Still Open: Gibbes & Sons Grocery, Learned, Mississippi

Most of the country stores we have looked at in previous posts are closed, victims of changing times and loss of nearby residents who once patronized these stores. But in the little town of Learned, Mississippi (near Utica), the H.D. Gibbes & Sons grocery is still open for business.

Learned is a nice little town, clean and neat. The grocery is at the corner of Main and Pine Streets.

Lunches are served on these polished tables.

Walk on in - it is visual delight. All sorts of old-fashioned stuff greets you: bottles, signs, displays, antlers. But this is a working store, so ask the nice-looking young lady for a drink, candy bar, or even some groceries. One side of the store has a ladder on a rail so the shopkeeper can reach high shelves. The store has an active restaurant on Friday and Saturday, well-known for steak (a carnivore-type of place).

Learned has some more square-front buildings that may have once been stores.

Tired? Find a rocker and put your feet up.

Interior photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 digital camera with Olympus 9-18mm lens. Exterior photographs taken with a FujiFilm X-E1 camera. I reprocessed the raw files with PhotoNinja software. This is the type of place to revisit with real film.

Country Store Still in Business: Roy's Store, Chatham, Mississippi

Roy's Store is one of the rare 100-year old Mississippi country stores that is still in business, and doing very well with its clientele of hunters and fishermen. Located at 2202 Lake Washington Road near the northern end of Lake Washington, it has survived floods and the Great Depression.

Roy's Store and Cabins, Chatham, Mississippi

The front has been fixed up and has modern gasoline pumps.

 

 

The inside is full of useful stuff for fishermen, along with and bits and pieces from the old days.  Stop for a coffee or snack. As of 2008, there was not yet an espresso machine.

Old Highway 61, Chatham, Mississippi

This is part of the original U.S. Highway 61. It is a single concrete lane running straight through the farmland.  It was explained to me that in the 1920s, the State could only afford to pave a single lane, which was adequate in an era when few people had cars or mechanized farm machines.

In winter, this is an excellent area for birding.  These people are participating in the annual Audubon Society Christmas bird count.

Lake Washington

Lake Washington is rimmed with cypress trees and is a great place to see cormorants, grebes, and other waterfowl. It is well worth a visit. Close by are the two abandoned mansions at Lake Washington.

For more information on Roy's Store and Cabins, call 662-827-2588.

Update June 5 2017: An Australian gent posted some wonderful photos of Roy's Store on his blog, The Rolling Road. Click the link. He is a Leica photographer.

Burks Grocery, Cook Road, Edwards, Mississippi

On our continuing tour of country stores, here is one more: Burks Grocery on Cook Road, Edwards. 

The modest wood building is south of Highway 27, set among small homes and trailers.

Burks Grocery, Cook Road

The store also sold gasoline.  The sales were recent enough to be in the unleaded era (post-1970s).

On a quiet afternoon, sit on the porch and chat with your neighbors. We have lost a lot in our society with the transition to giant supermarkets and Super WalMarts. Who sits outside the Kroger and chats with his neighbors?

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 or Fuji X-E1 digital cameras, tripod-mounted. On the G3, I used a manual-focus Olympus OM 50mm f/3.5 macro lens.

Morning Star Country Store, Old Port Gibson Road, Utica, Mississippi

Another former country store sits at the corner of Old Port Gibson and Adams Station Roads near Utica. It is across the street from the Morning Star Baptist Church, whose address is 11449 Old Port Gibson Rd, Utica, Mississippi.

Morning Star store, Old Port Gibson Road, Utica

I am not sure if the store shared the Morning Star name, but that works well and locals will know what you mean.

The inside has a lot of old stuff on the shelves, and the roof is beginning to fail.  I am often surprised how these old stores look as if the proprietors one day decided not to open, abandoning papers, furniture, and materials in place.

My Utica friend told me that the owners once lived in this little cabin just off to the side of the store.  I thought it looked like a tiny motel unit with two rooms.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G3 digital camera with a 20 mm ƒ/1.7 Lumix lens.

UPDATE DEC. 2019: The store is still standing, but is in poor condition. Here are two views from a sunny day, taken on black and white film.

Morning Star store (Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 501CM, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, yellow filter

Willis Store, Middle Road, Edwards, Mississippi

In the last article, we looked at an abandoned store at the junction of Newman and Canada Cross Roads. Proceed east a few miles on Canada Cross Road and you get to the intersection with Middle Road.  This is the site of the Willis Store.

Country stores in Edwards, Mississippi

Willis Store, corner of Canada Cross and Middle Roads, Edwards, Mississippi.

The building is in reasonably good condition and has modern lighting. But the price in the gasoline pump shows an older era.

This gasoline pump was last used when gasoline was $1.249/gallon, even though the "1" in the leftmost window is no longer visible.  If it was 24 cents/gallon, that would date this pump to the mid-1960s, a couple decades too old.  My friend remembered the business as active in the early 1980s.  Also, he told me that there was another old store in the woods south of the intersection, but the woods were thick, and I saw no remnants.

Jax Beer was brewed by the Jackson Brewery of New Orleans. Prior to 1956, it was brewed by the Jax Brewing Company of Jacksonville, Florida.

Historic home on Bill Strong Road, Edwards.

If you continue east, the road becomes Bill Strong Road.  About a mile east is a handsome historic house with six pillars.  The house may be unoccupied, but a cat crossed the porch, and just to the right, and couple of curious cows watched me.

The first three photographs were taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera and the 27 mm f/2.8 lens.  The old house was with a Panasonic G3 camera and 20 mm f/1.7 lens.  The black and white frames were reprocessed with PhotoNinja software.

Newman Plantation Store, Edwards, Mississippi

Here is another old-fashioned country store near Utica and Edwards, Mississippi: the former Newman Plantation store.  It is at the corner of Newman and Canada Cross Roads.

Map of Edwards and vicinity, with other historic stores shown (from ESRI ArcMap software)

I have little any information about the store's history.  Unlike the nearby Yates store, no one came by to chat on this quiet Sunday afternoon.  The store had the long overhang typical of early gasoline stations.  According to Tidbits and Treasures, written by Mary Landin, "Newman  Plantation covered a large area around Newman, which is the crossroads of two historic county roads that did not used to have names. No Newmans ever  lived on what is now Newman Road, because their homes face what is now  called Canada Cross Roads. When the county named them, they named the one that the Newmans thought should have been named Newman Road, Canada Cross  Roads, which is a misnomer in itself, and named the road that went to Edwards  from Newman, Newman Road."  Ms. Landin is a local historian and advocate of small-town living.

The store is locked and protected with bars, but I was able to take one photograph through the dusty glass.

Interior of abandoned Newman country store

Look at the old cash register on the shelf in the lower left. And is that a hot water radiator on the far wall?

I took these photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 camera with 9-18mm Panasonic lens or a 1949-vintage Leitz 5 cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens. The Summitar lens has been in the family since my dad bought it new.

Yates Country Store, Utica, Mississippi

Country stores once abounded in rural Mississippi. In an era before everyone owned their own car, rural people walked or rode a carriage to the country store to buy seed, tools, groceries, books, a newspaper, candies, or to make a telephone call. In 2011, I wrote about the Betigheimer store on Hwy 27, long gone. This one is near Utica: the W.B. Yates store, at the junction of Old Port Gibson and Cayuga Roads.

W.B. Yates store, Old Port Gibson Road

This is a rather basic cinder-block structure with the squared-off front that is so common on stores and commercial buildings in early-20th century rural areas.  The grey paint makes the place more severe, but the Coca-Cola sign adds a splash of red.

I could not go inside, and all the windows were blocked with plywood.

While I was putting my tripod away, an elderly gent came by to talk. He was a relative of the Yates family. He said the present store was built in 1947 (that explains the post-war cinder blocks). The original store was across the street where a post-war suburban home now sits. Mr. Yates died in 1986 and Mrs. Yates operated the store for two more years. She died tragically when she was hit by an 18-wheeler.

The name Cayuga, as in Cayuga Road, is an Indian name. The European settlers to this area came from upstate New York, where Cayuga Lake is the longest of the glacial-derived Finger Lakes. This is different than Cuyahoga, which is the name of the river that flows through Cleveland and debouches into Lake Erie.

The gent had some other interesting stories. Nearby is Charlie Brown Road. People kept stealing the sign, and the highway department could not figure out why. He convinced them to print a sign "C Brown," and the theft problem ended.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G3 digital camera and a 1949-vintage Leica 5cm ƒ/2.0 Summitar lens, tripod-mounted. My father bought the Summitar and its accompanying Leica IIIC rangefinder camera new at the Post Exchange on Guam. Stopped down to ƒ/4.0 or so, this lens equals many contemporary optics.

Update December 2019: A cabinet-maker and carpenter is using the Yates store. We chatted for a few minutes, and he said he was very busy with projects. Good news!

W.B. Yates Store (Panatomic-X film, Hasselblad 501CM camera, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, yellow filter) 

The Country Store, Farnham, Virginia

Farnham is a small farming town in the tidewater region of Virginia, located on the peninsula between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. This area has been settled for three centuries, and 1800s farm houses attest to the farming heritage. You still see rich fields of barley and corn.

This is an old country store. A long-time local resident told me Farnham was prosperous in the 1950s and 1960s when a tomato factory was active and hired many local workers. The factory closed and the town fell asleep. The store would have sold gasoline, groceries, and odds and ends to residents in the old days.

But the store has a new life. A lady from the Washington area retired to Farnham and bought the store and the adjacent house. The store is a perfect place for a party!

A Gulf sign from the gas station era.

I remember seeing steel chairs like these at old resorts in New England.

The back shed had the most interesting bits and pieces.


The main room looks great. This a nice way to revive an old building.

All photographs taken with a Fuji F31fd digital camera.