I have always wanted to own a small store. I have a friend in Virginia who owns a little place where he sells grocery and convenience items and has a little kitchen. He tells me that I am insane if I want to open a store. "You don't own the store, it owns you," he said. He usually works from morning until night, practically living behind the counter.

Even so, I find the idea of working behind the counter of my own little establishment appealing for one reason or the other. I find it hard to believe that the community store is dying. I suppose my idea of what a store is has something to do with the small store owners I knew as a child.

Our home was situated near the intersection of three counties and there were stores in each county within easy driving distance. Within three miles of the house were three grocery stores with gas stations, a junk store and pawn shop and a fruit market. Right now, I am just going to concentrate on the stores. Sounds like a booming metropolis when you write it down, but actually there were probably no more than 500 people in that three mile ring encompassing our home and all the stores. Sometimes I wonder how they all made a living, now that I know how hard it is to do so.

One of the stores was owned by a fellow named Dale Lyons, who sported a big white beard. We had a grocery charge account there and often paid for our purchases at the first of the month. That may have been the very reason that we shopped there to start with. I remember trying to get something and my mother telling me we didn't have the money. "Why don't you just write a check?" I asked.

Two of the stores are still in business, one under different ownership. The fruit market is gone altogether. People now drive about 12 miles to get the same stuff they used to be able to get three miles from home. At least half the stores I can remember growing up are gone, many now converted to other uses.

I suppose there is merit to being able to buy lousy goods from China and Taiwan for half the price of well-made American goods, but I just fail to see it. Not only do we now have poor quality goods, we also lost most of our manufacturing jobs.

The more people drive or buy from somewhere else, the less they can buy close to home. We can see that right here in town. At one time, Sparta had a lot more stores than it now has. Who wouldn't like to have Smitheys back on Main Street and other establishments to peruse on a trip to town? Those were the days when a trip to town meant something besides going to the bank or the post office. We still have some fine shops and stores, but it just isn't like it was once.

Of course, the days of the country store are now mostly over with. In some areas here in the county, I can still see the same kinds of stores I grew up around. However, far more have closed than remain open. Stores owned by a face everyone in the community knows, where you can still go get milk and bread or eggs if you run low. Those are the same kind of places where the owner still offers charge accounts and people on fixed incomes coming in to pay off their bill at the first of the month, just to start all over again.

I went by a store the other day and watched the older fellows sitting around and talking, the same way they used to when I grew up. They were spinning yarns and laughing, sipping on a cold soda or a cup of hot coffee.

My grandmother always shopped for groceries at the same two stores until the day she died. Actually, for the last years of her life, she would make out a list or call it in and my parents would go and get her groceries for her.

The grocers, both older ladies carrying on family businesses, knew my grandmother personally and knew exactly what she ate every week. Of course, it isn't hard to remember a box of Cheerios and a gallon of milk. I think she lived on Cheerios for years. She could have done worse.

One of the stores had an old Frigidaire in the back with bottles of Mountain Dew (with the little privy and the bearded mountain man on the bottle) and those little bottles of Coke. It also had a big old stove in the middle of the floor with a spittoon beside it and wooden ladder back chairs around it.

I remembering picking up a grape and eating it in the store. The man saw me and asked me if I paid for it. When I shook my head, he asked me how much money I had. I emptied my pockets, amounting to about three cents and a big piece of lint. "That will just about pay for that grape," he said, taking another swig of his 'cough syrup,' which for some reason smelled like whiskey. I never heard him cough, I guess the stuff worked.

Another time I picked up a tomato and took a big bite out of it, right in front of the front counter. My mother scolded me and tried to pay for it. The man behind the counter asked me if I wanted some salt. I think that is what we are giving up for sake of variety. Our communities are losing their special personality that was once so apparent in every backwater store. In many ways those stores were what gave us a sense of community. Where else could one catch up on the latest news and gossip, pick up some needed items and visit with friends? These days, we all live inside our own bubbles, complete with all the amenities one could want. We truly are blessed to live in a rural area where some of these fine establishments, though fewer and farther between, can still be found.

I am sure that my experiences aren't that much different from those of other folks my age and somewhat older who grew up around here.

Yet I wonder how much different it would have been in even earlier years, when stores had hitching posts and folks could still trade a few chickens for some sugar or flour.

I remember Wesley Gilliam's wife, I think her name was Laura McMillian Gilliam, on Pine Swamp Road telling me about the old store in her yard and how folks once traded what they had for what they needed. I don't know its former name or who ran it back then. The old store building is still there, but they have both passed. She sure did make a good bologna sandwich, with lettuce, a thick slab of homegrown tomato and onion. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. Maybe I'll run down to the store and buy myself a sandwich.

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