The Burning of Main Street
by Marvin T. Jones
Dan’s Flea Market, known best to me as the Belk & Tyler store of the 1950’s and 1960’s, flamed greatly last month. It was a Roanoke-Chowan event in that many of our volunteer fire departments were called in. Others were on standby in case another fire erupted elsewhere. It was in that Belk’s building that I learned to roam the aisles away from my mother. I could practice my training in respecting the merchandise. No salespeople ever admonished me for misbehavior. The toy section was up the stairs in Ahoskie’s only store mezzanine. I learned to shop for others after my sister Laverne taught me the importance of giving Christmas presents. I went from a self-indulgence for toys from Western Auto to buying Belk’s Jantzen, Arrow and Hai Karate products for my family. Holiday shopping was prettiest in the evenings, especially an hour before closing when most of the customers had left and the lights, inside the stores and on the street, were all mine. When Belk’s located towards the tobacco warehouse, Rose’s moved in and added a lunch counter, one that hadn’t known segregation. The ham biscuit was introduced to me. |
The view from the rear of |
Indirectly, the new Rose’s was a boon in another way. Daddy was driving down Main Street while WRCS-AM aired a live broadcast in front of the new location. The announcer spun a Johnny Hodges album and offered the album to the first driver to take the space in front of the booth. Daddy, listening to the station, parallel-parked the Bel Air, briskly took his prize and gave it to me. Except from the eminent and knowledgeable Clarence Shaw Newsome, I might have been the only person in Hertford County who knew about and appreciated Duke Ellington’s alto saxophonist.
Before another memory of my childhood in taken from me, let me share what I remember of Main Street. I slept in a metal crib until I was five. Thornton’s Furnitue (home of the first Belk location) delivered my first bed. I still sleep on it when in Cofield. It was at Thornton’s I came to love table lamps, or more precisely, the light that comes from table lamps.
Being a casual dresser, I have little to say about the fine suits of Ahoskie Department Store, although I walked through it plenty of times, going from the rear parking lot to the street. I politely tried to prevent an Ahoskie police officer from placing a ticket on the Convair convertible of my cousin Renee Melton, but he had already starting writing the ticket. I put the pennies back in my pocket.
Photograph by Angela Futrell.
At Walgreen’s, I abandoned Lance cheese crackers for a pimento cheese brand. From there, I carried home Mad and photography magazines.
The Rose’s that is now Quinton’s restaurant, reminds me of model cars and paints, Spanish peanuts and cashews, parakeets, Johnny Mathis and Don Shirley albums. Don Shirley? A somewhat known pianist and favorite of Bob Calvert’s jazz program on WGH-FM, he once gave a concert at Chowan College. Unfortunately, I was a student in Chicago then.
White’s Department Store sold hotdogs and milk shakes. The delicious chili dogs were sixteen cents. The twenty-five cent dog I bought on the Staten Island ferry in 1965 was an overpriced perversion. I still hate sauerkraut. I have one aside: the family of Mrs. Saluda Hall, a Pleasant Plains Church family, owned the building. Thomas Newsome of New Ahoskie Baptist was the contractor. During its construction in 1956, I was impressed by the scaffolding. What did a rural boy know about two story buildings?
The fish market was located between the hotdogs of White’s and my taste buds’ other love, Harrell’s Bakery. Well, rather the loop-like yellow glazed donuts of Harrell’s. I think it’s wonderful that my young metabolism allowed me to storm through a half-dozen then. It’s also wonderful for my health that those donuts are no more. Since Harrell’s closed in the 1980’s, every other donut has been a disappointment.
| One last Main Street memory is the Eskimo Drive-in. But I remember the site better as the Trailways bus station, particularly in September, 1970. My father and Phillipi's Rev. Chester A. Hart - who happened to walk by - were there to see me off. I then left Hertford County and haven’t moved back – yet. |
The unloading of stock at the
Dollar Store |
There’s room for your memories of Main Street on this website. Other stores of Ahoskie's Main Street I remember are Whidbee’s Hardware, Eddie Harrell’s, Western Auto, Feld’s, Fashion Shoe Store, Schleib Brothers, McKeel’s Jewelry’s, Burden’s Gifts, Copeland’s Drug, Colonial Grocery, and - still in business - Savin & Hill.