ERWIN’S GROCERY

Have you rode up Highway 58 in Decatur, TN to see the new bridge?  If you have, you may have noticed Ruth Erwin’s Grocery no longer has the name Ruth over the door, but her son Paul is still sitting out front, throwing his hand up as usual.

We stopped in to talk to “Bean”, aka Paul, and asked how long the old store had been there.  He said that he and his mother run it for about 38 years and she died March 6, 2005.  “Mr. Perkison owned it before us.  I‘ve been told it was about 107 years old”.  I asked Paul why he waves at all the people on bikes that go by, and he said he had some friends who rode bikes, but now they all have to wear helmets so it’s hard to tell them apart so he just waves or says hello to them all.  That makes sense to me.  Paul said Eight Ball let him sit on his bike sometimes. 

I asked Bean, aka Paul, why they call him Bean sometimes.  He said “Baby”, his sister, gave him that name when he was a little boy but now he was full grown and liked to be called Paul. 

I asked if anything had changed in the old store since his mother had passed away or was he trying to keep it just like it had always been?  Paul said they had come and got his Pepsi cooler because he wouldn’t buy $200 worth of drinks a week.  “They had to have a $200 order before they could stop out here.  I think Mr. Pepsi must have died because that old man told my daddy when they put the cooler in that as long as he lived he would let that boy keep that cooler.  He was a good old man, he liked my daddy.  They called my daddy Buttermilk Erwin when he drove a Falstaff beer truck in Chattanooga.  I really don’t know what Mr. Pepsi’s name was; Daddy always just said I should call him Mr. Pepsi.  Daddy always said I was to call anybody older than me Mr”. 

I asked Paul if he ever rode a motorcycle or motorsickle, as he called it.  Not by his self, he said, his nephew took him for a ride one time but it scared him pretty bad.  He just as soon ride is truck, he feels safer on the inside of an automobile.  I asked him if he liked to read our magazine and he said he loved the pretty girl pictures in it and he didn’t know all the good work that the riders did to help the little kids and the mommas that needed it until he got one of them.  “There sure are a lot of good people riding them bikes so I’m going to keep waving hello to them when they come by the store.  We need more good people like them in this old world, yep we sure do”.

“When Daddy bought the store, he said I could help pump the gas and sell some of my chicken eggs.  After daddy died, the government man come and made Mama take out our gas pumps but I still sell a few eggs now and then.  Mama cried when we lost our gas pumps but people still stop in.  We sell a lot of ice and some groceries but mostly we just sell smokes and beer.  We used to sell a lot of fried bologna sandwiches, Mama could make them good, but somebody sicked the G-man on us and they made us quit.  They made us take our meat slicer out.  We can’t even slice bologna anymore. 

I still have a lot of work to do.  I have to wash my own clothes now and do my housework.  I have to do my own cooking too, mostly heating stuff up to eat in a hurry.  I don’t know when I’ll retire; I’m over 60 now.  Who knows, I may go on one of them cruises one of these days, like that Love Boat on TV.  My brother in law and Baby went on one last year. I had to get my girlfriend to come help me run the store while he was gone.  He’s here most of the time though.  When Mama died he was already retired from Dupont and Baby and Shirley was still working so he agreed to come and help me in the store”. 

What about this wood stove Paul; who starts the fire and takes care of the heater and gets in the wood?  “I always start the fires and get in the wood, but I can’t cut it.  My good friend used to cut and bring me wood all the time, but I think he’s got his place all cleared off now.  As you can see, I ain’t got no wood pile this year.  I don’t know what I’ll do for wood this winter.  I may have to close up on them real cold days.  Sometimes Cris or Jamie or Heath will cut me some wood if they can find some to cut.  They help me a lot; they put plastic over my windows every winter.  Richie comes and lights my gas heaters at the house every winter.  I heat my home with gas when I can afford to buy some”. 

Well Paul, I’ll tell all our biker friends that you love them and that you’ll be out front waving a big hello when they come by.  “OK, you’re a good friend, you always bring me a Full Throttle.  I like looking at them”.

By Edwin Layman