It hurt, passing the corner of the Baptist church and seeing a cleared lot where memories had stood for more than a century.
Time finally caught up with the old red brick building in Fitzhugh that had been the center of town, literally and figuratively.
It was built shortly after statehood to house the Farmers State Bank of Fitzhugh, but I knew it all my life as Kerb Felkins’ grocery store.
It was on the northwest corner of the main crossroad of our little town, and it was where you went if you needed lawn mower gas, the makings for cheese and baloney sandwiches, maybe a cold RC or a small sack of sugar.
There wasn’t a lot left in Fitzhugh by the time I was big enough to be aware of it. The old-timers said the town used to have a couple of cotton gins, the bank, a lumberyard, a newspaper and livery companies, but they were long gone by the late 1950s.
In my day, there were the Baptist and Methodist churches, a post office, a domino hall and Kerb’s store.
Kerb and Opal Felkins were the owners and lived in the back of the store. I’m pretty sure Opal had long been ready to sell out, but Kerb was a gregarious sort who enjoyed the comings and goings.
In the summertime, the local dairy farmers would stop by in mid-morning, after the early milking and chores were done. They’d sit on milk crates and sip Double Colas and talk politics or baseball or whatever.
In the winter, Kerb kept a fire going in the pot-bellied wood stove in the back store and even in the warm months you could catch a lingering whiff of oak and hickory smoke.
Kerb sold lunch meat and cheese and would slice it to your request, then weigh it and wrap it in butcher paper tied with a string.
Half a pound of bolo sliced thick and some rat trap cheese on Wonder Bread, and you could picnic for a long time.
If you caught a pretty big fish and wanted to know how heavy it was, Kerb would lay it on those same scales and weigh it for you. Biggest he ever weighed for me was a 4-1/2-pound bass I caught in a pond over by the highway.
Kerb’s store was where I learned that the best way to eat peanuts is to pour a sackful of them into a cold RC. It was where I learned the importance of working hard, being honest and beating Roff in high school sports.
I bought candy there as a grade-schooler, gas after I learned to drive and groceries after I came home from the Air Force.
Sadly, the years wore away at the old building and it got to a dangerous point, so the Baptist church bought the property and had the building torn down to make way for a parking lot.
The pastor graciously agreed to save six bricks for me, and left them outside the church office.
I drove down about dark on Saturday, got the bricks and came home.
Glancing in the rearview as I pulled away, I pretended the brick building was still standing, a portal to a century of memories.