Remembering Rose: Salisbury characters through the years

Norman Ingle

, Charlie Roakes in one of his outfits carrying his cane , proclaims that he is the town character of Salisbury. Picture was published in the Salisbury Sunday Post Aug. 25, 1974. File photo by James Barringer

Mooney Thompson

Editor’s note:This story by the late Rose Post was first published April 5, 2003.

Roakes Grocery came down the other day, attacked by bulldozers and the march to the future — and I deny that I cried.

Must have been something wrong with my eyes.

OK, so it hasn’t been Roakes Grocery for 30 years.

But that little brick building close to the corner of Mahaley Avenue and West Innes Street was the staple of my life during the years I was cooking for five children, my mother and Eddie and me, and I’ve passed it many times every day for more than 40 years, driving from home to work and back again.

It was the kind of little neighborhood store that took a while to decide exactly what it was. First, it was a place to grab a quick loaf of bread in the little Log Cabin building on the West Innes-Statesville Boulevard corner before service stations took that spot, and then it got a little bigger across West Innes in the old College Inn building and then Charlie left Southern Railway and they built their new building next door and you became best friends with Charlie and Louise and all the other customers and swapped recipes and talked about the children and — oh, you had to stop in every day, whether you really needed any groceries or not.

I still fix scalloped tomatoes the way Louise Roakes taught me. And I’m sure I never would have been able to get my children into the adult world if I hadn’t been able to make a short-hand call and say, “I need three pounds of chopped meat, a salad and some fruit,” and when I got home, Charlie would have delivered exactly what I wanted, and it was on the kitchen table waiting for me.

Of course, they’d sold out in 1973, and I — and all the other families who didn’t think life was worth living without Charlie and Louise — adjusted, and the friendship didn’t die.

That’s why it was so much fun when I ran into Charlie one day, and he said he wanted to fight. Or file for office. Or have a proclamation issued.

“Whatever it takes — fisticuffs, election, proclamation,” he said. He was ready. He wanted it known far and wide that he was Salisbury’s Town Character. The only Town Character, no matter who else tried to claim the crown.

“I’m it!” he announced, twirling his new gray beard into a couple of fancy side curls and tossing his head like a stallion at the gate.

But it wasn’t official. There were pretenders to the throne.

“Humph,” humphed Norman Ingle, settling a straw topper at a rakish angle over his eye, not long after he’d retired from his downtown jewelry store. “He’s an amateur, a novice, a beginner, way down the line. I’ll show him five pictures to his one that will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I am the original and only and present Town Character.”

“Bosh!” boshed Mooney Thompson, “who wants to be Town Character?”

Mooney was the Foot-Long Hot Dog king already, starting in the ’40s at the same Innes-Statesville Boulevard corner Charlie started at and moving to the corner of Harrison and Fulton, where Boyden (to become Salisbury High) students, stopped for a foot-long breakfast, and finally at Windy Hill Beach, the only place on the Grand Strand smart enough to carry the Salisbury Post.

Mooney had given all of that up by the time Charlie was campaigning to be Town Character. He was too busy at his new occupation as TV viewer.

“But he doesn’t deserve it. Why, if Lord Salisbury could see him trying to be the Town Character, he’d turn over in his grave. What makes him think the town needs a character anyway?”

What made Charlie think so was he wanted the title.

When he had his store, he had a platform, a place to pontificate on whatever grabbed his attention, a location for launching whatever practical joke he could conjure up.

But he’d retired and needed more to do than feed the ducks at High Rock Lake where he’d moved. So why not go after the title?

Because Louise objected. More. She was raising the devil.

“She says I’m not going to be buried in my beard. She says that’s when she’ll have the last say. I told her I’m gonna talk to Charlie Bolden out there at Summersett’s and tell him, when I go, my beard goes with me and I want the casket open.

“I told Louise, ‘If you think I don’t have any friends, I’ll go down one side of the street and you go down the other and we’ll poll the people and see how many friends I have.’

“She don’t want to sit with me in church anymore. One Sunday morning, she jammed her elbow in me and said, ‘People are looking at you instead of the preacher. Stop curling your beard!’ I just kept on curling. The preacher told me I looked like Abraham.”

It’s for sure he didn’t look like Charlie Roakes. At least, not the Charlie Roakes who used to run the grocery store.

That, he said, was not just the beard. He had new clothes and lost 50 pounds.

He hadn’t planned to retire so soon, but he got a good offer and took it and started moving big plants to the new homes his sons, Bobby and Charlie Jr., were building, and all that lifting and lugging got to his heart. He spent 62 days in the hospital with a heart attack and lost the 50 pounds. Growing the beard was voluntary.

And nobody recognized him.

Old Mr. Ham Withers said, “Charlie Roakes? I’ll be durned if that’s so!”

And Sylvia Gordon? He ran into her downtown and sidled up real close and said, “How you doing, Honey?”

And “She pulled away. I could see she thought I was a fresh old man. Finally I told her who I was, and she said, ‘I ought to slap the hell out of you!’ ”

He laughed and curled his beard.

Louise said he’d do anything to get his picture in the paper, and he would, even unto slandering Norman and Mooney.

“Norman,” he muttered, “has no right to be Town Character. He won’t grow a beard because he’s scared of his wife, and Mooney sits in front of the television set 18 hours a day and sleeps 14 and then complains he can’t go to sleep. Why should they even be in the running?”

Charlie would even change his clothes over and over again to prove he deserves the title.

“I got a red outfit and a candy striped coat and a gold outfit” with a Swiss yodeler’s hat, “and I’m gonna get a green outfit.” He’d even put on his old Salisbury Clown Club Keystone Cop outfit if that heart attack hadn’t stopped him from playing in parades.

And Norman?

He might be the Sheik, “but I get a lot of sugar with this beard.”

Besides he was sure he was the best practical joker in town, especially if Mooney’s the goat. There was the time Mooney bought a great big black station wagon, and Charlie had a sign painter fix up a sign for his car that said, “Mooney’s Funeral Home.”

And the time he put For Sale signs all over his Salisbury house when Mooney was still running Windy Hill Beach, before he retired.

Or the time he had Jim Torrence print a picture of Mooney and Charlie framed it in a toilet seat. Or the time he had Bill Bost carve a horse’s head and put it on top of one cane — for Charlie — and a horse’s ... well, the part with the tail ... and put it on top of another cane for Mooney. Didn’t all that qualify him?

“Shucks!” Mooney says, “I don’t want to even get near his tricks anymore. I don’t get close to infested places, and you can’t tell what’s liable to come out of that wig on the front of his face. Let him be the top man — and stay down on that river.”

Norman Ingle was willing for him to stay down on the river, too, with the snakes and turtles and catfish, but he wasn’t willing to concede the title.

“That clown? I’ll stack my evidence against his any time. I’ll let him pick a jury of 12 good men and women and I’ll guarantee that jury will decide unanimously for me. Why, I’ve got the biggest collection of hats in town, hats I wore in minstrel shows, hats I’ve worn in parades, hats from Australia and Mexico. Why, I’ve marched in many a parade. I’ve turned my office into a museum, a natural museum, full of dust and cobwebs and old things.

“I’ve dressed up like a Mexican cowboy for the Kiddie Parade and I’m the Sheik and Grand Marshal for the Christmas parade and I went to 13 different places and played Santa Claus last Christmas.”

Why, he marched in the Holiday Parade at the age of 87 with the prettiest bunch of harem gals yet keeping him in line.

“I’m a gentleman citizen, a fellow who goes out to do something for the people. I’m not here to be a clown, although,” he admitted, “Mrs. Ingle tells me I should have been in Barnum and Bailey long ago.

“Why, that fellow Roakes, what’s his name? He’s not even a citizen! He’s sitting down there in a teepee on the Yadkin catching catfish out of the muddy river, and he’ll never catch up with me. I’d lose him in a race before he’d ever catch up with me.”

But first base or starting line, Charlie was ready for the gun to go off, and the competition to begin. He wanted the title.

Truth is, they shared it.

But when they were all gone, who was there? Who was even coming along? Somebody needed to pick up the mantle of Town Character because the folks who know there’s truth and living and laughter know a town has to have its character to be fully a town?

And now, with the old Roakes Grocery biting the dust ...

But wait!

Is Ronnie Smith preparing for something? We know he’s Salisbury’s No. 1 Cheerleader, but is a bigger title in his future?