McGill’s general store stood for 132 years. Now comes the tears, patrons’ last orders
Ladonna Wilson walked into McGill’s Store Wednesday, carrying her eight-month-old son in a car seat. She smiled at Angie Neelands, who worked behind the counter and put the car seat on the floor. Wilson didn’t have to say anything. Neelands knew her order. Fries.
Wilson came to the store, on the corner of S.C. 161 and S.C. 55, every Wednesday to get fries for her 11-year-old son, Troy.
But this was the last Wednesday she’d do that.
McGill’s Store, a staple in the Bethany community, will close Feb. 1. The family-owned general store opened in 1888 and although the store has made changes over the years, business isn’t the same.
“We’re just at the point of big business and one-stop shopping and those kind of things...have just pushed us out of business where we’re not making the money that we need to be able to sustain a business here,” Tammy McGill, who married into the family and works in the store, said.
But what hasn’t changed is the feeling customers have when they’re in the store.
“That’s the tough part,” Tammy said. She started to cry. “They all feel like family.”
Neelands walked back to the kitchen for Wilson’s order. Tammy came to talk with Wilson. She leaned over, picked up Wilson’s son, Colt, from the car seat and held him, while Wilson sat at a table.
“You come here and you just see family,” Wilson said. “Tammy loves my kids. She gives them quarters or ice cream or whatever it is. Angie, she knows Troy’s order — fries with five packs of salt. She always has that ready every time I come in.”
Almost immediately, Neelands brought out Wilson’s order.
“Are those mine?” Wilson asked. Neelands nodded and put the fries on the counter.
“I’m going to take Troy’s fries,” she said. “And I’m going to come back.”
Wilson made sure it was OK to leave Colt with Neelands a few minutes, and rushed out the door. Neelands held the eight-month-old in her left arm and operated the cash register with her right. Colt smiled at customers.
***
Phil Combs, from Shelby, N.C., sat alone at a table in the Feed Room Grill, an extension to the original McGill’s store that serves food. Tammy and her daughter, Lauren, a fifth-generation member of the family, had the idea to open the breakfast and lunch eatery in 2015, which occupies a room that used to store animal feed.
“When we opened the grill, we decided to keep the name,” Tammy said. “It’s just a different kind of feed.”
The grill was full just before noon Wednesday. Wooden farmhouse-style tables filled the room. One table had old receipts from the store displayed under the glass. Black and white pictures of the store covered the walls.
Combs ate a burger and glanced around the room.
“I used to be a FedEx man here,” Combs said. “And I ran this route for 13 years and nearly every day, I would stop in here, at least to get something to drink or eat.”
Combs said he ate lunch at the grill the first day it opened. And he came back nearly every day since.
“I knew everybody who worked here,” he said. “And I’d call — I didn’t have to tell them who it was — and they’d have my food sitting here ready for me. With FedEx, every second counts, so they’d have my food, my drink, everything waiting on me when I got here.”
Tammy walked around the grill to check on customers. Combs noticed her. “Come here a minute,” he said. She laughed.
“She’s cooked for me more than my ex-wife,” he said.
“Oh god,” Tammy said, laughing. “He used to tell me that when he came in here as our FedEx guy.”
“I’m serious,” Combs said. “I’m not saying I was their No. 1 customer because they had lots and lots and lots of customers. But I’m in the top 10 I bet.”
Charles McGill ran the store for decades. The store was built by his grandfather, James Leslie McGill. A picture of him hung in the store above the door.
Tammy’s husband, Jimmy McGill, and his brother, David McGill, who also run a logging business, took over the store when their father, Charles McGill passed away in 2008.
“When he died, we wanted to carry on that legacy and tried to serve our community in other ways, like I said, with the grill and things in order to try and carry on that legacy,” Tammy said. “I feel like he would not want us to keep going if we’re not making the money that we need to to stay going. He wouldn’t want us struggling.”
The store never sold alcohol or lottery tickets, and it never opened on Sundays. It was another way to honor Charles McGill.
“We’ve tried to stick to our moral compass as far as what he also wanted,” Tammy said.
Tammy stood next to Combs as he ate his last McGill’s burger. They reminisced about the store.
“It’s really going to be a sad day — not just for the community — but for everybody in the surrounding area,” Combs said. “There’s probably not a single business in this county that’s still in business after 132 years. I mean this is the original building. If you look at the outside and you look at these pictures, nothing has changed, really.”
Tammy started to cry.
“It’s something you never thought would happen,” Combs continued. “I thought McGill’s would be here forever.”
***
Sharon McCarter, from Clover, walked into the Feed Room. She, too, was coming to enjoy one last lunch. She started coming to McGill’s 40 years ago.
McCarter walked up to Tammy and started to talk with her about Charles McGill, who was in the store every day from open to close.
“Mr. McGill, of course, was here,” McCarter said.
“Oh yeah,” Tammy said.
“And I thought, ‘That man never smiles. I am going to get him to smile at me,’” McCarter said. “And so I tried and tried and tried. You know what it was? The grandchildren. If you mentioned those grandchildren, a smile would come right on his face.”
Tammy started to cry again.
“Y’all have got to stop doing this to me,” she said.
“Like you said, it’s time,” McCarter tried to console her.
The decision to close McGill’s was not made in one day, Tammy said.
“You start noticing things aren’t going as well as you expected,” she said. “That’s when you start looking at things. And like I said, you start praying, especially when it’s been 132 years. You don’t just turn around and say, ‘I’m closing tomorrow.’”
McCarter would come into the store every morning on her way to work, she said. And before the grill opened, she said people socialized around the black pot belly stove in the middle of the room.
“You would see the same people sitting around the stove every morning and you’d just say your hello’s and have a good day,” she said. “That’s just what you do in a small community. There’s just a lot of good memories here. You won’t have the memories around the table anymore.”
The black stove still sat in the middle of the room. Shelves stocked with sodas, candy, snacks, home supplies and boots filled the room. Some of the shelves were cleaned out Wednesday. Deer taxidermy heads and a turkey hung above the shelves.
The family isn’t planning to sell the building, Tammy said. The family home still sits on the property beside the store.
“Our plan is to not be here in the same capacity,” Tammy said. “That’s not to say that we won’t do something differently with the building or serve the community in a different capacity. We don’t know yet.”
***
A purple notebook lay on the counter. About eight pages were full of hand-written notes from customers. The words, “Once upon a time...” decorated the book’s cover. Almost every note read, “We will miss you” and “Thank you for the memories.” One person wrote, “Truly an end of an era.”
Wilson’s son, Troy, left a message in the book.
He drew a broken heart that nearly took up the whole page and a sad face. And at the top of the page, he wrote, “I am going to miss your fries for the rest of my life.”
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 2:58 PM.
