Alvin Davis’ Store

My grandmother, Inez Davis Lina, told me a little bit about her father’s general store/post office one day when I was a little girl of about 10 or so years old, when she and I were about to visit the neighbor whose house was on the property where this store had once been. Gran told me that her father had a store when she was girl, and that the post office was inside the store as well. She said that the store was located down the little dirt road that lies directly across from our family home’s front yard. We walked down that dirt road one summer day and she pointed out a then-wooded area on the right side of the road, as you face the sound, where the store used to be. This wooded area is adjacent to the back of the yard of the last house on the right. At the time when she and I walked down there, there was only Bernice Dixon’s land on the right side of that dirt road, then next was the wooded area behind Bernice’s then this last house that was on the sound. The store was in the woods between the two properties. I think Gran even spoke to the neighbor-lady about the store when we visited with her that day. (I don’t remember the lady’s name, but she was younger than my mom at the time, and she had a few kids that were younger than me, I think). Gran said her father owned the store and ran it himself. I think the store was a general mercantile because she told me that her father sold cloth and grain (for livestock) as well as food items. I know there was a very big and heavy safe where all the money was kept and it subsequently ended up in their house until the day a few years ago when my dad gave it away to somebody. The clock that was in the store was given to my parents by my grandmother (and it still works!), and there was an old-fashioned cash register–the kind that you pressed down on the handles to ring up a sale. Gran said she helped ring purchases sometimes and that’s why she told me about the cash register. I think my great-grandfather sold the store at some point and after that, I don’t know what happened to it.

At some time (I don’t know when), my grandfather, Alva F. Davis moved his store and post office from the shore to the corner of Rt. 70 and Horseshoe Road. It was situated where the Davis Park is now located. Sometime during or after World War II, Johnnie Davis leased the store from my grandfather until he built a new store across the road. My father tore down my grandfather’s store a few years later.

Source: Christy Lina McMann *TIA02.004.32