Half a Century Ago
Half a century ago, one thing I really looked forward to was a trip to Revis' general store; it was a 4 maybe 5 mile walk from our farm to Whittier , NC . We had to walk through Gateway which was one mile from our house, the Gateway had a gas station owned by Harry Shelton who sold used cars, tires, car parts, cold drinks, cigarettes, candy and gas from an old hand pump with a 5 gallon glass top, we could pump up from one to 5 gallons of gas which sold for 12 cents per gallon. Now that sounds cheap compared to $4 dollars per gallon we pay today, but I made 15 cents per hour if and when I could find work. I didn't have a car so gas wasn't to be figured into my budget.
But at the Revis store, there were clothes, bolts of cloth, hardware, shoes, hats, and feed; just about anything one would want on a farm. Mr. Revis had a big pot belly wood stove a pickle barrel with a checker board on it and there was always a game going on. Above the checker board a picture of Jesus and the American Flag hang on the wall. Did you notice I called him Mr. a word one never hears anymore? At his store, world problems were solved and elections were bought and sold. There was a separate store room where the finer things in life could be purchased like cigars and moonshine, and maybe some fine bourbon and bottle beer.
In that fine old store, I learned about honor, duty to my country, God, Jesus, respect for my fellow man, whether I had money or not I could walk away from Mr. Revis' store with anything I wanted, the amount I owed him was written in a book with a pencil and marked off as I made my regular payments. Now credit in those was different than it is today, in that before you would borrow you were damn sure that you could pay it back. Failure to pay a debt could brand a man and in some cases it would cause bones to break and blood to leak out of the body and in extreme cases even death would occur.
There was a phone in the store and he sold comic books too. People were tried, convicted and dealt with for things like child and wife abuse; on the other hand money was raised for hardships like health problems and surgery.
That old general store sorted out wars, it lived through depressions, social programs even segregation, I never saw a black person until I was 21 years old and was drafted into the military. But I had learned in that old store that all men are created equal. I learned that America was the only place in the world where a man could create his own destiny. Also I learned that a man should offer up his life for God and Country.
I wonder what would happen if every convenience store would install a checker board and welcome old timers like me to share stories and knowledge.
By no means am I saying that those were the good old days, that they were, but times were hard, my day began well before dawn and ended with the light of a lantern. Very, very few people were overweight because we worked and we all worked hard, we chopped wood to heat and cook with. We canned and preserved our food. We plowed our fields with horses and planted many acres of land to feed our livestock. We had no electricity, no car, no running water and an outside toilet. That reminds me of a story; Papa ( my grandfather ) got a real letter, that company was coming, so he wrote to Sears and Roebuck and asked them to send him some toilet paper, Sears wrote back to look in the catalog and send the catalog number and they would be glad to send the toilet paper to him. He replied with these words, Mr. Sears if I had a catalog, I would not need any toilet paper.
One thing I remember from that old General Store is the smell, feed, tobacco, fertilizer, leather, sweat and have you ever smelled love.
Every now and then a stranger or a drifter would stop at the Revis store, my, my, what a welcome visit that was because with him came new stories and world news and if he happen to be driving a car that was certain to be the center of attention. One time I walked into Mr. Revis' store and there was a stranger sitting in the corner behind the stove where the checker board use to sit. This stranger was very exciting and such stories he could tell, to me he knew everything, the old timers would sit fixed in the rocking chairs, buckets, barrels and on the floor just staring at him and listening to his every word for hours on end. He had images, drawing and music, his knowledge was endless. Every week day about 6pm a fellow called Walter Cronkite was with the visitor and every Saturday Marshall Dillion had stories of the old west he was followed by wrestling.
I left home shortly after the visitor came, but last year I was back at the store, the 3 rd generation of Revis' still have that old store and the visitor was still there in the same place, he was more colorful, slimmer and much larger and his voice was strong, Many people was listening and looking at him now, the visitor was so popular that he now had a name tag, SONY. Did you know that SONY stands for Standard Oil of New York.
I stayed a while and my mind went back to those wonderful years, no one noticed that I was a stranger drifting though, the old store had many additions and was quite large. I bought a Pepsi and a bag of peanuts which I poured into the Pepsi,
I was crying as I left. I realized that the old store had like myself, grown up and became successful in the land of milk and honey. A picture of Jesus and The American Flag still hang above the TV. Some things never change.
