Return to Country Stores in Central Mississippi and Louisiana

Introduction

Years ago, rural residents depended on a country store that was close enough to reach on foot, wagon, or horse. These stores provided for most of their needs, such as groceries, seed, tools, sewing supplies, and hardware items. Today, most have closed and people drive to the supermarket or Walmart. We have lost part of our 19th and 20th century cultural background. Here are some country stores in central Mississippi and one in Louisiana. I have photographed some of them before but wanted to revisit them and see some new ones.  

Florence

Most of the scenery along Hwy 49 between Jackson and Hattiesburg is boring strip mall Americana, very uninspiring. But a few traditional stores linger in dilapidated strip malls like this one in Florence.  

D'Lo

D'Lo is a small town a short distance off Hwy 49 southeast of Jackson. It is mostly known for the water park, but there is an old commercial strip downtown. Most of the stores are closed.

Satartia

Satartia is a village off MS Route 3 between Vicksburg and Yazoo City. The last time I photographed the little store in Satartia, a fluorescent light was on inside, but I did not see any commercial activity. This is a 4×5" Tri-X frame taken with a 135mm Schneider Xenar lens.

Utica

This is the Harris Carmichael store on Hwy 27. The building is in good condition but I do not know when the business closed.

Edwards

This is the Morning Star Store on Old Port Gibson Road at the junction of Adams Station Road (GAF Versapan film). It has been closed for years.

This store is on Military Road near Edwards. Based on the size of the pine tree, I think there has not been any activity here for years. This a Panatomic-X photo taken with a Hasselblad and the 50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens.

This is the Watley Store at 116 Bill Strong Road in near Edwards. 

Burk's Gro is on Cook Road west of Edwards. The day I took this picture, a guy came up to me and asked what I was doing. Duuh, taking a photograph. 

Midnight

Not much is left of this store on old US 49E in Midnight (name of the town). This is a Hasselblad exposure with the 80mm Planar lens.

Polkville

Vicksburg

This may not quite qualify as a country store. Let's call it a country liquor store. I seldom see cars parked outside and am not sure how much business it gets. 

Tallulah, Louisiana

This is the former Poboy Don's on Route 602 east of Tallulah, Louisiana. I recently biked by the store when some gents were repairing it to use as a hunting lodge. They said the building was post-World War II vintage. I photographed it years ago when it served po-boys (see Country Stores 15).  

Thank you all for riding along for this quick overview of country stores. There are many more in Mississippi and Louisiana, but I need to end this article. 

Jayden's German Store (Small Towns in Washington 02)

Pacific County and Willapa Bay. 

Driving west on Washington State Route 6, you eventually reach the environs of Willapa Bay. This is one of the largest estuaries on the North Pacific coast. For over a century, it was famed for its oyster harvest. The town of South Bend is on a bend of the Willapa River and serves as the county seat of Pacific County. During some business trips in the early 2000s, my coworkers and I passed through South Bend. It looked pretty rough back then.  

In March of 2022, South Bend looked much better. We wanted to lunch somewhere and were surprised to see signs for Jayden's German Store? What, a German deli in South Bend? We could hear the Brätwurst calling us ("Come eat me...").

Jaden's store is right on the main road. Find a place to park and shop for souvenirs, chocolate, mustard, and cookies. Pick up a few hot brats for lunch. We learned that the owner formerly cut hair and then decided to open the store and sell items from the old country.

Hand-made signs. Folk art at its best. I love places like this.

No more coastal coffee (Gold 200 film, Kodak Retina IIa camera, 50mm ƒ/2 Xenon lens)

Unfortunately, Coastal Coffee in its cheerful little blue house was no more.

The Pacific County Courthouse is an unusually ornate structure in immaculate condition. We met the city clerk, and she graciously opened the building and showed us around. 

Standby for more southwest Washington in the future.

Most of these photographs are from a Moto G5 mobile phone except for the frame of the cheerful little blue coffee shack.

The Menlo Post Office (Small Towns in Washington 01)

Menlo Post Office (Kodak Gold 200 film, Retina IIa camera, 50mm ƒ/2 Xenon lens)

Menlo is an unincorporated community in the Willapa Valley of Pacific County, Washington. It is on WA state route 6, which takes you to the Pacific coast from I-5 in central west Washington near Chehalis. Interesting note: the 56-mile Willapa Hills State Park Trail follows Rte 6 on the former Northern Pacific Railroad line. What an incredible ride. 

"Reach for the batter-whipped bread" (Gold 200 film)

We wanted a drink and looked in the Post Office/store. This proved to be an interesting place. I always love to visit small stores like this.

Have a seat, a soda, and some petrol

The store/Post Office had an impressive collection of snapshots of generations of high school graduates,  babies, and miscellaneous townsfolk. This must be the town archive. The post mistress said the original store burned in the 1920s, This was the "new" store - from 1924.  

The first two photographs are from my new/old 1950s Kodak Retina IIa camera on Gold 200 film. It has the right vibe for this type of subject matter, and the optical quality is excellent.

Lost to Fire: Powers Country Store, Grangeville, Louisiana

In early 2017, I visited the extremely interesting Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana. This is the research facility that helped confirm the existence of gravitational waves. A similar laboratory is in Hanford, Washington, and the two confirm each other's observations. On my way home, I drove west and north on the way back to Mississippi. Passing through Grangeville, I saw Power's Country Store on LA 37. Quick stop. The proprietor generously let me take some photographs inside with my Rolleiflex. This was one of these handy stores that sold munchies, drinks, hardware, and various other supplies. It was active with customers coming and going.

The outside looked like an old building with many additions over the years. Its not possible to tell what was there in the late-1800s.

The steps led to the part of the store with hardware, seed, and feed

The inside was a fascinating look at an older time. Mounted deer on the walls. Miscellaneous snacks and groceries. Tools, seeds, and automotive supplies on a higher level. Bare light bulbs and fluorescent tubes - nice stuff. Old-timers, bubbas, and children milled around.

These interior scenes were 1-second tripod-mounted exposures on Kodak Tri-X 400 film. I bought some cold juice, thanked the folks at the counter, and headed home.

I forgot about these negatives and did not scan them until July of 2020. Then I looked for information about Powers Country Store and was horrified to learn that it burned down on June 26, 2018, only a year after I visited. From WAFB 9 (Baton Rouge):

GRANGEVILLE, LA (WAFB) - An old neighborhood grocery store that has been a staple in St. Helena Parish for more than a century is gone. Powers Country Store in Grangeville was destroyed by fire Monday night. 

Flames shot nearly 20 feet into the air as firefighters battled the massive blaze at Powers at around 10:30 p.m. Cell phone video taken by someone who witnessed the destruction spread quickly on social media, perhaps because the old store holds a piece of rich history. It has been open since 1896. An old, rusted sign bearing the store's name and the couple, Frank and Ramona, that started a restaurant some 60 years ago is all that remains.

From The Advocate (Times-Picyune, New Orleans):

Until the fire, the Powers Store remained a vibrant place for people living and working in the area, including the local gravel pit workers, Graves said.

“Usually at lunch time the parking lot is packed,” Graves said. “Now I don’t know what they’re going to do, I guess go to the truck stop a little farther south. It is going to really sting not having it there.”

Suzanne Hornsby Hobgood was among several people who stopped by Tuesday to extend condolences. She said she remembered buying candy from Frank and Ramona Powers when she was a kid. As an adult, she brought her family to do the same.

“I’d come out here and bring my children. And now I’ve been bringing my grandchildren,” she said.

Hobgood said the store was filled with history, including an antique cash register, deer mounts from hunting trips and old photographs. 

I am sad; this is how we lose out cultural heritage. As time goes by, people forget. Within a few years, almost no one will remember that Powers Country Store once existed and served the community.

Older Urban Decay articles about country stores (please click the links):

Lorman, Mississippi
Lorman, Mississippi in 2019
Farnham, Virginia
Roy's Store, Chatham, Mississippi
Onward, Mississippi
Learned, Mississippi
Betigheimer Store, Edwards, Mississippi
Willis Store, Edwards, Mississippi
Yates Store, Utica, Mississippi
Twin Arrows, Arizona (Route 66)

The Old Country Store of Lorman, Mississippi - in Business

Old Country store, April 29, 2019 (Moto G5 digital file)

In the previous article, I posted pictures from the 1980s and 1990s of the Old Country Store in Lorman, Mississippi. Fast forward many years to 2019, and the Old Country Store Restaurant serves southern cuisine. My friends and I ate there on a Thursday in May of 2019 and had an excellent luncheon (big BBQ ribs!!). I did not try the famous fried chicken, but my friends attested to its culinary qualities and kilocalories.

These black and white frames are from Kodak Panatomic-X film exposed with the 50mm Distagon lens on my Hasselblad 501CM camera. The 50mm lens on the square format gives a similar view as a 27mm lens on 35mm, so in effect a wide-angle view. Click any frame to expand the view. I braced the camera body on a ladder or shelves and took long exposures.

The old adding machines and cash registers are gone, but I was surprised to see the remnants of an IBM punch card machine in the room with the faded business cards stapled to the wall. Some of you old-timers may recall when 80-character punch cards were used to submit programs and data to mainframe computers. When I learned FORTRAN programming in the 1970s, I used punch cards.

Currently unused church, McDonald Road, Lorman, Mississippi

There is not much left to the community of Lorman, My friend, Martha, told me that early in the 20th century, there were stores, a post office, and a rail junction. Her uncle used oxen to bring timber to the junction. Now it is all gone. But the Old Country Store is the spot of good news. This is a success story, a part of our cultural heritage still in use. Try the lunch there! And take a camera.

From the Archives: the Lorman Country Store, Lorman, Mississippi

Lorman Country Store, Leica M3, 50mm ƒ/2.8 Elmar lens, Kodachrome film

Lorman is a small town - really just a hamlet - south of Port Gibson on US 61. Lorman was known for its old-fashioned country store, which had been in continuous operation from 1875 until 1996. In the past, US 61 passed directly in front of the store. Today, the new 4-lane road is a short distance to the east, and the old store is not subjected to heavy traffic right in front.

Waiting for a ride, 1990 (Olympus Zuiko 35mm shift lens)

In the past, the store housed a post office and sold all the necessities needed by a small farming community. By the mid-1980s, the store was still open, but most visitors may have come to see the museum of antiques, old adding machines, books, and stuff. It was pretty interesting. But finally it happened, bad news: in March of 1996, the Vicksburg Post announced that the store had been sold and that all the contents would be disposed at auction. My photographer friend and I drove to Lorman a day or two before the auction. The proprietor generously let us take pictures inside during its last day of operation.

The photographs are all from Kodachrome film exposed with a Nikon F3 camera with 50mm ƒ/1.8 Nikkor AiS lens. In the interior, I used a Vivitar flash with a cardboard diffuser.

The frames above are from Kodak Tri-X Professional film (the ISO 320 emulsion) taken with my Fuji GW690II camera with 90mm ƒ/3.5 lens (the "Texas Leica"). I used a tripod. A wider-angle lens would have been useful, but I did not have one at the time for 120-size film.

This has been a quick look at the Old Country Store. As of 2019, it houses a restaurant - photographs to follow.