By Katie Scarvey
kscarvey@salisburypost.com
FAITH ó Not long after we stepped inside McCombs and Company in downtown Faith, Freddie Sides of Spencer came in and bought a container of the shop’s signature product: pimento cheese.
“I love it,” he said. “I’ve been eating their pimento cheese for years. It’s the best pimento cheese around. You can’t get any better.”
He now buys the roasted jalepeno version, which is Kim Shores’ twist on the classic recipe concocted by her uncle, Verne McCombs.
“It’s wonderful,” Sides says. “It’s not too hot ó it just adds some pizzazz.”
Dana Moose from Mount Pleasant came by later. She also purchased a container of pimento cheese ó her first, she said.
Even the Avett Brothers have made the trek to Faith to find the stuff.
McCombs pimento cheese is a venerable tradition. Verne McCombs started making it in 1958, along with cousins Norris and Howard McCombs. Norris and Howard went on to other things ó Norris opened a grocery store in Rockwell, and Howard opened a soda shop in Faith.
Then, the pimento cheese making fell to him, at which point it kind of took on a life of its own, Verne says. He went from making about 40 pounds a week to about 150 pounds. He generally mixed it up in 90-pound batches.
Kim remembers going to McCombs Grocery as a child, where she’d see her uncles Eugene and Verne, her aunt Edith and her grandfather Ray McCombs, who worked until he was 90, she says. Her uncle Eugene would always give her a nickel for candy, she remembers.
Verne pretty much grew up in the grocery, and he started working there when he was 12.
“You liked it, didn’t you?” Kim asks him.
“I guess,” he says, “except when we wanted to play ball.”
She remembers hearing that when Ray and Irene got married in 1924, they couldn’t have the ceremony until the store closed ó at 8 p.m.
That’s how important keeping the store open was.
The late Eugene McCombs, who was a state representative for many years, was known for loading up his car with containers of pimento cheese to distribute to his fellow legislators.
“Then,” as columnist Bill Williams wrote some years ago, “they would go and pass binding legislation.”
Verne closed the grocery in 1999, to retire at the age of 77. He’d had the store and all the food to make himself for the three years before he closed, and he was tired.
“It was too much,” he said.
But Verne’s pimento cheese didn’t really go away. He couldn’t stop making it completely, and it’s been available one place or the other for more than 50 years.
Now, you can get it at McCombs and Company, where Verne’s niece Kim is the new maker of the pimento cheese ó and the red slaw and chicken salad and egg salad.
Kim says that before she opened her shop, she helped Verne in the Faith Soda Shop and Restaurant, where he was still making pimento cheese.
She watched Verne like a hawk, making notes on how he made the cheese.
Verne jokes that Kim wanted to get the measurements down before he kicked the bucket.
“I never used a recipe,” he says.
“He could just eyeball it,” Kim says.
She’d stick her measuring cup in just before he tossed a handful of something into the mix.
She discovered that Verne’s hand holds about half a cup.
It took her six months to figure out the measurements, she said. That was important because she wanted her cheese to taste just like his.
She figured that people would know it if there was a difference.
Verne told her that if it started tasting different, she’d have to call it Shores’ pimento cheese.
She prefers to keep the McCombs’ taste and the McCombs’ name. Why mess with a good thing?
“She’s doing a good job,” Verne says. “I hope she keeps it up.”
Kim won’t reveal her hard-won recipe, but it does contain four different kinds of cheese: American, sharp and mild cheddar, longhorn, plus pimento peppers, mayonnaise, evaporated milk, vinegar and sugar.
Kim opened McCombs and Company in December of 2007 in what used to be the town library. Before that, the space housed a soda shop, before that a bar, and before that a meat market.
Folks are still expressing surprise at rediscovering the McCombs fare they’ve loved.
“Every week, someone comes in and says, ‘I didn’t know it was back,'” Kim says.
Kim, who used to be a nurse, decided to open her own business because it would allow her to be available to her children. Although she has two children in college, she also has two younger ones who are still at home. Since the family lives just up the street from her business, they can ride their bikes back and forth, she says.
When she was debating whether or not to start the business, she remembers her son Sam telling her, “Just do it. You can do it, Mom ó I’ll help.”
Daughter Jena said the same thing, and that was enough to convince Kim.
Sam and Jena help out when they can, although that will end when they go college in the fall.
Kim is proud of her town, which is thriving, she says.
“A lot of small towns are dying out, but Faith’s still going strong,” she says.
If you’re craving pimento cheese but don’t live near Faith, Kim wants you to know that you can find her pimento cheese at Variety Produce in Rockwell, Pop’s Country Store on Highway 601 and People’s Produce in Kannapolis.
Kim also sells chicken and egg salad, as well as cole slaw, all from Verne’s recipes. She sells almost as much chicken salad as she does pimento cheese, she says.
The business is all take-out. Bag lunches are available, with the customer’s choice of sandwich spread ó pimento cheese, egg salad or chicken salad ó plus pickle, chips, a drink and a homemade dessert.
When Kim opened her business, Rita Lefler was working with her, running a bakery called Carolina Sweets. Rita has since returned to a company she helped start in Rockwell.
Now, Kim bakes the sweets that go in the bag lunches, mainly cookies and brownies.
McCombs and Company features seasonal specials, like chicken and dumplings and soups in the winter and potato salad and deviled egg trays in the summer. All of the salads and the pimento cheese are made fresh, from scratch.
Call-in orders are available for quick pickups.
McCombs and Company is located at 113 N. Main St., Faith.
Hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday and 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday.
For more information, call 704-279-9776.