I understand that Kerb Felkins’ grocery building in Fitzhugh soon will be razed.
The building long ago saw its better days and probably should be razed, but, boy, do I hate to see it happen. Way back around
Way back around statehood, Fitzhugh was what Kerb used to describe as “a going Jesse.”
It was a bustling town on the railroad, with a bank, a newspaper, a couple of cotton gins, a lumberyard and a two-story brick schoolhouse.
Some of the businesses burned and others wilted in a changing economy and, by the time, I arrived on the scene in the 1950s, the going Jesse was gone.
The bank building was all that remained of the former bustle and it had long since been turned into a grocery store, which Kerb bought sometime in the 1940s.
Kerb had an old-fashioned pop box with cold water that went up a couple of inches high on the bottles. It was the coldest pop in captivity because Kerb kept it a quarter of a notch above freezing.
The regulars knew how to pick out a pop, which would be dripping wet from the water, and use their thumb and middle finger to flick the water back into the pop box.
Kerb had some dairy crates and boxes around the pop box, and that was where local boys learned all the things they needed to know to become men.
Such as how to pour peanuts into a bottle of RC and how to drink around a toothpick in the corner of your mouth.
And that you should cut the sleeves out of your hay-hauling shirts.
Never mind that you’d scratch the dickens out of your forearms. It was a cool look and much sought after by 16-year-olds who were trying to make a little money and impress any girls who might be driving by.
If you caught a big fish, Kerb would weigh it for you on the same scales that he used when he sliced baloney and cheese.
He had gas pumps out front that dispensed ethyl and regular.
I can’t estimate how many jokes I heard, how much rat cheese I bought, how many cases of RC that I drank at Kerb’s store.
And now it is to be no more.
After it’s flattened, I would like to have one of the bricks as a souvenir.