The Appalachian Country Store Was Perfect — Until We Let This Happen (Ours Closed in 1979)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com There is a brass bell over my front door. For fifty one years it rang over the door of Virgil Amburgey's country store at the mouth of our creek, and the last time it rang there was a Saturday in October of nineteen seventy nine. I was the one who walked out under it. That store was perfect. The liars bench and the pot bellied stove where the school children waited for the bus. The credit book that ran on nothing but a man's word. The egg basket you traded for coffee, the honest scale, the candy jars, the telephone Virgil would open up at two in the morning, and the Christmas oranges for every child on the creek. Three things killed it. The first two you could blame on the world. The third one you cannot, because the third one was us. On that last afternoon Virgil handed me one page torn out of his credit book, folded twice, and told me not to open it in there. I will tell you what was on it. My grandfather kept the farm ledger for most of his life, and down in the margins, in pencil, he wrote how a thing was done. A few years back I sat down with that ledger and wrote out ninety three of the things he knew how to do with his hands, the way they used to get passed around that stove. So tell me down below. What was the name of the store at the end of your road, who ran it, and what did a nickel buy you there? https://burlsizemore.com