ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 12, 1997 TAG: 9701130017
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Dispatches from Rye Hollow
SOURCE: STEVE KARK
Pearisburg's Little Giant Market is not the sort of place you'd expect to find downtown across the street from the municipal building.
It seems like anywhere you travel in this country these days, even in small-town America, one place looks pretty much like another. You find the same brick buildings with the same tinted-glass windows; the same gas stations, fast-food franchises and quick-stop markets along the main drag.
Any sense of individual character has disappeared, sacrificed to our desire for convenience and familiarity.
That's why the Little Giant Market is so unusual. There's nothing commonplace about a market in an old Quonset hut wherever you find it, let alone in the middle of town.
The roof and walls of a Quonset hut are composed of semicircular sections of corrugated metal. Because it looks so different from the block-shaped buildings around it, a store in a Quonset hut has a certain appeal. It looks like something you'd build at the South Pole or on the moon.
Because they were simple and easy to construct, Quonset huts were common on military bases during World War II. And, for a time, until utility was replaced by flashy commercialism, they were used by civilians too, especially those interested in low-cost building materials.
While Quonset huts may have been common at one time, they are not so now. When you step inside this one for the first time, your eyes are drawn to the smooth curvature of the ceiling. It makes an immediate impression on you and is certainly a novel experience.
Then you see all the bags of feed on either side of the entryway. They're stacked waist-high on both sides of the aisle. There's cracked corn on your left and assorted bags of feed on your right. There's feed for hogs and rabbits and horses and cows. And dog and cat food to boot.
There's coffee and bread and flour too, everything you'd expect to find in any convenience store anywhere. But it's the other little things you find that give the market its simple, country-store appeal.
For instance, on the floor in front of the counter sit two big boxes of beans, a scoop in each. There are two handwritten signs at the top of each box. One says, "Pinto 59 cents." The other says, "October 77 cents."
On the counter itself, there are bags of "chocolate coconut tips" and "butter toffee peanuts." Behind them, next to the chewing tobacco, empty Red Man tins are neatly stacked ($1.50 each).
Farm and garden supplies fill the wall behind you.
If you're lucky you'll find S.B. Carroll working the counter. He started the business 33 years ago. And though its been 10 years since he sold it, Carroll still works part time for the new owner, Fred Hackney.
Motioning toward the contour of the ceiling, Carroll says, "You can hear the ice and snow in the winter as it slides down the side." An experience, I imagine, unique to Quonset huts.
The place was built before World War II as a showroom for a car dealership. When Carroll acquired the building in 1964, it was being used for storage.
"I already had a place over in Narrows," he said, "but I decided to move my business to Pearisburg because there was lots of parking across the street. The town didn't build the municipal building until a year later. I was here first."
Folks bought things a lot differently back then, he says. "They'd stock up for the winter. The roads weren't kept up like they are now, so folks tended to buy supplies in bulk ... I'd sell 100-pound bags of beans ... People would ask for a barrel of flour, which means they wanted four 25-pound bags. That was the way we called it then."
"I used to stack the coffee in the back corner so folks would have to go through everything else to get to it. That way they might see something else they needed too," he said.
Carroll points to a slogan which he had handpainted on the wall above the bags of feed many years ago. It reads, "We have two sizes of everything we stock, too large and too small."
"I tried to put that in an ad in the paper once, but they left it out," he says. "They thought it was a mistake."
"There was a fella that had some business with the town," Carroll says. "He used to come in here whenever he came to town, once a month, just to walk around and soak up the atmosphere."
I think I know why the visitor took the time. They just don't make places like this anymore.
He probably figured he'd better catch it while he could, before they knocked it down and put up another franchise in its place.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB