[media-credit id=5328 align=”alignnone” width=”678″]
[/media-credit]
“All roads lead to S&J’s,” said Shelia Castilow, owner of the S&J grocery store. It was a phrase that was painted on a mural at her son’s grocery store that bears the same name. I thought the phrase was a little funny, especially because the store seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere, but the more I thought about it, I felt as if I had been pulled to the store.
I had decided to try to chase light one night. I began to drive towards the sunset, knowing that the road I was on would lead to an area that was surrounded by farm land. The sky was percolating, colors dripping on endless corn and cotton fields, and no matter how fast I drove, it was always out of reach.
There was a small store coming into view, and without thinking I instantly turned right and was parked in the store’s lot, which is located at 5919 Old Jackson Rd, Bells, Tenn. There were no cars there. I walked up to the store’s porch and saw two weathered picnic tables and a pair of chairs. On each of the tables rested heavily-used ash trays with fresh cigarette butts. The sign on the door said “closed,” but I would be returning very soon.
Photographer Neil Cole and I arrived at 8:15 one morning to the sight of two older men sitting in chairs on the patio, waiting for the store to open. Without speaking to anyone, I already knew that this was an early morning hangout place for people.
[media-credit id=5328 align=”alignnone” width=”678″]
[/media-credit]
The smell of cigarettes in the air made the place feel as if it was trapped in the wrong time period. This was a store still locked in an older, simpler time. A time when people would sit around before a hard day’s work, smoking and talking about life, and then repeat the same process during fading light.
“Them are the only two left,” Castilow said, speaking about the two men who were on the porch when Neil and I arrived. “When I got this store, there were probably seven or eight older men, and they’d hang out. Before I got this store, there was a wooden table back here.” She pointed to where a small table now sat. “It was like a dining room table. They say all the men sat around and shot the bull. You know what I’m saying.”
S&J is not just a grocery store, but also a community center, offering lunch plates to customers and to the men who want to hang around for a little while with their friends and eat something.
S&J Grocery is mainly a farmers’ kind of store, one that Castilow has owned for the last five years. Some of the men come in and play dominos. She has a tablet that the men use to keep score on, but it’s not just older men who play. During the summer teenagers will come inside when it gets hot and join in.
“When it’s cool outside, men just sit around [the front porch of the store] and hangout,” Castilow said. “Even when the store closes, men are out there talking.”
[media-credit id=5328 align=”alignnone” width=”596″]
[/media-credit]
S&J Grocery is a convenient place for the area’s residents to frequent if they need anything quickly.
“It’s like five or six miles away from any other store, you know what I’m saying?” Castilow said. “If a new house is going up in a community, they’d rather go here because it’s just closer. I got a lady down here and she does not buy nothin’ but just in-town stuff. But one night she ran out of mayonnaise. Well, anyway, I had a little cup over here, you know I keep plastic cups, so I sold her a plastic cup of mayonnaise to finish fixing her supper so she didn’t have to go to town to just get that. Some people come down here and they just need a couple of eggs, or they need four five slices of bacon, so they run down here and get it instead of having to drive all the way to town.”
This kind of causal setting has created an atmosphere where people feel like they belong.
[media-credit id=5328 align=”alignnone” width=”678″]
[/media-credit]
The building itself has a rich history. According to Castilow, what is now the S&J Grocery store used to be another store located where the criminal justice building is here in Jackson, Tennessee. One of the older men sitting on the porch, Travis Mayfield, was related to Frank Jones, one of the past owners of the store. As a kid, Mayfield remembered the store being moved to its current area and being built on a goat farm. Mayfield recounted how his uncle actually lived in the store he owned and sold items while raising goats.
Mayfield spoke on how he’d sit in the store Indian style—something for which he’d be made fun of because his uncle thought it looked weird—and pet the goats while his uncle would do business. Now, though his uncle is no longer an owner, Mayfield continues to visit the store so that he can catch up with his friends and play games from time to time.
The most recent owner was dedicated to keeping the store open as many hours as possible.
“That little old man ran this store seven days a week,” Castilow said. “He never closed for nothing. No holidays, nothing.” He loved the store and kept it open for the small community of farmers that needed supplies but didn’t have the time to run all the way to town.
[media-credit id=5328 align=”alignnone” width=”678″]
[/media-credit]
Unfortunately, he suffered from a heart attack while he was on a tractor. One of the wheels was spinning repeatedly on a board of wood, causing smoke to spill out of the shed he was in.
“The day of the strawberry festival, on a Friday,” was the day he died, Castilow said. “Some hunters came through. There was some smoke in the area, so they got to looking for the smoke.”
Upon his death, the store went up for sale, and the farming community in the area began to ask Castilow to run the store because of her experience running a Save-A-Lot for eleven years. Castilow bought the store and continues to run it, knowing the importance of this store for the small community that surrounds it.
[media-credit id=5328 align=”alignnone” width=”678″]
[/media-credit]
Castilow’s son, Justin, also owns a store called S&J, located in Bells, Tennessee. At his store, there’s a mural painted on the outside wall with a picture of the two stores and a black-top road, which looks like an S and a J, between the two.
Though the community is small, S&J Grocery serves customers not only by meeting their grocery needs, but their social ones as well.
“All Roads Lead to S&J’s.” That’s what I thought of as I drove away. I hope that’s true. If I’m ever just driving around again, I hope I end up here. This is the kind of store you end up staying in for a long time.
Photos courtesy of Neil Cole