteenth of sixteen oh seven, when one hundred and four enterprising men and boys started making tracks from their boats westward on the beaches of Virginia after four and a half month at sea that kicked off from London, England. I bet the lads were getting a

little spicy by the time they hit the east coast. Unfortunately, the first washing area was still one thousand, three hundred and fifty nine miles away in Fort Worth, Texas, and wouldn't be invented for another three hundred and twenty seven years. Now that's a long time to wait for clean drawers. Fortunately, there was someone willing to fill the void for services.

The country store, or a reasonable facsimile of what we know, is one soon after I told you about the little store of my youth, not far from where we lived, that sat in the wye of the gravel road, that if you went right coming from town, when you got there, it would take you to our house, and if you took a left, you were headed toward Crane Lake or the Saline River. That little country store was owned and operated by a lifelong resident of the community who ran

it until he retired. It was sold to an enterprising family whose questionable hand washing was brought to light back on episode one thirteen of This Country Life. You should go back and listen to that one if you hadn't already anyway, the country store in most places was the department store of today. They didn't have it. They could order it, they couldn't order it, more than likely didn't

need it. Everything from canned grocers to bread, leather goods, clothes, and bullets and beans could be bought there with credit accounts for those that qualified, the qualifications being that their word was good and when and if there was ever a problem, someone would be standing before the grocer with the reason why they needed extra time to pay or make an offer to trade something of value or time and labor against their unpaid balance. Remember my Grandpa papall Sly,

the Southern gentleman's store owner. Well, he and his wife Beulah known to us all including my friends as Mamasly, lived in town across the road from that store. They had sold it by the time I got old enough to remember it, but my mother told me stories of my grandfather extending credit to folks that needed help and tolding the note for him for a long time, or sometimes forgiving some debts altogether. For families that were just

struggling but trying. He delivered some groceries to those that didn't have a car, and not everyone did back then. He'd load the pickup with the orders people had called in and my grandmother had gathered up from the shelves. Then he would make his deliveries and collect what was oweding. Most families that had accounts at the store worked for the lumber mills in town that would pay their bills from the previous weeks on payday as new groceries were

delivered from their orders. It was a good system, and it worked for the most part. There were a few that tried to get by and take advantage of my grandfather's generosity. Excuses were cheap and plentiful, and even when he knew better, my mother told me he'd give them the benefit of the doubt until they crossed the line. I had to go with him when he made his

rounds delivering groceries and collecting the money. Regardless of the task, he'd let her go with him, the little girl sitting beside him as they went through the neighborhoods, dropping off goods and collecting payments. She hopping out of the truck in her little ruffled dresses and bows in her hair, walking with him to greet all the people that she

knew that traded in her daddy's store. She told me the one day, after several stops, he pulled up to someone's house that was notorious not only for not paying his bills, but for not taking care of his family, not the way he should have spending more time looking for something to drink and work and provide feed his wife and children. My grandfather got out of the truck, and as she slid over in the seat to get out too, he said, no, baby, you stay here this time.

And with that, my grandfather reached behind the seat of the truck and took out a hammer and walked up the path to the front door of the house. Called the man out on the porch. She said. He came out, and I could hear Daddy talking to the man and the man talking back, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. They were both talking really low. Then the man went back in the house, and he came back with some money and handed it to my daddy like he was mad, and he started to go back in

the house, but Daddy wouldn't let him leave. Then your grandpa counted some money out, stuck it in his shirt pocket, and handed the man back what was left. The man looked surprised, and they shook hands. And he never said what they talked about or exactly what happened on that porch. But after I got older, I knew why he took the hammer with him, But I also know that he gave the man back money that he owed my daddy

with a promise to use it for his family. The first example I highlighted in this opening story of this podcast about my grandfather may make him seem like he was a mean or a violent person, and if you think that, you'd be wrong. The second account described him perfectly. He was a well respected member of the community who would give all he could until the giving took away from his ability to take care of his family. Family was his first priority, and he believed everyone else's priority

should be family as well. He stopped at nothing to take care of his and would do all he could to take care of others. Country stores were a lot of things. The main things they were was a community gathering place for friends and neighbors to visit. A few miles up the road in New Edinburgh, Arkansas, there were several stores that fit this mold over time, only one remains there now. It was there that we would gather

sometimes after a morning of hunting during turkey season. We checked the signing sheet to see if anyone had killed the turkey, and meet at the back to hear everyone's report from what had gone on during the summer. We'd be there buying crickets and crappy jigs, asking in line about where the fish were or weren't biting. My all time favorite was when it was cold outside and there was a fire in the wood stove and the old men were holding court, reading the paper and drinking coffee

and solving all the world's problems. Right there in the back of that story, you could warm your hands, you're behind and your soul with stories of long ago from the folks who witnessed and lived. Those places are fewer and further between now, but they're still around. Eleven years ago, back when I was still having to really work for a living, my job took me to a little community in the Delta region of eastern arc and Saw farming was and still is the main employer in that area.

And that'sle between large expansions of plowed ground rest the tiny community of Melwood, Arkansas, sporting a bustling population of twenty one. It lies one mile due west of Island sixty five, the famous Jackson Point Hunting Club on the Mississippi River. This place is exactly what I assumed it would feel like walking into my grandfather's store sixty years ago and warned, and what it did feel like walking into the one in neew Edinburgh, where I lived later

in life. I was there around dinner time or lunch if you prefer but I went in to get a cold drink and something to eat, and the smell of cooking food drew me to the back of the store and I ordered the plate lunch. I don't remember what it was. I just remember it was good and hadn't been microwaved. I sat down at a table and across from me sat several folks who were older than me. They weren't eating, not yet anyway, but I could tell this was their group and regular place to meet, to

sit and to visit. I needed to be on down the road at another point of interest that was the focus of my trip. I was on a schedule, and the twenty minutes out allotted to eat that day quickly turned into an hour and a half. I got home that evening two hours late and told Alexis about my day when she asked, and it was the best day I'd had at work in a long time. It inspired me to write the following day what I'd like to

read to you now February seventeenth, twenty fourteen. Two and a half hours from my home is a forgotten farming community. A post office that could fit inside my house stands next to a general store. The flag of our nation flaps gently in the breeze, and here it seems time

stands still. The old folks are positioned behind and in front of the counter and places one can imagine or theirs, places that they assumed yesterday, places they will be tomorrow, and places they will be as long as they're able. The floor creaked with ages. I walked inside, but it held firm. It held the way things hold that were built when the measure of a craftsman was gaged by time, not budget. Invited, I sat down and we talked, And for an hour I talked with four old strangers who

spoke of family in simple times. Little Rock was a far away place. If they chose not to go, why should they? Everything and everyone they needed was here, And for an hour they let me watch. I missed those folks today, in the times of which that encounter reminded me. Majority of you who will read this and played a part one way or another in my life, and without you, good or bad, I wouldn't be where I am today and today, my friends, I'm in a good place now.

That's what I wrote that day, and all these years later, I still get the same feeling of reverence reading it now as I did then. It makes me want to get up and drive over there to see my old friends at a place I have never returned, to see people whose names I never learned, and people I'd never seen before that day, but made a lasting impression on me.

Just the same, Bellwood's Grocery is still open. I have no idea how long it's been there, and even though I've only been there once in person, I've been there a thousand times in my memory, just like mister almas Mark's story at the why in the county road where my brothers and sisters, cousins and I would make our way to either walking, riding bicycles, horses, or hitching a ride from someone headed in that direction, a four and a half mile trip on a hot, dusty gravel road

that held the promise of adventure and discovery between home and a coke if we had enough money a candy bar or two to share. Those roads are all paved now and have been for a long time, and I drive them now without kicking up a torn of dust as I make my way along those roads that six generations of my family before me it as well. I wonder what they thought about as they traveled along, passing

familiar homes and places. At what point did the reverence for this land and the community become so strong among the folks who've lived there. It's always been an important place in my life. Naturally, everyone's home is, but sometimes it takes moving away just to see how important those places are, or visiting a place for the first time that it's so similar to your own you feel right

at home from the beginning. Places like these are all around us, and they don't necessarily have to be isolated. Rural stores with hot, dusty, barefooted youngers running in and out of a park bench, a diner, a church, a friend's front porch, any place where we have an occasion to pause and enjoy the company of familiar faces, even those of strangers, all looking for the same thing, kind

word from an old friend or a new one. Tomorrow is March the first, and me Bear John and his pappy Clay Bow will be attending the Black Bear Bonanza at the Benton County Fairgrounds in Bentonville, Arkansas. Look up the Black Bear Bananza twenty twenty five and get directions and ticket information. It's going to be a lot of fun, so load the wagon and y'all come. Seis until next week. This is it read sign it off. Y'all be careful.