Just a few steps east of the stoplight, where 158 meets Highway 35, sits an aged and weathered store, a vacant restaurant, and the most cherished memory vault of my entire adolescence. I drove by it a few weeks ago just like I do every time I go back to visit or pass through – slowly – half wanting to stop and spend hours exploring, and half wanting to run like hell.
I’ve been inside only once in the last decade, naive to the real effect this place had had on me, thinking that I could actually walk in and grab a block of cheese and a quick hint of my childhood and be on my way. (Bah!) I didn’t get the cheese on that trip.
Instead, I realized quickly that the nice man behind the counter wasn’t Miss Becky or Miss Deanie, that it wasn’t 1994, and I was either going to puke or sob if I didn’t back away fast. I made it to the car before the ugly crying started. Whew – wasn’t expecting that.
Once upon a time this place was my Disneyland. It was full of candy and hand trucks to ride, and some of the greatest characters of my happy childhood’s movie. I can still hear the sound of my daddy’s key in the lock and smell the can of Pledge behind the checkout counter. I can hear the loud hum of the back room and taste the chocolate-covered peanuts and peanut brittle that no other Christmas candy will ever beat. I can see the line of customers at the meat counter and I can feel immediately and fully right at home if I let my mind settle back there.
I got off the school bus right there at the front. Every day without fail (at least the way my memory tells it) my Pop was standing in the window waiting with a smile. He’d opened that store in 1954, and saved a special seat for me and my glass-bottle Coke to take a break and have a snack in his office after school. Good grief, what I wouldn’t give to share a Coke with him now.
I spent afternoons straightening the stock on the shelves until I was old enough to carry a box cutter of my own in my back pocket. I learned to keep all the bills facing the same direction in the register if you wanted to count change quicker. I loved watching my daddy talk to his customers like they were his friends (because they were), and I loved it even more when the old ladies would ask, “Ain’t you Johnny’s baby? Good Lord girl, you done grown.” My response: beaming.
Today, the locks have changed, the characters have all moved on, and life for us all looks very very different than it did back then. But no matter how many years go by or how many turns we take, the fact is that I’m still Johnny’s Baby, we still belong to J.C., and to me, THIS will always be our place.
Somewhere along the way I thought I outgrew that little store, that little town, that little life. So often these days I feel like I’ve lost the little girl with the grocery store feet. Maybe I’ve been wearing high heels too long.
She’s still in there though. She’s the piece of me that knows how to make friendly small talk with a perfect stranger. She’s the one who knows that everybody (from the town drunk to the town mayor) buys toilet paper. She knows that hard work is made for more than money, and that when you add a little kindness and a few good folks to it, it doesn’t feel like work anyway. She knows what it means to build something and keep at it until it becomes a part of you. She’s also the piece that understands that it’s okay to turn the page. Just because a chapter ends, that doesn’t mean it can’t always be one of your favorite parts of the story.
Though it might be another decade before I go back in, driving by that store these days makes me smile. I smile because I know there’s such beauty in turning the page.
Just last weekend I got to hang out for a while in another place that felt right at home, just two hours east of that old Disneyland. My daddy has the keys, my Pop’s picture is on the wall, and the two little girls I love the most in this world learned a little bit about straightening stock on the shelves. Eventually I pray they’ll get the time and the chance to learn the other lessons too, if they’re lucky, with grocery store feet and all.
Visit www.obxbutcherblock.com to learn more about our place.
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