The Country Store
When my parents brought me home from the hospital in 1951, they carried
me through the front door of their country store on Steele's Creek near
Wayland in Floyd County Kentucky. I had been born at the old Lackey
Hospital in Knott County. That building still exists but has, for many
years, been a personal care home for the chronically mentally ill and is
now known as Golden Years Rest Home. The first 20 years of my life
were spent in a country store named for my father and known as B. L.
Hicks, General Merchandise. The first six years of my life we lived and
operated the store on Steele's Creek not far from Wayland,
Kentucky. In 1957, my parents built a new store and house on Right
Beaver Creek at Dema, Kentucky, in Knott County. This was about three or four
miles up Beaver above Wayland. At the time, my aunt and uncle Corbett
and Ellen Terry were also operating a store, which they rented, on
Beaver Creek about a mile below the Knott County line across Beaver Creek from the mouth of a hollow known as Collins Branch. My parents and
my aunt and uncle were always close and a plan was made to
simultaneously move them into our store on Steele's Creek on the same
day we moved out. They continued to operate that store for several
years until they eventually went out of business. They actually used the
same truck and men to move both stores. We would haul a load from our
store on Steele's Creek to our new store on Beaver Creek. On the way
back, they would haul a load from Corbett and Ellen's store on Beaver
Creek to the store on Steele's Creek. We had emptied the feed room attached to the side of the store the day before the big move and as Corbett and Ellen's property was moved in it was put inside the feed room until we had emptied our side of the store and house part of the building. Then Corbett and Ellen set up their property in the main building of the store and the attached living quarters.
 |
| Ballard Hicks, Jr. & Ballard Hicks In The Store, Photo by Roger D. Hicks |
For the next fourteen years we operated the store on Beaver Creek. By the time I could see over the counter and count change, I was working, or perhaps I only thought I was working, at least some of the time in the store. By the time I was 12 or 14, if my parents needed to go to Martin, Prestonsburg, or Hindman to conduct business, I could generally be left alone in the store for a few hours at a time. As I grew older and began to travel around, I would also, from time to time, be in other country stores. I still go in them today when I can find one that is actually a real country store. Based on all this history, I tend to believe I am an expert on country stores.
 |
| Ballard Hicks, Country Store Owner, Photo by Roger D. Hicks |
My father bought the store on Steele's Creek sometime in 1945
after his first wife, Ora Hicks, became ill and he had to leave his job
in the coal mines. I have recently found his employment records from Elkhorn Coal Company in Wayland, Kentucky, which actually documented on the record that he had bought a store and quit his job. He ran the store until her death and continued to do so until we moved to Beaver Creek in 1957 as I have said above. Sometime in the next year or so my father married my
mother, Mellie Hicks. They continued to operate
the store on Steele's Creek and then Beaver Creek until a few months after my mother's death in 1970. By that
time, my father was 83 years old. Other than his obituary which
appeared in the Floyd County Times and the Minutes of The Old Regular
Baptist Church, I know of only one other instance in which he is
mentioned in print. That third mention is a brief story in an oral
history book, "Coal Camp Kids: Coming Up Hard And Making It", by Barbara
Ford Ritch. The comment says, in its entirety: "Ballard Hicks, Nora
Jean Coontz recalled, had a grocery store at Steele's Creek. 'That is
where I had to go to get feed for our horse. He kept a case full of
hard candy. I would get two hundred pound bags of feed, and make sure
the feed sacks were the same, because then Mom could make me a new skirt
from the sacks. Sometimes, I would get an orange Popsicle, and climb a
big sycamore tree, eat that Popsicle, and wonder what my future would
be.' " That brief oral history account does or says many things for
me. It means that, at some time, someone other than me was positively
affected by my father's country store. It also says a few things about
the way he ran his store and how most country stores in general were run
in those days. I have also recently on October 14, 2020, received another such memory from a man named Gary Perkins who lives at the mouth of Collins Branch between Wayland and the Knott County line about his trips to my parents' store on Beaver Creek.
BTW, was your father still running the store at Dema during the 1960‘s? I can still recall purchasing soda pop (usually Orange Crush) at the store when visiting cemeteries in the area with my grandmother. It was usually during the middle of July and the soda pop was a welcomed treat. Take care, Gary
Although it is purely coincidental, I find it interesting that in both comments, written quite a few years apart, both these people who were children when they visited my parents' store were choosing to have something with orange flavor as their treat and they remembered it fondly several decades later as adults. My father would be very proud to know that if he were alive today. Gary Perkins also went on to discuss in his e-mail another store owner in Hindman, Kentucky, the county seat of Knott County, whose name was Bramlett Clark. I do not remember ever hearing my parents talk about this man and had never heard his name before. But I do remember hearing about a man who worked at the Hindman Settlement School who was known as Professor Clark, or in the language of the time, Fesser Clark. Here is Gary Perkins' comments about Bramlett Clark and his store.
Our family traded at a small store in Hindman, KY., that was owned by a man named Bramlett Clark. He was the unofficial town historian, and it seems as if he knew everything past and present that took place in the town. I can remember my mother giving him a list of items she wanted to purchase. He would walk around the store, gather the items, ask if it was cash or credit (he may have used the term carry instead of credit), place the name of the item and price on a small carbon copy receipt book and total the amount. It also seemed to me that he had a few items that he kept stored in a back section of the store, or under the counter, that he either rationed, or saved for his better paying customers. The IGA and PIC-PAK Grocery stores came to Hindman during the late 1960‘s and he lost most of his customers. He was probably owed thousands of dollars when he passed away.
It is also bittersweet to me to hear Gary Perkins discuss how much money Bramlett Clark was probably owed at his death. After my parents both died, my sister and I gathered up all the documentation of store debts owned to our parents which were also documented in those same carbon copy receipt books which Gary discussed and those books filled a bushel fruit basket. I do not remember the amount my parents were owed but it was thousands of dollars. Like many other owners of country stores, my parents and Bramlett Clark all had a soft spot for their neighbors and customers who suffered in poverty at times and often allowed people to charge for groceries when there was little likelihood they would ever be paid. My own expression about that propensity is that my parents were always suckers for someone coming in broke with a few hungry children and asking for credit. It was a fairly common trait among southern and Appalachian country store owners.
Recently in December of 2020, I also received, in the comments section below, another wonderful reminiscence about my parents and our store from Georgetta Moore Cook the granddaughter of E. Hawk Moore, a close friend of my father, whom I wrote about in this blog post. This is what Georgetta said about my parents and our store:
I remember the store very well we use to visit there when I was young when we would visit my dad's and grandparents graves and sometimes my mamaw just liked to get out and visit people and we would come there. You had wonderful parents I remember them well they would always give me and my siblings an ice cream or a bottle of pop which means a whole lot to a kid the kindness they showed us. My mom and mamaw would sit and talk while us kids would go outside and play. My mom was Ruth Moore,my mamaw was Cora Hall, my grandpa and grandma was Preacher Hawk and Samantha Moore we all lived at Steele's Creek. I met you a few years ago and didn't realize who you were it had been years since I had seen you.I am Earl Cook's wife Georgetta we came to your auctions when you were at Banner.
Wonderful comments like these about my parents and our store are a great deal of the reward in writing about these things. I appreciate all three of them and the people who bothered to send them. Collectively, they say a great deal about the kind of people my parents were and the methods they used in running a store and dealing with the public.
This blog post just seems to keep getting comments from others who have fond memories of country stores. I just saw a post on March 30, 2021, from John D. Shelton who is married to a distant relative of mine with a photo of a country store which was important to him in his childhood and was operated by John's great uncle Les Shelton This is what John had to say about his memories of that store.
"It was Les Shelton's Grocery on Hwy 829 near intersection of Hwy 558 in Cumberland City (all so known as) Cabin City, in Clinton County, Ky. In late 1800's it was largest City in Clinton County, now it is just a few Homes in a small Community. I was Born in small frame house about 1/4 miles to the left of this Store."
Nearly everyone who was able to regularly spend time in a country store as a child seems to have pleasant memories as a result of that experience. Here is John's photo of his great uncle's store. The photo below of Les Shelton's store is not the best quality in the world and John says he is looking for a better one since the store is now totally gone.
 |
| Mellie Hicks, My Mother, At The Property At Dema, KY, Photo by Roger D. Hicks |
My father obviously made an effort to leave a positive impression. He
also, like nearly every other store owner, made an effort to allow
customers to have their own way with regard to the promotional items
which often accompanied sales of livestock feed, flour, meal, and a few
other items. Most mothers made some effort to gain enough flour, meal,
or feed sacks of their favorite patterns to complete their next planned
project. Dishes were also often given as a promotion with flour, meal,
and a few other items. And, of course, most brands of jelly came in decorated glass jars which became drinking glasses when empty. Many flour and meal sacks were actually pillow
cases. A few other brands gave the dishes away, one piece at a time
with their brand of flour or meal. My parents also kept livestock after
we moved to Knott County and my mother also used the brands that gave
the promotional items. I, too, wore feed sack shirts to school until I
was in about the eighth grade. I refused to do so after I entered high
school and my mother stopped making the shirts for me. However, most of
the patterns on the bags were more feminine than masculine. But many
males also wore shirts made from the bags. Houses had curtains, table
clothes, dish towels, towels, wash cloths, dishes, and many other items
which were either packaging just as it came from the store or packaging
altered to meet a purpose in the home. I have even heard of one or two
occasions where women actually fought over the last bag of feed in a
particularly popular pattern. I have even written a short story about two women fighting over the last bag of flower in a pattern one of them was desperate to find. That story is still unpublished at this point but I will be certain to let my readers know where it can be found after publication. Most of the dishes given to customers
this way were plates and cups. Jelly was also commonly sold in drinking
glasses with patterns on the glass. You ate the jelly, threw away the
lid, and had another glass for the home. Silver Dust Washing Powder for
many years had either a towel, wash cloth, or dish towel in each box of
their detergent depending on the size of the box. For many men, a
favorite part of the old Porter Wagoner Show on television was Dolly
Parton doing the Silver Dust Commercial. She always held the
promotional towels just under her most famous assets and that part of
the show was one of the most risque things in television in those days.
And, to my knowledge, Dolly never had a "wardrobe malfunction".
The country store was generally an informal community center for the geographic area in a five or ten square mile circumference. Paved roads were uncommon although both our stores were located on a paved road. Far fewer people had cars than today. Everyone had less ready cash for gasoline even though it was cheap from the end of WW I to about the onset of the Vietnam War. Therefore, it was common for people to walk to the closest store even if was across a ridge or two. In a case like that, it might be closer to go to a store by foot over a ridge which might be a considerably longer distance if the roads were used. I remember one woman, in particular, who came to our store for a few years by walking up the holler from her house, along a ridge for a mile or so, and then down the hill through our cow pasture. She always brought her own burlap bag for her groceries. She would fill it up with canned goods on the bottom and anything soft on the top. She would tie a string around the opening, shoulder the bag, and walk up the hill through the pasture into the woods and out of sight.
It was also common for people to ride a horse or mule to the store and carry groceries home in saddle bags or in burlap bags across the animal's back. Corn sleds on wooden runners were also often a means of transportation, especially if the customer was buying several sacks of livestock feed, seed potatoes, fertilizer, or even a full months supply of groceries. I also knew two boys who managed to break a bull calf to ride with a bridle, and they often rode him to the store until he became more bull than beast of burden. It wasn't uncommon also to have a few people who were making moonshine to buy sugar, cracked corn, wheat middlings, malt syrup, and yeast in large quantities. Most of them came in some kind of truck with the ability to cover their purchases in order to avoid advertising their profession. Most country store owners knew exactly who was moonshining in their area. But a few would travel to an adjoining creek or even county to avoid buying from people who knew them. But the added gas for travel sometimes dictated against this practice. One of the largest stills ever destroyed by federal authorities in Knott County was found about 3 miles from our store on Salisbury. Long before the still was cut we knew who ran it and its location not to mention how much sugar, corn, middlings, yeast, and malt syrup he was using a week. The man who owned the still was sent to prison in Arizona and eventually murdered by a fellow parolee shortly after their release. That story was actually told in one of the old pulp true crime magazines. I have read the story but don't remember the name of the pulp magazine in which it appeared. He never made it back to Knott County alive. When he died, there was still a charge account book in his name on the shelf in our store.
On one occasion, my father, who often traded in livestock, sold several shoats of about fifty to seventy five pounds each to the husband of the woman who walked the ridge to the store . Neither my father or the buyer ever drove a car. Part of the deal was that my father "and that boy will drive the pigs to your house on Saturday morning." That Saturday morning, we got up at the crack of daylight, fed the shoats to slow them down and keep them for trying to stop and root all through the woods in a search for food stuffs. We began driving them up through the cow pasture, along the ridge, and down the holler to the buyer. When we got there, the family was up, the pig pen was ready, and the mother was cooking breakfast on a big wood burning step stove in a log house. Not many people today can say they have driven livestock through the woods. On at least one other occasion, my father bought cattle from someone on Salisbury and we drove them down the dirt road out of the holler, down the railroad right of way, across the creek, and down the highway a short distance to our barn. It was not uncommon for country store operators to deal in anything of value if they had the barns, pastures, buildings, or storage space it required and my father was a expert at trading anything he could make an honest dollar on.
My father also often bought from or sold livestock to Chester Layne, the area Tom's Candy Distributor. Chester also owned the stockyards at Ivel and bought or sold livestock all along his franchise area which covered Floyd, Knott, and Pike Counties. A few years ago, his sons owned Layne Brothers Ford in the same spot where the stockyards were for many years. But they went out of business several years ago. Chester bought a cow from us once that he always claimed he used as a milk cow. He also always said he had named her Happy after former Governor Happy Chandler. I have my doubts about parts of the story since Chester was rather loquacious and primarily bought cattle for resale. Generally, when my father wanted a new bull, he would arrange for Chester to find him a registered Hereford and bring it to him. He was one of the first men on Right Beaver to regularly keep a registered bull. He made a little money on the side by allowing neighbors to breed their milk cows to his bull for five or ten dollars each. I also have several bull stories which will show up somewhere else later.
But Chester Layne was a fine example of a traveling salesman. I loved to see nearly all of the salesmen show up but Chester was one of my favorites. He and my parents were friends and he always paid attention to me, even as a small child. Nobody had air conditioning in houses or cars in those days and I am sure that driving a panel truck two hundred miles a day in Eastern Kentucky was dry and tiring work. Chester would often pull up in front of our store porch, jump out of the truck, say hello, go straight out the other door in the store into the living quarters, use the bathroom, wash his hands, go to the refrigerator for a glass of cold buttermilk, rinse the glass, return to the store and then ask "Well, what do you need today?" Once when I was about ten or twelve, he offered to pay me a dollar a book to read the Bible if I finished the whole King James Version. I don't think I even got through Genesis before I quit. I wonder sometimes if he wasn't actually betting all along that he wouldn't need to give up the money. It was a Sisyphean task for a young boy. But Chester was one of several men in those days who influenced me to want to travel and be a salesman. Chester also had a brother, Kelly Layne, who worked with or for him and sometimes made the run. Kelly was also a lot of fun but not as much as his brother.
Once when I was working at the Hope Center Homeless Shelter in Lexington, Kentucky, I had a client who told me had stolen one of Chester's Tom's Peanut Trucks from a small country store on Mud Creek in Floyd County. He said he and a couple of other guys were sitting on the store porch about half drunk when the driver pulled up, stopped, put the truck in neutral with the engine running, and ran into the store. The truck was already pointed down the creek since the driver had come over the hill from the opposite creek. My client said he was drinking, broke, and unemployed. So as soon as the store door slammed, he jumped off the porch into the truck and took off to a chop shop in Magoffin County and sold the truck and inventory all to the chop shop operator. Apparently, no one on the porch admitted to knowing who he was and the state police couldn't have gotten to the scene in less than thirty minutes in those days. He was probably close to Magoffin County before the trooper ever took the report. I wish I had heard the story while Chester was still alive so I could have compared it to his version. I did come to know the chop shop operator later but he also died before I ever asked him about the story.
Another of my favorite salesmen was Harold Purkey, Jr. who drove a Kern's Bread truck out of western Virginia into Knott and Floyd Counties. During the summers, Harold would allow me to ride with him from our store down Beaver Creek to the end of his route in Punkin Center between Wayland and Garrett. He would drop me off at home on his way back south to Virginia. Harold liked to talk, had a long and cumbersome route, and I am sure he liked the company. I also picked up a lot of my desire to be a salesman from riding with Harold.
Bill Parish drove a Chappell's Milk route out of Hazard Kentucky for many years and was popular in the area. Before my father quit drinking, which took place about the time I was born, Bill used to bring him a case or two of beer from Hazard every week as a favor. I am sure it was illegal and against company policy. But to my knowledge, Bill never suffered any consequences for it. Hazard was wet and both Knott and Floyd Counties were dry which made Hazard beer a lot cheaper than buying from the bootleggers. I suspect Bill probably did this favor for more than one of his regular customers.
Talmadge Vanderpool drove a Betsy Ross Bread truck out of Prestonsburg into Knott County for several years also. Talmadge was a fine individual but he just wasn't as sociable, talkative, or funny as most of the other salesmen.
Another who also influenced me was Bernie Whitt who sold groceries for a company in Paintsville, Kentucky. Bernie was very quiet, low key, and efficient. He wasn't nearly as much fun as Chester but he was a good salesman. There were actually two grocery companies in Paintsville which serviced Knott County. I remember the man who sold for the other but can't remember his name. He died sometime in the late 1950's or early 1960's in a house fire. As I recall, he woke up to find his gas water heater had gone out and when he struck a match the room had apparently filled with natural gas and exploded. He once brought me a little, brown, bob tailed puppy he had found at an illegal roadside dump when he stopped to relieve himself. He was hauling the dog along in his car looking for someone to give it to because he just couldn't leave it to die at the dump. I called the dog Tarzan but can't ever remember the salesman's name.
Another traveling salesman, I saw a lot of and liked a lot was Jack Childers who was self employed as a meat salesman out of Prestonsburg. Very few country stores attempted to sell fresh meat and only sold frozen meat plus some bacon and cold cuts such as bologna. Jack came up Beaver once a week in an old refrigerated utility truck much like a wholesale ice cream truck. He was talkative, friendly, and full of information. Jack lived not far from the site of the Floyd County School Bus Wreck and another of his customers was a couple who ran a country store and lost all their children in the wreck. Jack brought us a great deal of information about the wreck, the search for the victims, and the lingering after effects on the survivors. My parents seemed to have a closer link to that couple because of their shared profession and shared suppliers. I was also the same age as many of the children on the bus. We had other salesmen who supplied that couple and our store as well. However, most of the others just didn't seem to invest themselves into a human relationship with those grieving parents the way Jack did.
For me, the traveling salesmen represented a doorway to the outside world, travel, extended human contact, and people and places I had not seen. They were an invaluable source of information for an inquisitive, talkative boy who longed to learn more about the world. They were usually good talkers, friendly, interesting, and funny. It was a hard job to be a traveling salesman. But just like the men who influenced me to sell and many I sold with later, I enjoyed every day I ever spent driving or walking the hills of Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia selling a variety of items. It also gave me the opportunity to get to know several dozen other country stores in both states. Living and working in a country store was a good life. But it was bland compared to the life of the men who jumped in a car or truck five or six days a week, spent their time in different counties or states every day, and knew hundreds or thousands of people over a wide geographic area. They always knew the most current gossip, who had died, who got married, who bought a registered bull or a fancy coon hound, who had a baby, who got arrested, who went broke, and any other news worth hearing.
My very first memory is of my father holding me in his arms at the window of our store on Steele's Creek in the middle of the night watching a neighbor's house burn. I admit that is an odd first memory. But most of my earliest memories are set in one of the two stores we ran. Late in the evening, especially in winter, men would gather in from all around the neighborhood and tell stories in front of the old natural gas stove. No, our stores didn't have a pot bellied stove. I knew a few that did but not ours. We would sometimes split the shell on chestnuts and place them on the front of the old ceramic burner stove to roast. But the best part was listening to my father and the other older men tell stories of the times when they were young, and Knott County had no paved roads. They talked about hunting, fishing, farming, logging, coal mining, religion, politics, and unionism. I learned a lot from some of those fellows too. I learned that you always plant crops and castrate livestock by the signs. I learned that you never keep a chicken killing dog. I learned that you never cross a picket line and nothing is lower than a scab. I learned how Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry Truman saved the world. I learned that a straddle pole is nearly as low as a scab. For the uninitiated, a straddle pole is a person who crosses party lines to vote. I learned how to be a Yellow Dog Democrat and I have never forgotten. I learned what a Hoover Box and Hoover Times and a Hooverville were and I learned who caused all of them. But Hoover Boxes kept a lot of poor people alive during the depression. They are a homemade box trap, made from chicken wire or wood, baited and set out to catch possums, ground hogs, rabbits, and coons to prevent starvation. For those of you who don't know the song, listen to Tom T. Hall's "Don't Forget The Coffee, Billy Joe". It never mentions a Hoover Box. But it says an awful lot about the times and attitudes I am talking about.
As I said early in this posting, there are very few real country stores today. There are many who still claim to run country stores. The old country stores sold you a bologna and cracker sandwich not a pizza or chicken wings. The owners knew they were running a store and never tried to make it a restaurant. They never crossed lines. They generally never endorsed candidates in politics but allowed all candidates to leave their campaign materials on the counter and stapled to the outside walls beside every body else's. They sold fifty pound buckets of lard, onion sets, seed potatoes, brogan shoes, Levis, horse shoes, and nails. They let people charge a month at a time and most of the people paid. They might from time to time let you sell a few food stamps or pay your bill with them. It might have been illegal but it kept their neighbors afloat and that is much of what they were about. Very few owners of country stores ever got rich. But most died with hundreds of friends who remembered times their children would have starved without the store owner's generosity.
The country store was generally an informal community center for the geographic area in a five or ten square mile circumference. Paved roads were uncommon although both our stores were located on a paved road. Far fewer people had cars than today. Everyone had less ready cash for gasoline even though it was cheap from the end of WW I to about the onset of the Vietnam War. Therefore, it was common for people to walk to the closest store even if was across a ridge or two. In a case like that, it might be closer to go to a store by foot over a ridge which might be a considerably longer distance if the roads were used. I remember one woman, in particular, who came to our store for a few years by walking up the holler from her house, along a ridge for a mile or so, and then down the hill through our cow pasture. She always brought her own burlap bag for her groceries. She would fill it up with canned goods on the bottom and anything soft on the top. She would tie a string around the opening, shoulder the bag, and walk up the hill through the pasture into the woods and out of sight.
It was also common for people to ride a horse or mule to the store and carry groceries home in saddle bags or in burlap bags across the animal's back. Corn sleds on wooden runners were also often a means of transportation, especially if the customer was buying several sacks of livestock feed, seed potatoes, fertilizer, or even a full months supply of groceries. I also knew two boys who managed to break a bull calf to ride with a bridle, and they often rode him to the store until he became more bull than beast of burden. It wasn't uncommon also to have a few people who were making moonshine to buy sugar, cracked corn, wheat middlings, malt syrup, and yeast in large quantities. Most of them came in some kind of truck with the ability to cover their purchases in order to avoid advertising their profession. Most country store owners knew exactly who was moonshining in their area. But a few would travel to an adjoining creek or even county to avoid buying from people who knew them. But the added gas for travel sometimes dictated against this practice. One of the largest stills ever destroyed by federal authorities in Knott County was found about 3 miles from our store on Salisbury. Long before the still was cut we knew who ran it and its location not to mention how much sugar, corn, middlings, yeast, and malt syrup he was using a week. The man who owned the still was sent to prison in Arizona and eventually murdered by a fellow parolee shortly after their release. That story was actually told in one of the old pulp true crime magazines. I have read the story but don't remember the name of the pulp magazine in which it appeared. He never made it back to Knott County alive. When he died, there was still a charge account book in his name on the shelf in our store.
On one occasion, my father, who often traded in livestock, sold several shoats of about fifty to seventy five pounds each to the husband of the woman who walked the ridge to the store . Neither my father or the buyer ever drove a car. Part of the deal was that my father "and that boy will drive the pigs to your house on Saturday morning." That Saturday morning, we got up at the crack of daylight, fed the shoats to slow them down and keep them for trying to stop and root all through the woods in a search for food stuffs. We began driving them up through the cow pasture, along the ridge, and down the holler to the buyer. When we got there, the family was up, the pig pen was ready, and the mother was cooking breakfast on a big wood burning step stove in a log house. Not many people today can say they have driven livestock through the woods. On at least one other occasion, my father bought cattle from someone on Salisbury and we drove them down the dirt road out of the holler, down the railroad right of way, across the creek, and down the highway a short distance to our barn. It was not uncommon for country store operators to deal in anything of value if they had the barns, pastures, buildings, or storage space it required and my father was a expert at trading anything he could make an honest dollar on.
My father also often bought from or sold livestock to Chester Layne, the area Tom's Candy Distributor. Chester also owned the stockyards at Ivel and bought or sold livestock all along his franchise area which covered Floyd, Knott, and Pike Counties. A few years ago, his sons owned Layne Brothers Ford in the same spot where the stockyards were for many years. But they went out of business several years ago. Chester bought a cow from us once that he always claimed he used as a milk cow. He also always said he had named her Happy after former Governor Happy Chandler. I have my doubts about parts of the story since Chester was rather loquacious and primarily bought cattle for resale. Generally, when my father wanted a new bull, he would arrange for Chester to find him a registered Hereford and bring it to him. He was one of the first men on Right Beaver to regularly keep a registered bull. He made a little money on the side by allowing neighbors to breed their milk cows to his bull for five or ten dollars each. I also have several bull stories which will show up somewhere else later.
But Chester Layne was a fine example of a traveling salesman. I loved to see nearly all of the salesmen show up but Chester was one of my favorites. He and my parents were friends and he always paid attention to me, even as a small child. Nobody had air conditioning in houses or cars in those days and I am sure that driving a panel truck two hundred miles a day in Eastern Kentucky was dry and tiring work. Chester would often pull up in front of our store porch, jump out of the truck, say hello, go straight out the other door in the store into the living quarters, use the bathroom, wash his hands, go to the refrigerator for a glass of cold buttermilk, rinse the glass, return to the store and then ask "Well, what do you need today?" Once when I was about ten or twelve, he offered to pay me a dollar a book to read the Bible if I finished the whole King James Version. I don't think I even got through Genesis before I quit. I wonder sometimes if he wasn't actually betting all along that he wouldn't need to give up the money. It was a Sisyphean task for a young boy. But Chester was one of several men in those days who influenced me to want to travel and be a salesman. Chester also had a brother, Kelly Layne, who worked with or for him and sometimes made the run. Kelly was also a lot of fun but not as much as his brother.
Once when I was working at the Hope Center Homeless Shelter in Lexington, Kentucky, I had a client who told me had stolen one of Chester's Tom's Peanut Trucks from a small country store on Mud Creek in Floyd County. He said he and a couple of other guys were sitting on the store porch about half drunk when the driver pulled up, stopped, put the truck in neutral with the engine running, and ran into the store. The truck was already pointed down the creek since the driver had come over the hill from the opposite creek. My client said he was drinking, broke, and unemployed. So as soon as the store door slammed, he jumped off the porch into the truck and took off to a chop shop in Magoffin County and sold the truck and inventory all to the chop shop operator. Apparently, no one on the porch admitted to knowing who he was and the state police couldn't have gotten to the scene in less than thirty minutes in those days. He was probably close to Magoffin County before the trooper ever took the report. I wish I had heard the story while Chester was still alive so I could have compared it to his version. I did come to know the chop shop operator later but he also died before I ever asked him about the story.
Another of my favorite salesmen was Harold Purkey, Jr. who drove a Kern's Bread truck out of western Virginia into Knott and Floyd Counties. During the summers, Harold would allow me to ride with him from our store down Beaver Creek to the end of his route in Punkin Center between Wayland and Garrett. He would drop me off at home on his way back south to Virginia. Harold liked to talk, had a long and cumbersome route, and I am sure he liked the company. I also picked up a lot of my desire to be a salesman from riding with Harold.
Bill Parish drove a Chappell's Milk route out of Hazard Kentucky for many years and was popular in the area. Before my father quit drinking, which took place about the time I was born, Bill used to bring him a case or two of beer from Hazard every week as a favor. I am sure it was illegal and against company policy. But to my knowledge, Bill never suffered any consequences for it. Hazard was wet and both Knott and Floyd Counties were dry which made Hazard beer a lot cheaper than buying from the bootleggers. I suspect Bill probably did this favor for more than one of his regular customers.
Talmadge Vanderpool drove a Betsy Ross Bread truck out of Prestonsburg into Knott County for several years also. Talmadge was a fine individual but he just wasn't as sociable, talkative, or funny as most of the other salesmen.
Another who also influenced me was Bernie Whitt who sold groceries for a company in Paintsville, Kentucky. Bernie was very quiet, low key, and efficient. He wasn't nearly as much fun as Chester but he was a good salesman. There were actually two grocery companies in Paintsville which serviced Knott County. I remember the man who sold for the other but can't remember his name. He died sometime in the late 1950's or early 1960's in a house fire. As I recall, he woke up to find his gas water heater had gone out and when he struck a match the room had apparently filled with natural gas and exploded. He once brought me a little, brown, bob tailed puppy he had found at an illegal roadside dump when he stopped to relieve himself. He was hauling the dog along in his car looking for someone to give it to because he just couldn't leave it to die at the dump. I called the dog Tarzan but can't ever remember the salesman's name.
Another traveling salesman, I saw a lot of and liked a lot was Jack Childers who was self employed as a meat salesman out of Prestonsburg. Very few country stores attempted to sell fresh meat and only sold frozen meat plus some bacon and cold cuts such as bologna. Jack came up Beaver once a week in an old refrigerated utility truck much like a wholesale ice cream truck. He was talkative, friendly, and full of information. Jack lived not far from the site of the Floyd County School Bus Wreck and another of his customers was a couple who ran a country store and lost all their children in the wreck. Jack brought us a great deal of information about the wreck, the search for the victims, and the lingering after effects on the survivors. My parents seemed to have a closer link to that couple because of their shared profession and shared suppliers. I was also the same age as many of the children on the bus. We had other salesmen who supplied that couple and our store as well. However, most of the others just didn't seem to invest themselves into a human relationship with those grieving parents the way Jack did.
For me, the traveling salesmen represented a doorway to the outside world, travel, extended human contact, and people and places I had not seen. They were an invaluable source of information for an inquisitive, talkative boy who longed to learn more about the world. They were usually good talkers, friendly, interesting, and funny. It was a hard job to be a traveling salesman. But just like the men who influenced me to sell and many I sold with later, I enjoyed every day I ever spent driving or walking the hills of Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia selling a variety of items. It also gave me the opportunity to get to know several dozen other country stores in both states. Living and working in a country store was a good life. But it was bland compared to the life of the men who jumped in a car or truck five or six days a week, spent their time in different counties or states every day, and knew hundreds or thousands of people over a wide geographic area. They always knew the most current gossip, who had died, who got married, who bought a registered bull or a fancy coon hound, who had a baby, who got arrested, who went broke, and any other news worth hearing.
My very first memory is of my father holding me in his arms at the window of our store on Steele's Creek in the middle of the night watching a neighbor's house burn. I admit that is an odd first memory. But most of my earliest memories are set in one of the two stores we ran. Late in the evening, especially in winter, men would gather in from all around the neighborhood and tell stories in front of the old natural gas stove. No, our stores didn't have a pot bellied stove. I knew a few that did but not ours. We would sometimes split the shell on chestnuts and place them on the front of the old ceramic burner stove to roast. But the best part was listening to my father and the other older men tell stories of the times when they were young, and Knott County had no paved roads. They talked about hunting, fishing, farming, logging, coal mining, religion, politics, and unionism. I learned a lot from some of those fellows too. I learned that you always plant crops and castrate livestock by the signs. I learned that you never keep a chicken killing dog. I learned that you never cross a picket line and nothing is lower than a scab. I learned how Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry Truman saved the world. I learned that a straddle pole is nearly as low as a scab. For the uninitiated, a straddle pole is a person who crosses party lines to vote. I learned how to be a Yellow Dog Democrat and I have never forgotten. I learned what a Hoover Box and Hoover Times and a Hooverville were and I learned who caused all of them. But Hoover Boxes kept a lot of poor people alive during the depression. They are a homemade box trap, made from chicken wire or wood, baited and set out to catch possums, ground hogs, rabbits, and coons to prevent starvation. For those of you who don't know the song, listen to Tom T. Hall's "Don't Forget The Coffee, Billy Joe". It never mentions a Hoover Box. But it says an awful lot about the times and attitudes I am talking about.
As I said early in this posting, there are very few real country stores today. There are many who still claim to run country stores. The old country stores sold you a bologna and cracker sandwich not a pizza or chicken wings. The owners knew they were running a store and never tried to make it a restaurant. They never crossed lines. They generally never endorsed candidates in politics but allowed all candidates to leave their campaign materials on the counter and stapled to the outside walls beside every body else's. They sold fifty pound buckets of lard, onion sets, seed potatoes, brogan shoes, Levis, horse shoes, and nails. They let people charge a month at a time and most of the people paid. They might from time to time let you sell a few food stamps or pay your bill with them. It might have been illegal but it kept their neighbors afloat and that is much of what they were about. Very few owners of country stores ever got rich. But most died with hundreds of friends who remembered times their children would have starved without the store owner's generosity.
 |
| Buttermilk Junction, Library of Congress Collection |
There were several other country stores I was in on a fairly regular basis over the years. Right above the store on Steele's Creek was a store owned by Earl Manns. Earl bought scrap metals which my parents and most other store owner's didn't do. As teenagers, myself and my cousins Johnny and Jack Terry often sold a little scrap metal to Earl when we could find it. Right beside our store on Beaver Creek was another owned by Miles and Alta Hall. For several years, Alta and two of her daughters also ran the Dema Post Office. I am not directly related to Miles and Alta but one of their sons is my uncle by marriage, Edgar Hall. One of my mother's brothers, Mabry Hicks, married Alta's sister Hazel Layne. Another of my mother's sisters, Eva Hicks, had a son with Hazel and Alta's brother Milt Layne. It is interesting that two families could have intermarried and intermingled so much and I am still not directly related to most of them. Right up Beaver Creek about two miles, Silas Slone ran another small store for many years. Silas and his wife had no children and their store died when they became too old to run it. Silas had two unmarried sisters who also ran a store for many years on Caney Creek about four or five miles from ours.
I can only think of four genuine, or nearly genuine country stores left in the entire nation today. I have added the link to Hog Island Cottages And Country Store in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan not far from Mackinac Bridge. They have a website, a liquor license, and rental cabins which all says they aren't a real country store. But they sell smoked fish and a few years ago when I was there their coolers, shelves, and display cases were about the same models as the ones my parents were using in the 1950's. It is well worth visiting if you are ever in the Upper Peninsula. They also sold me the first pastie I ever ate. A pastie is a fried meat, rutabaga, carrot, and potato pie which the Welsh iron ore miners used to carry into the mines in the area. They are awesome, rib sticking food, and where else can you buy food which contains rutabagas. Near Cannel City, Kentucky, on Highway 191 at the Junction of Highway 1000, is the Caney Valley Grocery run by Roger Finch. It also sells pizza and chicken wings and has a tanning bed which says it isn't a real country store. But it is located in an old two story store building that is nearly a hundred years old with some display cases and shelves close to that era. Roger is also in the antique business and the store is filled with hundreds of items, in addition to the groceries, which go all the way back to the days of the genuine, early country stores. Plus, Roger Finch, his family, and their employees are all so friendly that they compensate for the drawbacks. It is well worth visiting. The third store I want to mention, I don't even know for sure if it's still operating. But the last time I drove from Whitesburg to Harlan over Cumberland Mountain there was a store in operation there which had been in a family for three generations, had all the original shelves and display cases, didn't sell pizza or chicken wings, and smelled and felt and looked like it was about 1955. If it's still there let me know and go buy something to help keep it open.
The fourth country store I know of which has unfortunately burned to the ground was the Family Market #2 on US23 between Ulysses and Louisa in Lawrence County Kentucky. It was owned by Bob and Dianne Castle who also own a couple of others in Lawrence, Martin, and Johnson Counties. They ran a deli in the store on US23 which made the best bologna sandwich in Kentucky. As of 2013, you could buy a loaded bologna and cheese sandwich there for about $2.00 which was a phenomenal price for a couple of slices of bologna, bread, cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayonnaise. I stopped there nearly every time I visited my cousin in Lawrence County and recently an auctioneer friend of mine from Huntington told me he also stopped there for a bologna sandwich when he was on the road in Eastern Kentucky. The Castles also sold a few antiques and a lot of the older, more rural, and less common items that aren't found at Seven Eleven. It was always well worth a stop if you found yourself on US23 in Lawrence County Kentucky. Now go out and find your own favorite country store and send me a message about it.
 |
| An Abandoned Country Store At Blaine, Kentucky, Photo by Roger D. Hicks |
Editorial Note: I originally wrote and posted this blog post on May 29, 2011, in the early days of this blog. It was always one of my most popular blog posts. But, recently, I discovered that a business on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or their blog posting service had hijacked the link to this post. I had actually been in that business a few years ago and had nothing but good things to say about it. That is no longer true and they shall remain nameless here. I sent that business an e-mail asking them to cease and desist from hijacking that link and my related page views. They never did a thing about it. I do not keep an attorney on retainer so I chose to not pay one several hundred dollars to write a cease and desist letter to these Yankee Usurpers. So I have found myself copying and pasting this post with a new title and a few edits to cover changes in information in the past 8 + years. I hope you still enjoy the post.
