 |
| Country stores in Edwards, Mississippi. Map drawn with ESRI ArcMap software. |
 |
| The Betigheimer country store on Betigheimer Road and MS 27. |
A coworker who grew up in Utica told me he used to shop there as a child. He remembered buying his first cookies there, two for a penny (I didn't ask what century this might have been). He was intrigued by the fact that Germans ran a country store in a rural African-American community. How did they end up in a place like Utica? At the time, it was a classic country store, selling hardware, seeds, food, tools, nails, and useful supplies. He could not remember when it ceased business as a general merchandise store. The Betigheimers lived in a large wood house just east of the store, but it was struck by lightning and burned down sometime in the 1980s. A modern house is on the lot now.
When I returned in 1997, the antique business had closed, but there was a lot of old-fashioned machinery (junk) strewn about the yard. Nice stuff, but not much was happening.
The store burned sometime around 2000. I rarely drove on Hwy. 27, and one day in the early 2000s, it struck me that the store was gone. Sad, another piece of our heritage gone.
 |
| 1986 Tri-X photograph of the Betigheimer store taken with a 4×5" Tachihara camera and 180mm ƒ/5.6 Caltar IIN lens. |
Update June 2020: the last photograph is a black and white Tri-X frame from a 4×5" camera.
3 comments:
I live in Louisiana (formerly from Woodville, MS) and I haven't passed through there in many moons. It saddens me to know the old store is gone. We always stopped there when I was young on our treks to Port Gibson, Jackson, etc.
I remember as a child in the '60's stopping there a few times on the way to church at Bethesda with my uncle and Grandma for a Coke. At that time it was more of what we would call a convince store today.
I could tell you much more about this store as my great grandparents owned it and then my grandparents owned it and then it passed on to my father who rented it out as an antique store. My great aunt ran it while I was a child, and she would let me go through the change drawer and keep any coins that were my birth year! And there were a lot of Dimes minted in 1967 apparently. She also used to let me have free Cokes and Stage planks. So obviously I was a chubby/fat child.
During the Summers when I stayed with my father, as he and my mother were divorced and we lived in louisiana, I worked for the old man who rented the store as an antique store. He also sold watermelons and cantaloupes underneath the tree to the right of the store. Which was right in front of the old house as we all called the original Homestead.
I joined the military in 1987 and my father passed on while I was in. So the last time I was there was probably 1985. It sends me to know that none of the buildings are there anymore.
Post a Comment