T.W. Jones, pre-ADT man.

Earl Spivey in front of the windows of T.W. Jones General Merchandise store, in 1972.
The United States Post Office of Cofield is on the left.

T.W. Jones, pre-ADT man

by Marvin T. Jones

Unlike in Mayberry, you’ll find that Cofield, North Carolina is mostly folks of African and Indian descent. When I was a teenager, a few whites were living there in the 1960’s and I think a few still do. The church members of Phillipi served as a guide for the general behavior of the citizens. An occasional fight caused by drinking caused by bootlegging on the outskirts and one peeping tom made for most of our crime. Still, our plain shops tempted robbers from Virginia.

It wasn’t until 1969 that the Sheriff’s Department assigned our George Early to guard the village on weekend nights. George Early was married to the eldest of the lovely Vann sisters. During the day he worked at James Bazemore’s corner store and garage across from my father general merchandise store. George’s rise filled us with a sense of Cofield’s growing importance. For a while we turned our heads towards him when Deputy Sheriff Early parked his cruiser between the train station and Tal Reid’s garage.

On one of those evenings, I was made aware of the strength and weakness of George’s job. My great-uncle Collin James parked next to George. I sat in front passenger seat enjoying the company of Uncle Collin and his neighbor and antagonist, Gary Robbins. Gary peered from the back seat and asked,

”What’s that rifle doing in the car?”
“It's in case I see a snake,” Collin snapped.
“That man (George) can kill it,” Gary replied, referring to the armed George Early.
“He’s town limits – I’m worldwide.”

Before Andy and Deputy Fife were first concerned with break-ins, my father, T.W. Jones, thought about any he might have. Dress shoes, sheer stockings or bottles of Atom Bomb perfume, shelved far away from the register, may go un-noticed, but a night robber could bag cartons of cigarettes, maybe some change in the cash drawer – even worse, bust it – or a fresh chicken. The pocket watches, knives and half-empty boxes of ammunition (we’d sell a single shotshell or .22 caliber cartridge) offered temptations. Daddy knew of other stores in the area that were smashed into.

He mated two electrical plugs, one from the power outlet. The other was connected to a two-hundred watt bulb near the ceiling. No one was used to such a bright light. I think the brightest bulb he sold had half the wattage – we were all energy conservers. At closing time, he’d turned off the lights so that no one could see him hook a black thread across the aisle near the cash register. The other end of the thread was tied to a plastic strip that stayed slipped between the electrical plugs, breaking the circuit of the electricity. Another hooked thread did the same – this time its strip opened the circuit of a battery-powered fire alarm.

Every night the trap was set. And a few years afterward, a couple of fellows from Virginia, Barney and Clyde, came into the dark and quiet village of Cofield during its darkest and quietest time. They had the talent to carefully remove the molding from one of the store’s front windows. Barney pulled out the glass, Clyde silently laid it on the concrete pad they stood on, and they crawled in over the Mayola ice-cream freezer. The knives and watches were ignored or not seen as they creeped past the soda box, the loose candy, the canned food, the packaged candy, the medicines and finally the cigars, which included Blake Sharpe’s and Uncle Collin’s favorite brand, King Edward.

Daddy kept the cash drawer slight open so that it wouldn’t get broken. A couple of dollars in change was always left in it. But it didn’t matter much. Clyde moved reached for the cigs and Barney bent over the cash till. Clyde crossed the black threads. The light flooded on and the alarm blared like a hog-sized rainfrog. In rushing out, Barney and Clyde rushed out through the window they hadn’t removed and tumbled onto the one they had laid aside. Covered in broken glass and dropping their cigarette cartons, they escaped toward Winton, the historic route of Virginian scoundrels.

It was just as well. Barney and Clyde ended up in the Winton jail for their crime. Chester Rawl’s insurance company paid for the repair, and the secret of the system stayed in Cofield.

Coda: Daddy and my brother Howard, using a stouter thread, rigged up a camera to the cash drawer. They later substituted the camera for a can of bug spray.