THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 6, 1996 TAG: 9607060343
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 154 lines
Standing and flipping change onto the table covered in printed oil-cloth, the man in a work uniform with ``John'' over the left pocket pats his belly, and a satisfied grin spreads across his face.
``Enjoyed it,'' he says, directing his remark to a woman with a bouffant, blond hairdo sitting on the other side of the room. ``Behave yourself.''
It's nearly 2 p.m. The lunch rush is over, and Girlyn Felton has finished in the tiny kitchen at Floyd's Grill.
By this time, she's ready to talk, to joke with her customers, catch up on their lives. And she's ready to reflect on years of cooking, cleaning and handing out advice in the ramshackle building that hangs on the side of U.S. Route 460 near the Suffolk line.
``People who behave don't have a bit of fun,'' Felton says, laughing and waving to the departing customer. ``And they don't get by in this world. It takes the hell-raisers to get by.''
At Floyd's, an exchange like this one is routine. The place hasn't changed much over the more than 20 years that Felton has been in charge.
Inside, at this time of day, the pool tables are bare. The pinball machine is silent. The jukebox doesn't blare country music.
Outside, the awnings over the windows are rusting. The paint is peeling. One of the front windows is cracked.
But something new has been added.
To one side of the acre lot in one of Suffolk's fastest-growing commercial areas, slated soon for a regional sewer line, there's a For Sale sign.
And for some locals, it signals exactly what growth can bring to this city: change.
That's not what everybody wants.
I hate it,'' Felton says, her elbows resting on the table where she sits to hold court each afternoon. ``It will break my heart. Every time I think about it, I want to cry.''
But Felton feels there is little choice. At 69, she has neither the stamina nor the money to bring Floyd's up to the standards of more modern eateries that have sprung up around her.
``If I won the lottery, I'd paint it white and trim it in that bright pink. I'd call it Floyd's Pink Palace and serve everything fancy.''
While the newer places offer liquor and trendy foods, Felton serves beer, beans, chicken pot pie and a kind of homespun philosophy that never gets stale.
But without a liquor license, she simply can't compete.
``The younger crowd goes where the liquor is. Liquor makes the difference, but, at my age, I can't take that risk. Twenty years ago, I would have climbed on the roof if I'd needed to. But now, the old bones are just too brittle.''
So for the first time in her career, real estate agent Linda Johnson is faced with selling not just a building or land, but selling tradition as well.
``It is really a unique thing to market,'' Johnson says. ``I had no idea, when I first listed the place, how entrenched Girlyn is in the community. She's real proud of the fact that people have had a good time there, and she's almost never had any trouble. I think a lot of people would like to see it continue.''
The building is thought to be at least 100 years old. Originally, it was a grocery store. Older customers recall when there were gasoline pumps out front.
Felton doesn't remember that, but a lot of people have told her about it. She's not a Suffolk native. She grew up on a farm in North Carolina, second of eight children. She and an older sister cooked and took care of the younger children while their mother worked in the fields.
Felton was a young widow living in Maryland when she started getting calls from her brother, Floyd. He was running the place in Suffolk then, when it was little more than a bar and when hungry customers were told: ``You know where the kitchen is.''
But his health was failing, and he needed his sister's help.
``He showed me the ropes, but he was hardly serving any food then,'' Felton recalls. ``I started cooking, and my lunch business picked up. Word got around, and business took off.''
Felton's brother lived only about three months after she moved into an apartment over the grill and took charge. As the business grew - good food at reasonable prices by day, sandwiches, beer, pool and country music by night - the bar's reputation changed, Felton says.
``Everybody called it a rough joint, but I didn't take any crap off of anybody. If they'd call me before it got started, I could handle it. I'd take them outside or take them in the kitchen and talk - and I never had to get nasty either.''
Loyal customers know Felton as a kind of cross between Dolly Parton and Martha Stewart.
``She's just a country girl who likes to cook and enjoys seeing others eat,'' one longtime customer says. ``She really cares about the people who come in there.''
The bouffant, platinum blond hair and the witty remarks with a twang remind Felton's customers of the country music queen. Her culinary skills, they say, are unsurpassed.
``I never saw a bean I didn't like,'' Felton says. ``Take garlic, salt and pepper away from me, and I'm lost. I can cook all day if there's somebody around to eat it.''
As the years passed, Felton established a menu. Mondays and Tuesdays are ``surprise'' days. Chicken pot pie, maybe, every other Tuesday. Otherwise, it's ``whatever I feel like cooking.'' Wednesday is ``country dinner day,'' with several kinds of vegetables cooked in ham hocks, with corn bread. Thursday brings homemade spaghetti. On Friday, steak and fresh seafood are on the lunch menu.
Felton has little use for commercial food suppliers. She'd rather rise at 5 a.m. and shop for bargains, going from one grocery store to another, taking advantage of fresh-vegetable stands this time of year.
``It's a nice place to eat country cookin','' says Jimmy ``Heartbeat'' Brinkley, a mechanic at Nansemond Ford Tractor. ``I hate to think about it closing. I'm hoping somebody will get it and run it just like Girlyn has run it.''
Felton's two daughters, Michele Biggs and Wanda Darden, grew up in the business. They still help out when they can. Her youngest grandchildren, 6-year-old twins Heather and Holly Biggs, know every customer by name.
``And if those kids don't have nothing else, they have manners,'' Felton says, sitting and watching the girls play. ``I've made sure of that.''
Just as Felton has won her customers' loyalty - ``We started out with the fathers, then the sons, now the grandsons'' - she has won the loyalty of her employees.
Joan Lankford of nearby Windsor is nearing her 20th anniversary working at Floyd's.
``You can't beat having a good boss,'' says Lankford, 48. ``She's a good person to work for, and it's a bunch of good people who come in here. They are all close to family.''
For years, while the lunch business flourished, recreational ball teams celebrated at night at Floyd's; hunters and fishermen enjoyed the food, cold beer and conversation. The pool tables brought some customers in, the fellowship brought others.
Felton celebrated Christmas by giving a huge party with free food and draft beer for a penny.
She can't recall that she has ever gotten tired of any of it.
``I get aggravated sometimes,'' she admits. ``Who don't?''
Once, though, on a night about 18 years ago, Felton called her lawyer. She told him she was tired of working so hard and wanted to sell the place.
He said, ``Honey, call me tomorrow, when you feel better.''
She never called back, and she's never, in all the years she's been in business, needed to call him for anything else.
Until recently.
As the area around the old building began to grow and other, more modern restaurants and bars moved in, the competition got to be too much.
``I sat down with Joan and Wanda and Michele and told them I was thinking about selling the place. I tell them everything. They've helped me all they can.''
Others seem to share Felton's hope that the tradition can be carried on, Linda Johnson says. They'd like to see Felton stay on. She says she'd do that for a while, until she teaches somebody else the ropes.
But that, she admits, probably won't happen. The old building needs an overhaul. The only value to what she has is in the land and its strategic location, in the center of expanding development.
Still, there's hope. Tradition means a lot to some.
``I keep hoping and praying that I'll come in here some morning and see that somebody has put up another sign,'' says Lankford, the 20-year employee.
``It will say, `Save Floyd's.' '' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by MICHAEL KESTNER, The Virginian-Pilot
Customers wish owner Girlyn Felton could pass on her legacy of good
will and good food to her granddaughter, Heather Briggs.
Color photo by HUY NGUYEN, The Virginian-Pilot
To compete with new restaurants in Suffolk, Floyd's Grill needs more
money and effort than its owner can afford. by CNB