Flip Flops and Pajamas: March 2016

No one knows exactly when the old store building was built. The ones that knew have passed away. My mother, who just turned 89, remembers that in the 1930's the building was used as a mill. It was probably erected sometime in the early 1900's. Mr. Robert Weaver decided to become a merchant since he already owned the building, he made a few repairs and set-up shop. I feel compelled to write this story because it represents several generations of my family. I was reared in the country store as were my own two sons. If only those walls could talk, we would laugh, cry and shake our heads in disbelief at was heard and seen there.

Frith's Grocery 1955-1990

As I said earlier, no one knows exactly how old the building is, but we do know a little bit about the soul of the place. Mr. Weaver updated the building with some siding and put in a few staples for his neighbors in the Hiatt community of Rockcastle County. Whenever he had customer, they went to the house next door where Mr. Weaver lived and got him to go with them to purchase what they needed. He carried coffee, flour, and cornmeal, as well as farming supplies like nails, tacks and fencing supplies. The small farming community of Hiatt was like the rest of communities in southeastern Ky., just a wide place in the road. There was a post office, but it closed a long time ago. Most people alive today don't even call this location Hiatt. Some how the name has been changed to Brindle Ridge. Times chancge and we all accept them and move on.

Mr. Weaver and his wife, Eunia, decided to sell the grocery store business in 1955. My grandparents, Tom and Hallie Parkerson Frith purchased the store and the 22 acres that went with it and named the store, Frith's Grocery. They lived in the house next door, but decided to remodel the store once again and add on a room behind the store building for them to live in while my parents, Jack and Ila Wade Lambert, lived in the house. Years later my grandparents attached a mobile home to the back of the store and lived there. They knew they could make more money if they were always available for the customers and also added gasoline tanks to better serve the community because by then most of the neighbors drove cars and used tractors on their farms.

I was born in 1957 when the store was in it's heyday. I was raised by my parents, grandparents and every customer who came to the store. Granny and Grandpa opened the store early and kept it open late. Once a week a "drummer" from Berea Wholesale would stop by and take Granny's order. What she ordered would be delivered the next day. Sometimes Granny let me stock the shelves. She did all the paperwork while Grandpa pumped gasoline and tended to their farm. My mother cooked the meals and tended to me. There was always someone at the store. They would come in, offer to buy everyone a Coca-Cola, then sit-down in one of the chairs Granny provided to visit awhile. Sometimes there would be as many as 15 to 20 people sitting and standing in the small room. Granny always sat in a rocker in the back of the store. If seats were scarce, customers just turned a wooden "pop" box on it's end and sat there. Granny didn't like it if someone sat on the bright yellow drink box. She wrote a sign that said, "Please don't sit on the box" just to keep people from bending the lid in. She didn't care to tell you verbally that she "didn't allow no sitting' on the drink machine." Every night when everyone had gone home, my grandparents would fill up the drink box so the first customer the next morning would have an ice cold drink. The most popular drink was a small bottle of Coca-Cola.

The store was located three miles out of Brodhead on the highway 1505. This was the main road off highway 150 from Brodhead over to Conway where you could pick-up highway 25, which led you to Berea and interstate 75. There was a lot of through traffic, so Granny fixed bologna sandwiches for passer bys as well as the locals whose wives were too busy or not at home to fix them lunch. She kept a roll of Fischer's bologna in an old Frigidaire refrigerator as well as a block of American cheese. Boy, those sandwiches were good. People still say they can just taste those bologna sandwiches and wonder why they can't find any bologna that good anymore.

Me with my dog, Ida February 1960
Store in background

Since highway 1505 was busy with workers on their way to Berea to work, gasoline was a big commodity. Granny's store was located at the perfect spot to stop and get gas and cigarettes before heading out to work. Granny sometimes jokingly called her business the "Jot 'em Down Store," because she had so many customers who bought on credit.

My favorite memory of my childhood was the late summer nights when it was too hot to stay inside so all the neighbors gathered in the yard. My cousins and I pulled up a chair or a pop box and sat around in a circle listening quietly while the adults told tales. When the topic moved on to something we weren't interested in, we would start a game of tag or play under the lights above the gas tanks. If I didn't have anyone to play with, I enjoyed just listening to the adults talk. Several men had served in World War II. They wouldn't talk about their time overseas very much, but every now and then they would open up. Their voices would become softer as they relived the battles. I didn't understand why everyone spoke in hushed tones sometimes and a feeling of sadness hung over us all. I remember feeling such sympathy for them when they told how cold and wet they were, or worst of all, how homesick they were. I learned early on that war was the worst thing a human would endure.

There was something so special about sitting outside on a warm summer night with lighting bugs silently passing over our heads and the smell of the mimosa blooms in the air. The silence was only broken by an occasional car whizzing by on its way to some important place.

If the mosquitoes were biting, Granny would start what she called a gnat fire. If the speaker was on a roll, even the bugs wouldn't run us inside. I learned how to farm, cook, clean, tend to sick livestock, take care of babies and vote democrat. I learned cuss words as well as prayers. I also learned how to fish, hunt and how wonderful Coach Adolph Rupp up in Lexington was.

Daytime at the store was great too. Grandpa had a great idea that I'll never forget. After the customers got their bologna sandwiches, they wanted to eat under the shade of the maple trees. Grandpa tied a huge industrial sized fan that his brother who worked in the Champagne, Illinois Dump, brought him. I thought to myself, "Wow! This is better than air conditioning."

Whenever a member of the community passed away, Granny and Grandpa closed the store during the funeral. She told me never to count the cars in a funeral procession for that was bad luck.

Granny was terribly afraid of thunderstorms. She had a storm cellar built when she and Grandpa first bought the place so that is where we headed anytime it thundered. If there was a customer in the store, Granny would tell them a storm was coming and she was going to the cellar. They were invited to go with her or go home, most went home if they could. Granny kept an axe in the cellar in case a tree fell across the door. She also had a kerosene lamp for light and she always carried a bottle of Coke as well as her nerve pills. I hated going to the cellar and wasn't the least bit afraid of storms. The cellar was dark, damp and smelled. It did make a cool play house in the heat of the day though.

Other than when there was a funeral, the store never closed. Sometime on a snowy Sunday afternoon, my grandparents locked the door early, but if someone drove up needing something, they would open for them. Granny had no tolerance for those who may have drank too much alcohol. She would throw them out personally. This would upset me. I would cry and beg her to be good to them. One serious drinker ended up hiding in our dog's house. One got hit across the chest with a broom and knocked backward up against the tree. It didn't pay to rile her up. She made a lasting impression on me in so many ways. She was tough on the neighbor boys too. They enjoyed teasing her took to calling her Blue like the color of the rinse she put on her hair. One teenager, Ray Lear, will probably never forget the trouble he found himself in when he rode his pony in the store. He rode it in the front door and out the back door, passing Granny on the way.

I got married in August of 1975 in the yard behind the store. Grandpa had developed cancer and was very sick. I thought that if I married at home maybe he would be able to attend, but he was in the hospital when Mike and I married. Grandpa died not even a month later. After Grandpa's death, Granny just didn't have the heart to run the store, so my mom took it over in 1976. My father had died of a sudden heart attack in 1971 and to make ends meet, Mama had worked odd jobs. It seemed like the thing to do would be for mom to take over the running of the store. In 1978, our son, Kyle was born and followed by son number 2, Neil, in 1981. Sadly, Granny passed away in her sleep in 1982. Kyle remembers Granny, whom he called Na-Na, but Neil, who was only 4 months old, doesn't. I was working so Mom got the job as babysitter. She was working too, but tending the store allowed her to watch the boys and do her job at the same time. The customers in the store had huge influences on their lives just like they had on my life years earlier.

Mom ran the store much the same way Granny and Grandpa had. She sold the mobile home that they lived in and also made some updates. She replaced the old Frigidaire with a bigger milk cooler, installed air conditioning which meant now no one left the comfort of the store for a shade tree.

Mom was a widow for 19 years. In 1989, she met Hershel Taylor whom she later married. In March, 1990, she closed the store for good. The old building is still standing. So many memories are alive in there. Many of the daily "loafers" have passed on. Sometimes we see people who were small children when the store closed and they always tell us they have such good memories of getting to visit the store. They remember exactly what their parents would let them buy, such as a pop, chips and maybe some candy. We all encounter changes in our lives, I lost Mike in 2014 to cancer and in 2015, Mom lost Hershel, also to cancer. I have 4 grandchildren, Jack, Camden, Gray and Layla. Neil lives in Georgetown, Kyle lives on Granny and Grandpa's farm in a new house located behind Mom's house, the same one she's lived in since the 1950's. I have such fond memories of friends, family, and life lived in that little old store.