Downpour greets walkers at the end of adventure

Salisbury Post columnist Mark Wineka and photographer Jon Lakey arrived at the Rowan and Cabarrus county line on Main Street in Kannapolis just before 3 on Thursday. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

R.C. Stafford stopped while driving to speak to the "walking guys" of the Salisbury Post. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Fred Talbert of Talbert's Jewerly in Landis. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Betty Hartsell and her daughter Angela Atkinson at Perry's Olde Shoppe on North Main Street in Landis. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Sachin Valia, owner of the Landis Dairy Bar, behind the counter. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Justin Bailey and James Garrett play a game of chess in the carport of Bailey's home on North Main Street in North Kannapolis. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

By Mark Wineka

mwineka@salisburypost.com

LANDIS — Betty Hartsell likes to drive up traffic to her store — Perry’s Olde Shoppe on North Main Street — by putting a lot of interesting yard art alongside the road.

Only a short patch of pavement separates her front door from the highway, so it’s difficult to drive by, or walk past, without noticing.

It also helps give the impression that a lot of interesting things are just spilling out of the store. Which is the truth.

Perry’s Olde Shoppe features antiques and collectibles, including linens, glassware, dishes, millinery, “shabby chic” creations and, for lack of a better word, “stuff.”

Hartsell and her daughter, Angela Atkinson, are just back from “The World’s Greatest Yard Sale,” which stretches from Covington, Ky., to Gadsden, Ala. — some 450 miles of stuff.

The women, traveling with their husbands, followed a shorter segment of the great yard sale route and concentrated a lot of their buying on yard art. They were able to fill a commercial van and truck.

Perry’s Olde Shoppe was originally a Ketner’s grocery store. “We’ve utilized every inch of this building,” Hartsell said Thursday, giving a quick tour.

“It’s amazing what we’ve done with it.”

She opened the store three years ago after retiring as an administrative assistant to the chairman of the biology department at Davidson College. She lives in Landis, close enough to walk on nice days.

But a deluge greeted her Thursday morning, and limited the items she could place next to the road.

The name “Perry’s Olde Shoppe” is a tribute to her son, who died when he was 14.

Young Perry would have preferred a bait and tackle shop to this, Betty said.

***

On the last day of our walk through Rowan County, Post photographer Jon Lakey and I set out in rain and finished in sunshine.

The trip started last Sunday at a church service across from the rubble of what once was the N.C. Finishing Co. plant along the Yadkin River.

It finished within sight of the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis, a biotechnology center which has promised a future where the textile industry was once king.

Rain to sunshine?

Every day on our walk, we heard people tell us that the country’s and their own economic situations are tough and not improving. They just don’t see signs of a recovery — at least not for them.

That’s the bad news. The good news is Rowan County has some great people, as we saw again Thursday on our stretch drive through Landis and North Kannapolis.

***

R.C. Stafford spotted us along North Main Street in Kannapolis and pulled his Toyota truck into a parking lot we were just leaving.

“I saw you guys, and I said, ‘I bet you’re the walking guys,” he said, exiting his truck.

Stafford, 79, has been retired for 17 years after a 46-year career at Plant No. 1 in Kannapolis. His wife retired in 2000 from the mill, three years before it shut down for good.

“I’m really dressed to garden,” he apologized. “I didn’t know you guys would be out there. I just got my turnip patch in, and this rain ought to really make it go.”

***

At lunchtime, Jeremy Gill had exited a side door at Turning House Millworks and was enjoying a smoke. He also was waiting for a ride to take him to the bank.

It would have to be quick. His lunch break was only 30 minutes.

Gill said he started working at Turning House about two weeks ago and had just been paid.

We said our goodbyes and walked on. I looked over my shoulder a minute later and saw him getting into a car.

***

Things were slow for Tim Dietz Thursday morning at Landis Auto, a place owned by Robert Richards that offers tune-ups, oil changes, tire rotations and other general maintenance services.

The rain didn’t help.

“You have to deal with the weather and the people not wanting to come out,” Dietz said.

A young clerk from Advance Auto Sales, located just south of Landis Auto, roared into the parking lot in his Mustang. He carried a couple of cases of oil for Dietz.

“When do you get parts delivered in something like this?” Dietz said of the boy’s snazzy ride.

“All he needs are the Advance decals on the side.”

***

Fred Talbert, owner of Talbert’s Jewelry in Landis, was happy to hear we had been walking all week.

“It’s good for you,” he said. “It gives you longevity. Exercising, son, is good for you.”

In 1948, Talbert was the new kid on the block when he opened his jewelry store here. All of those other businesses from 1948 are long gone.

“We just don’t have anything much left in Landis,” said Talbert, 85. “The young people today don’t come to a little town like this.”

Talbert still has some work, such as jewelry repair and engraving, but he’s not kidding himself.

“I just come up here now for the fun of it,” he said. “This is to have something to do.”

Talbert was stricken with polio at age 2, but that didn’t prevent him from helping on the family farm, nor following his father’s path and getting into the jewelry business. He first attended the Spencer School of Watchmaking in 1945-46.

Talbert took that valuable training and started his own store by first repairing watches. Then he was fixing bracelets. Soon he was into the retail end of the business and doing well.

Members of the same families kept coming back to his store — some did business with him for 50 years.

That’s rare today.

***

It was a wet walk Thursday morning, but it wasn’t the rain getting under Chuck Freeze’s skin.

It was the traffic.

The vehicle accident that shut down Interstate 85’s southbound lane Thursday morning ruined the start to Freeze’s day.

Standing outside his train shop in Landis, Freeze said it took him an hour and 40 minutes to drive from his home in Welcome.

"They’ve got every road closed up through there," said Freeze, who tried all the alternative routes he could think of.

His hobby shop, Chuck’s Trains, has been open to the public in Landis about five years, though Freeze has been in the building about eight. In the beginning, he was content attending only model train shows and operating as a mail-order business.

Now he does a lot of business through his web site and says the walk-in traffic to the store is pretty good. He and his wife, Deanna, still attend weekend shows, and those start in earnest again in September.

Freeze will be going to places such as Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach and Atlanta.

“The store stays busy,” Freeze said, “but I have to admit, most of the people aren’t from Landis.”

Unlike many other businessmen we’ve talked to in our trip across Rowan County, Freeze said things are going pretty well for him.

“Hobbies thrive during a depression,” he said.

***

Jon and I had the hot dog special at the Landis Dairy Bar — four hots dogs for $3.99.

I added a banana milkshake.

The Landis Dairy Bar is an institution, dating back, owner Sachin Valia said, to 1961.

Valia sat at our booth for a minute and told us how he originally bought the dairy bar with the intention of tearing it down for parking.

He wanted to expand the Exxon side of his building next door and add a Subway restaurant. But it would require more parking.

Valia learned quickly that a lot of people were emotionally attached to the dairy bar.

“They said, ‘Don’t do it, this is our history,’” he recalled. “A lot of stories were so touching, we decided not to do it.”

He scrapped the plans for a Subway and remodeled the dairy bar instead.

***

We ran into Todi Ward not long after she had opened the front door to the Players Sports Bar and Club at noon.

She invited us inside for a look at the place.

“A lot of changes have been made and will continue to be made,” Ward said.

Ward had an interesting life story. In capsule, she and her sister lived in foster homes for much of their childhood after their father was killed in a train accident in 1973.

Ward ended up in Phoenix, but four years ago, she returned here to reconnect with her mother, cousins, aunts and uncles. She and her 15-year-old son intend to stay.

Meanwhile, her sister has married an attorney and is living in Michigan.

They talk by telephone every day.

***

“Check,” Justin Bailey said, snatching one of James Garrett’s pieces from the chess board.

The men, who said they play chess all the time, had their board balanced on a piece of plaster board, which teetered on a couple of cinder blocks.

Bailey was in a white plastic chair; Garrett, an orange vinyl one.

They were drinking Pepsi.

I asked who usually wins these chess matches.

“He does, I have to be honest,” Bailey said.

But in a few more moves, Bailey had him.

What was next on the agenda?

Bailey said he planned to go into the house and make spaghetti. Then, more chess.

**

We spoke briefly with Hipolito Alvarez, who has a new Mexican food truck that he parks outside a Mexican grocery on North Main Street.

He said he used to be a cook at the Mambo Grill in Salisbury.

The truck, Los Jalapenas, offers tacos, tortas, bebidas, burritos, enchiladas and many variations on these themes that I’m unfamiliar with.

But it was making me hungry.

***

Our last stretch drive toward the Rowan-Cabarrus County line was uneventful.

We finished our walk across the county at 2:52 p.m. Thursday.

Jon and I have talked about going back through my notes and his photographs to count how many people we met this week.

It could be 100. It could be 200.

We had some wet days — Sunday and Thursday — and some hot ones. It was August, remember.

We really can’t complain overall.

Jon liked to say we were a “spectacle” walking down the road all week, and I always laughed.

But I prefer to think of us as “spectators,” filing reports on people just going about their everyday business.

Yet to their credit, they gave us the time of day.