I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past Saturday to pick up some of Jake’s Bar-B-Que. Jake only has Bar-B-Que available on the weekend, but he makes some of the best Bar-B-Que in the area. A few years back, Jake took it into his head to sell his Bar-B-Que over the internet. Jake had the idea to become an internet Bar-B-Que mogul, but he could never settle on how he wanted to set up his Bar-B-Que web site and the idea sort of fizzled for lack of attention. I pulled up to the new gas pumps in front of the store. Jake kept the old gas pumps with the oval tops and the little balls that whirled around behind glass as the gas pumped for years and refused to upgrade until the old pumps were finally so out of date there was no way to get parts for repairs. Then he reluctantly replaced them with these new modern pumps. It’s a shame, really, as the old pumps fit in with the look of the store so much better than these new gadgets. But times change and you have to keep up with progress, less you get left in the dust of the past.
Jake came out as usual to fill ‘er up and we talked about the warm weather we’ve had most of the week. “It’s an early Spring,” Jake commented. “But it won’t last. Too early in the year. There’s over half of February to go and all of March. We will have more cold before it warms up for real.” I followed Jake into the store and told him I had come for a box of Bar-B-Que. He went off to hustle up a box and I wandered over to the pot belly stove where the Reverend Johnson sat with Hermann Spencer and Hurshel Ledbedder. A man I have not seen in years was standing with his back to the stove and a cup of coffee in his fist. It was Harry Biggers, son of old Charlie Biggers who ran the store back before Jake bought it. He saw me and a big grin came across his face as he walked up with his hand stuck out. We shook and I asked what he was doing back in these parts.
“I just got tired of Memphis,” he said, “and decided to move back home.” It seems Harry had been talking with the Reverend about buying Mister Johnson’s house. I asked if it was a done deal and Reverend Johnson said about the only thing remaining to work out was if Mister Johnson’s dogs took a liking to Harry. The dogs have lived on the property a long time and it doesn’t seem right to move them off, so anyone moving into the house has to agree to take care of the dogs. Harry likes dogs. One of the things he dislikes about life in Memphis is there is no good place in the city to let a dog run free.
I asked Reverend Johnson how he was getting on. I had not seen him since Mister Johnson’s funeral. The Reverend said he was doing just fine. Mister Johnson left his affairs pretty much in order, so there was not a lot of things to take care of with his estate. Reverend Johnson was sitting in the old chair where Mister Johnson used to sit. Nobody much had used that chair since Mister Johnson had passed on, but it seemed real natural that Mister Johnson’s brother should be sitting in that chair.
Harry was saying how sorry he was he had missed Mister Johnson’s funeral. Mister Johnson used to come over to the store back when he was a young man working the cotton gin out back. He would buy a coke and a bag of peanuts. He would dump the peanuts into the coke bottle and then turn up the bottle to get a mouthful of coke and peanuts at the same time. It was a good snack and it cost a total of a dime, a nickel for the coke and another nickel for the bag of peanuts. Harry said his family lived in the back of the store those years and they had a television Charlie would drag out from the living quarters and hook up in the back of the store. When people brought their cotton in to the gin, they would come over to the store and watch the television with Harry. Television was a novelty in those days and not many people had one. The kids loved the treat of seeing a television and Harry passed many an afternoon watching television with the farmers’ kids from the area.
Harry remembers the store was one of the few places around with running water. About once a week Charlie would kill a hog and dress it out and store the meat in the two refrigerators he kept in the store. Then he would sell the meat from that refrigerator the rest of the week. You couldn’t do things like that now, Harry was saying. Some government agency would be down on your neck for selling unsafe meat without government approval. But Harry doesn’t remember that anyone ever got sick from the meat Charlie slaughtered fresh out behind the store.
Harry doesn’t remember why his father came up with calling the store Charlie’s Truck Stop. Maybe it was because of all the farmers that stopped off there in their pickup trucks. Back in those days most people didn’t go to Selmer or Corinth much. They grew most of what they needed on their farms and they came to Charlie's for sugar and flower and coffee and for fresh meat. Harry remembers at Christmas time his father would go to Memphis to a department store and buy boxes of toys for the local kids. He would buy toy guns and dolls and other items and have them for sale. Many of the families about would come in to buy these toys for Christmas for their children. There were some families in the area who could not afford to buy toys for Christmas and Charlie always managed to have a few toys left over he would give away to those folks for free. Charlie made sure every child in Soagie had a Christmas morning.
Harry says he misses the old days. There have been a lot of changes in life since Charlie ran the old store and a lot of the changes have made life better. But those were simple times back then and folks got on just fine and were just as happy with their lives as folks anywhere.
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