“Is that thing real?”
I asked in the general direction of the front counter as I came in to Stanfield’s General Store on Main Street in Four Oaks, bypassing pumpkins and mums just outside the door. The thing in question was a giant stuffed turkey who looked poised to make a run for it.
“Yeah, he’s real. Well, he was. Rufus stuffed him,” Storeowner David Stanfield said, standing behind the long wooden counter, his smile filled with a warmth that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“Rufus?” I’ve always been bad with names.
“Owns Johnston County Hams,” he said. “He does some taxidermy too. That’s his boar on the wall over there.” He pointed to his left where the black head of an intimidating animal presided over racks of plumbing fixtures and hardware I’d have been hard pressed to identify.
I spent several minutes just wandering around, peering in glass cases containing pottery and handmade jewelry, a refrigerated case of Ashe County cheeses and Johnston County Hams products, shelves of local wines and craft beer, and handcrafted wooden toys, one of which I was smitten with immediately.
It was a system of ramps and pulleys down which you rolled marbles, each one clacking its way in succession down and down to a carved tray at the bottom. It felt like something straight out of Santa’s workshop. I made my way up to the counter where Stanfield still stood.
The front door opened and a man came in, throwing a hand up in greeting as he walked toward the back of the store. David returned the gesture and grinned. “That’s my employee, Scott Johnson,” he said by way of explanation. “He handles the store when I can’t be here.”
Behind the register were a remarkable variety of antiques. “Most of this is stuff I’ve collected over 40 years at flea markets and antique stores,” he said, gesturing to shelves containing everything from an old brass spittoon to two wood and metal contraptions, which, he informed me, were tobacco looping horses.
To me, they looked not unlike spindly bicycle racks. I wasn’t familiar with their purpose so I got a brief lesson in their use from Stanfield, who had himself starting “handing” tobacco when he was around eight years old.
“I had this wooden horse in here,” he said, pointing to the one closest to him. “And a man came in one day and said ‘you don’t have a metal one’ and I told him I hadn’t ever seen a metal one.” Scott spoke up from somewhere among the shelves, saying he’d worked with metal ones in his days in tobacco. “Y’all had the metal ones?” David’s eyebrows rose. “Y’all were high-class farmers.”
“Are you from this area originally?” I asked, sure I knew a Johnston County accent when I heard one.
“I’m from Smithfield,” he affirmed, nodding. “I grew up there and moved to the Four Oaks area in ’79. I came to Four Oaks with granddad when I was growing up. We’d go to Barefoot’s store near Lake Levinson.”
“What did you do before opening this store?” I asked.
“I’m a contractor. Home improvement projects,” he said. He told me how he’d been helping a friend of his build a house near Boone. He’d admired the nearby town of West Jefferson, where he’d discovered Ashe County Cheese.
“I went up there and watched how they made it,” he said as his eyes roamed over the stock of bottles and jars on the shelf just behind me. “Then the Nehi, RC Cola, Orange Crush, Cheerwine, Sundrop…they’re all bottled in West Jefferson too. They’re made with real sugar like they were when we were kids.”
I was curious as to how a home improvement contractor came to own a general store.
“Well, these buildings came up for sale and I bought them,” he said. “I was going to fix them up and put my woodworking shop in one of them. But folks kept saying I should open a general store, that there’s always been a general store in Four Oaks.”
I had dim memories of the old Austin’s Feed Store as it was when I was growing up in the 1980s. I rarely went in with my dad or grandpa, impressed as I was that it was a man’s place where mysterious and masculine things were discussed, bought, and sold.
From the sidewalk outside, I could see racks of denim overalls, boxes of work boots and shelves of mystifying objects in the shadows, the faint smells of fertilizer, raw lumber, and tobacco wafting out the door.
Years later when I was in college, I worked as a teller one summer at the downtown branch of Four Oaks Bank where Aubrey Austin, the owner of Austin’s Feed Store, was a regular customer.
“Is anything here original to the old feed store?” I asked David, looking around the store at the array of antiques. Everything looked to me like it had sat where it was for generations.
“Well, I bought the Austin’s Feed Store sign and the old cash register,” He gestured to a hulking machine with brass buttons and levers on his right. “This counter too, that’s from the old store.” I realized they looked so at home because they were.
A pot-bellied stove sat in the center of the floor just beyond a pair of antique coin-operated checkerboards. I asked if it was original to the store but no, it had replaced the old one, which had become rusted and unfit for use over the years. David looks forward to cranking up the stove when the weather turns cold.
I asked him how he chose the assortment of food and products he sold. There were jars, bottles, and cans on the rows of shelves, many bearing the Stanfield name. Pickles, jams, jellies, barbecue and hot sauces, peanuts and cheese straws, all reminding me I hadn’t yet had lunch.
“I went to the Got to Be NC food show in Raleigh and just tasted different products. I’ve also had people call me and send me samples. I’ll let customers try them and I’ll ask, ‘What do y’all think?’”
As for the plumbing, electrical, hardware, and landscaping supplies he sells: “I just got things I liked and used in construction and yard work. Then I’ve added things as people asked for them.”
He showed me a notebook behind the counter where he keeps a list of products customers request that he stock. He noted with a smile that most everything he stocks is made locally in Johnston County, like the Johnston County Hams products, or at least made in North Carolina.
Of the crafts in the store, he said that local artists just got the word out and brought their crafts to him themselves. He sells pottery from a woman several streets away, hand-made wreaths and jewelry, even art made from painted horseshoes. An adorable orange horseshoe pumpkin sat in the front window.
“There are a lot of local artists that want to be able to show and sell their stuff,” he said. “So I’m giving them a place to do that.”
A couple of customers came into the store and out of the rain that heralded the passing of Hurricane Joaquin off the coast. There was lively discussion of the weather and rough landings at RDU in past storms, along with the purchase of a glass-bottled soda and a pack of nabs. These were familiar faces. They laughed and exchanged jokes.
When I asked about one I didn’t quite get, David grinned, shook his head and said, “That’s an inside joke,” and, raising his voice slightly to reach the others, “and it’s going to stay inside.”
More laughter at this as they wandered off to peruse the aisles. I started eyeballing the cheese crackers near the register and realized I was thoroughly enjoying myself in this old-timey store with the rain pounding the sidewalks outside.
This was a place to get comfortable, put the iPhone away, grab a drink and a snack, and slow down with a game of checkers for a dime and some conversation. These places still exist and I’m grateful.
When you’re constantly ducking into and out of giant, impersonal chain stores, it’s hard to realize that the general store is alive and well in places like Four Oaks and not just in televised versions of an America from the past. This instilled me with a quiet relief, knowing there’s still a place nearby where I can come to find the little things that make me smile, things I loved as a kid.
There are rumors of bluegrass jam sessions on Thursday nights in the coming months. Count me in.