I don't know about other parts of the nation, but here in Kentucky, country stores used to be fairly numerous up to the last couple of decades of the last century. I can remember 5 different country stores on the state road that runs by my house. Of the 5, the only one I ever visited much was Dot store. I often hung out there the first few years I got out of the Army and began farming in 1972. Alvah, the store keeper, had OCD big time regarding numbers. I bought soft drinks there in returnable bottles. Before he rang up my purchase, Alvah would move his finger to each bottle cap as he counted out loud, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.” several times. At the close of each business day, he would remain in the store several hours and do a full inventory of all his stock. He would then walk across the road to his house carrying a pistol in one hand and all his store’s cash in a cigar box in the other hand. That habit was his eventual undoing. One evening a robber armed with a deer rifle was waiting for him in his yard. For some reason, he attempted to enter his house instead of complying with the robber and got shot. He lived but never recovered enough to reopen the store. The robber was never caught. The store was reopened several times under different management, but never stayed open long. The building is now a residence.
That’s Shorty posing with Alvah. Shorty was one of the regulars at the store. I don’t know which particular syndrome would properly describe him, but he wasn’t bright enough to earn a living. He did know how to sharpen a pocket knife and earned a little pocket money doing that at the store.
Here are some more of the Dot store regulars. That one guy who doesn’t look surprised and a little alarmed at seeing a camera is Kenneth, Alvah’s brother. I never knew what was wrong with Kenneth either, but he never spoke and just sat there, looking down no matter what was happening. That’s James Ipox trying to dodge being in the shot. He wouldn’t say why, but my speculation was that he may have been wanted by the law somewhere. The family of the old guy who looks to be shielding his eyes against the sun asked me to make copies of this picture some years later. James Ray Sharp, on the far left, was more than anyone else, synonymous with Dot store. He lived about a half mile away and would walk to the store every day when it opened at 10:00 A.M. and would stay until the store closed at about 5:00 P.M. James Ray had no genetic abnormality that anyone knew of and had, at minimum, ordinary intelligence, but he never learned how to function well enough to either truly earn a living farming or develop any sort of relationship with a woman. He owned a farm left to him by his father and pretended to raise a tobacco crop, but his crop was something of a joke in the neighborhood. He didn’t have a functioning tractor and worked up a little ground with a grubbing hoe to plant a tiny quantity of tobacco. His whole crop would weigh less than 100 pounds. Somehow he existed like this for several decades, surviving mostly by not spending any money and doing a little day labor for other farmers. With some outside help, he somehow began drawing a small check near the end of his life. With today’s perspective, one could add as a positive aspect to James Ray’s life — he didn’t leave much of a carbon footprint.
I don’t know that I picked up much wisdom from my brief store loafing days. About the only brief conversation I remember well enough to quote is this exchange with an old regular named Jim Wood.
— Jim, in a voice slow and deep — “Do you remember that barn that used to be between that stable on the Jim Joyner place where you live and that fired tobacco barn on the Thad Rogers place?”
Me — “No I don’t.”
Jim — “I didn’t reckon you would. It burned down in 1925.”
I wouldn’t say that my few years as a frequent visitor to Dot store added anything to its ambience. I do think I may have been the only person to capture any sort of photographic record of its existence.