Big changes in a small town

The story in Sunday’s Appalachian News-Express about Food City’s celebration of 50 years of business is as notable for what it didn’t say as for what it did. For there, buried deep inside this report was the revelation that the celebration was taking place at the newest outlet just opened in Vansant, Va., a mere four miles away from Jack Smith’s first store in Grundy, and while the story didn’t come out and say it, I knew without a doubt that the curtain had fallen on my favorite Food City location

Well, it wasn’t like I didn’t know that the Grundy store’s days were numbered. After all, I’d discussed it many times with the store’s personnel. But like an old friend whose name you spot in the obituary, it came as a bit of a shock, nonetheless. And as is the case when you must deal with bad news about an old friend, I experienced the phase known as denial. Maybe, I thought, the old store was still opened. After all, there would be no store in Grundy if this one closed.

So, with grocery list in hand, and some faint hope I started out for the big city of Grundy, fully aware of the fact that I might have to back track a little in a worse case scenario, and head farther west than I normally travel. And sure enough, when I got to where my travels might have ended only a week or so earlier, I spotted a darkened building denuded of its sign, and a parking lot that had only one vehicle. An old friend, indeed, was gone.

It’s hard to believe that this 8,800 square foot location is now too small. In 1955, when a lot of mom and pop locations that are now just a memory were still in business, this must have seemed incredibly large. But, alas, no longer. Now, a store of this size is a relic, a dinosaur in the 21st century. So there was nothing to do but replace it, and the replacement store’s size, at 46,500 square feet, shows just how out of date the old store was.

But for a while, the old store was state-of-the-art. For instance, the doors here were automatic, and at a time when the public didn’t see such a thing on an everyday basis, as was the case with one lady who came into town to do her weekly shopping. As my Dad told it, she went up to the store, and straight to the “out” door. Of course the door wouldn’t open easily, but this didn’t stop our heroine, and after a mighty struggle, she actually got the door opened.

Now there is nothing my Dad loved more than a good laugh, and he was still laughing when something occurred to him. If she had gone in through the out door, she’d probably come out through the in door.

Sure enough, when the lady made her exit, another tremendous struggle with the automatic door ensued, but, as Bugs Bunny once said, clean livin’ prevailed, and as the lady made her way towards her car, she said to my Dad, who managed briefly to quell his laughter, “Them’s the hardest doors to git in and out of I ever did see.”

At this, Dad could only choke back his laughter, and agree that, “yes, they are kind of hard to ‘git in and out of’”.

Speaking of those weekly shopping trips, that is just what they were when this store was not so old. You didn’t go to a supermarket except to get those items you didn’t grow in your garden or couldn’t get at that those mom and pop stores that were still everywhere. Still there were those customers who took that to an extreme. And speaking of those who took such extreme measures, my Dad was on one of his monthly shopping trips (yes, he shopped only once a month), when he spotted a fellow shopper who was obviously not a city dweller. Like my father, this man knew what he wanted, and it took him only a few minutes to get it. In no time flat, according to Dad, he was checking out with his only purchases, a 50-pound sack of potatoes, and a 25-pound sack of pinto beans.

“There was one thing for sure, ” Dad said, “he wasn’t going to go hungry.”

Well, that was then, and this is now. Now the old store just doesn’t have what the public demands. So you change with the times, or you get left behind. And Jack Smith, et al, must be doing something right. After all, K-VA-T stores are doing a good business in an area that has seen national stores like Kroger’s and Wynn Dixie leave, even in the face of competition from the likes of Wal-Mart.

It’s just too bad that sometimes the cost of remaining competitive is a store that is as familiar to you as an old, but comfortable pair of shoes.