THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 8, 1995 TAG: 9501070115
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY FRANK ROBERTS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GATESVILLE, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 160 lines
IN 1932, PRESIDENT Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the New Deal. So did Claude Savage. FDR introduced his idea as a way out of the Great Depression. Savage's idea was to go into the grocery business.
``It was just a notion I had,'' he said on a recent winter day, standing in the general store that was his livelihood for 58 years. The long-lasting notion ended Dec. 31, when the 92-year-old Gates County fixture retired.
With mixed emotions.
He was happy to divorce himself from the responsibility, unhappy about leaving his familiar wooden haunt and the old friends who visited daily to buy a little, talk a lot.
``The day he retired he told me to stay till the new owners got here,'' said Jean Freeman, Savage's daughter. ``He said he was going hunting. He came back long enough to give 'em the keys.''
Savage's Grocery, on the outskirts of Gatesville on N.C. 37, an area once called Old Road, is now Cup's-One-Stop.
``It's being updated to something like a convenience store,'' Freeman said.
Convenient, probably.
As colorful as Savage's Grocery was for years?
Probably not.
Places like Savage's, in business since 1936, provided many basic material necessities. But more than that, they provided warmth and friendship, especially for area retirees.
``They would - everybody would - come in and sit around,'' Freeman said.
The camaraderie seemed more important than the profits.
``People would sit around and play cards,'' said Savage, whose memory is still Gillette-sharp. ``In the '40s and '50s, there was a ballpark next door. Folks would come in after the games.''
Folks like the Rev. Hugene Fields, pastor of Parker's Grove Baptist Church in Mapleton, described by Savage as ``a customer and a dear friend.''
Fields, 67, said he has been part of the homey store ``since I moved into the county in 1951.''
Another customer of many years, Emmit Knight, who is with the North Carolina Department of Highways, leaned back in a wood-back chair and noted, ``I'd just as soon come here and talk to Mr. Savage - talk about old times.''
``I'd talk about older times,'' Fields added.
Those are the times Savage talks about - hard times and good times.
``My momma gave me away when I was 3 years old. I stayed with Mr. J.B. Holland till I was 22.''
That would be about 1924.
``That year I went to work helping build the road from Gatesville to Sunbury.
``It was the first paved road in Gates County. I loaded wheelers to move dirt. Used mule power. Got $2 a day for a 10-hour day.''
The memory bank opens a little further.
``When I was a boy, the old man who raised me had cattle. Fellow named Jeffries used to buy cattle.
``I walked from Gatesville to Suffolk. Camped overnight where Liberty Springs Christian Church is now.
``Had two head of cattle and a horse-drawn farm wagon full of hogs that the old man drove.
``Before that I worked a plow for 35 cents a day.''
In 1932, Savage decided, more or less on a whim, to open a combination filling station and grocery, about half a mile from where Savage's Grocery - make that Cup's-One-Stop - now stands.
He drove to Suffolk in his year-old Chevy roadster to pick up inventory from the Nansemond Grocery Co.
Two years later, he closed that business and went into logging and farming, buying and working 100 acres.
``In 1940, I bought 200 acres for $3,500,'' he said. ``Now, I rent a farm.''
He apparently missed the grocery business - or maybe he missed the company of customers - and opened another grocery in 1936. But he continued as a logger and farmer until retiring in 1970. But he only quit logging and farming that year. He began concentrating on the grocery store.
It was in an old house that he'd bought and renovated.
``I started with $23 worth of merchandise - Vienna sausage, potted meat, sardines, Pepsi, Coke. The first gas I sold was Esso.''
He went through three brands, winding up with Hi-Lo.
The price of gas, in the '30s, was 21 cents a gallon.
``Soft drinks were a nickel a bottle. A 12-pound bag of flour was 35 cents.''
Savage remembers yesteryear's costs as if they were yesterday's prices.
``Eggs were a quarter a dozen, mackerel a quarter a tin.''
There was plenty of time for sales.
``I operated, at first, from 7 a.m. to midnight,'' said Savage, who had a lot of family help. His wife, Emma, was usually there until her death in 1985. His daughter also worked with him most of the time.
I'm gonna miss the people. I love to talk,'' said Freeman, who speaks lovingly of the man she sees as father and friend. ``He not only gave the people credit, he loaned 'em money.''
``He's gonna be missed here,'' said Fields, one of the longtime customers. ``He's helped so many people in the county.''
But Claude Savage also can be a no-nonsense kind of guy.
``I had white and black customers - never had any problems. They done like I said or else. I've had to tell a few to get out, usually kids,'' Savage said. He's still in good shape, as is the property he bought way back when.
He bought 2 acres of land and the house in which he still lives for $210 at a courthouse auction in 1922, the year he bought his first car, a trusty Model-T.
Today he drives - yes, he still drives - a 1994 Ford pickup.
``My driver's license runs out in four years,'' he said. ``I know I'll never be able to get another one.''
Another milestone: Savage is the oldest male member of New Hope Baptist Church.
His two children, two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren live nearby, except for one great-grandchild in the Army and one in the Navy.
Besides age, Savage offers two other reasons for his final retirement.
``For one, the big stores got you locked out now. Another reason: There've been several break-ins over the last few years.''
The last one was Christmas Eve 1993.
``I had a computer cash register that was stolen, so I went back to the old-time register.''
There were so many old-time items that filled Savage's Grocery it could have qualified as an antique store.
``Burger Beer gave me a clock back in the 1930s. It's still working. I've had the same scales since that time.''
There were a couple of beat-up, overstuffed chairs and a pair of century-old fox horns ``that came off a Texas longhorn,'' said Savage, who lists hunting as a favorite pastime.
``I was president of the Old Buck Hunting Club. I organized it in the '40s. It's still going strong. Has members of both races.''
Savage misses his Clorox and Crisco, chewing tobacco and cigars, Oreos and M&Ms, apples, potatoes, onions. Until he retired, he still had on display Lucky Dice home games and accessories for water pumps.
But, as he already noted, progress - in the form of convenience stores and supermarkets - is putting folks like Claude Savage out to pasture.
Mom-and-pop businesses and pop shops - named for the soda pop they sold - are the subjects of books of memorabilia and trivia.
Savage doesn't need any of that.
He has his memories. ILLUSTRATION: ON THE COVER
The [color] picture of Claude Savage on the cover was taken by
photographer Eric Thingstad.
Photos by Eric Thingstad
William Riddick, Wayne Hathaway and Jerome Riddick shoot pool in the
back of Savage's Grocery one day before Claude Savage retired. In
the old days, the back room was a dance hall.
Claude Savage, at right, has operated Savage's Grocery in Gatesville
for 58 years. Besides providing the necessities of life, the general
store was a meeting place where folks, like Emmit Knight, far left,
the Rev. Hugene Fields and Roscoe Riddick, could sit and talk
awhile.
When Claude Savage walked out the door of his general store and into
retirement on Dec. 31, he took with him 58 years of hard work and
fond memories of the friends he's made.
by CNB