Absolutely nothing beats windshield time , a road trip and good conversation in the car . Welcome to another episode of Dan the Road Trip Guy , where we have entertaining conversations about cars and road trips , life lessons and maybe every now and then , a little advice . I'm your host , dan Neal Road Trip Extraordinaire , and now buckle up and enjoy the show .
It's just me today , and I was feeling a little nostalgic this past weekend and brought back some memories from my childhood . I thought I would share those , thinking back to when I was a young boy . Sunday afternoons a lot of times my uncle would say hey , let's go to the mountains . They weren't really mountains , they were hills . They did seem like mountains .
When I was a small boy we would load up his old Willis Jeep . I best recall it was some sort of government vehicle that he had probably bought at an auction , because you could still see some sort of name on the side under the gray paint that he had painted . The Jeep Probably a 60-something model , if I were to guess had a big winch on the front .
We would head off to the hills with our friend Earl Cordell . We would pack ourselves a lunt I do recall it being probably potted meat , which I look back on that and I'm like what is in potted meat ? Anyway , we would have that and some crackers . We'd probably have some pork and beans .
We'd follow that up with maybe some little Debbie Oatmeal cream pies or some moon pies , pepsi , I just remember that very vividly . I was fortunate to grow up across the street from Anderson's Grocery . When I was nine years old I walked across the street and my uncle looked at me and said you need a job , and he put me to work at the age of nine .
I had an older brother who was nine years older . He had gone off to college . I had a cousin who was nine years older and he had gone off to college and would later go to the Navy . My cousin kept the flame going on Anderson's Grocery until this past summer when he made the decision to sell .
It was a store that had been started by my grandparents in a place called Rock Creek . I remember visiting that on our trips over to the hills and you could still see a little bit of the house and the store standing there . They would later move it out to the town of Pine Nut where that store would serve people for decades .
My cousin has stood the test of time watching big stores come to town and still continue to battle day in and day out . The store didn't change a lot . It had wooden floors . My cousin did update a few things , but a lot of the same coolers , fresh cut meat every day . In the summertime there was feed and seed and fertilizer to be sold .
I don't know if my cousin continued that in these past years , but that was always the thing . My uncle would show up every morning at 7.30 , open the store . He would go home around 7 that night . Now he would slip off from time to time , but for the most part he was there six days a week , 12 hours a day , day in and day out .
Never saw him take a vacation . I think his vacation was to head over to the hills and get away from , get away from everything and he just felt like you were in the middle of nowhere when you were over there in those hills . I have a lot of great memories from the grocery store .
I'm hoping to catch up with my cousin and have some conversations with him about all of his years in the store . When he came back from the Navy he went to work quickly in the store and I remember working alongside him .
I was in high school at that point and we would stock grocery shelves on Monday nights after the groceries came in during Monday , and I always look forward to that . As I got older I could stay up later . I would spend my summers working in the store . I would work sometimes after school . Definitely on Saturdays I would be there .
But just a lot of great memories from that store and no doubt that's where I got a work ethic that has continued today with me . Guess , when your uncle puts you to work at the age of nine and then my mother was at the store and there was never a time to be idle and just stand around .
There was always a window to clean or a floor to sweep , always something to do , no time to be idle . I'm real proud of my cousin for continuing Anderson's grocery all these years . I know it probably wasn't easy , particularly with the retail landscape that changed .
I'm going to try to catch up with him and get him on this show and we can talk about all those years that we worked together , we rode motorcycles together . It's about all I had . It was just thoughts that came to my mind .
Hopefully you have some of those same great memories and you will write them down , share them with your family and friends Until we meet up again . You can find me on the internet at dantheroadtripguycom .
I hope you will follow this podcast so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes , and share it with your family and friends so they can enjoy the stories of my guests also . Until we meet again on a future episode , keep having conversations with each other and keep driving .