7/12/2006

Western Auto has served Snow Hill for more than 50 years
By Tom Range, Sr.

The Western Auto Associates auto parts store has been in operation at 114 West Greene Street in Snow Hill for over 50 years.  It  was founded in 1951 by Gus Payne, whose family has been in the area for generations.  His father was one of two Snow Hill city policemen back in the 1930s.  Gus’s children and now grandchildren staff the store. 

To staff and customers alike, he is known as “Pop-Pop.”

The previous occupant of the site was an oyster bar.  The enterprise has expanded twice absorbing its neighbors; to the south a hat shop and to the north a “five and dime” store.  On a hand-drawn street map, created in the 1940s by long-time Snow Hill resident Burt Gibbons, Western Auto shared the block on its of Greene Street with men’s clothing stores, a drug store, a doctor’s office and a shoe repair shop.  These enterprises would be called “mom and pop” ventures, supporting the town population as well as the workers in the mills, hatcheries and canneries located in town.

Gus mentioned that virtually all manufacturing has disappeared from Snow Hill during his 50 years on Greene Street.  Young people, he went on, have left the city as a consequence.  Snow Hill was once a thriving river port and a hub of commerce.  All that is gone, too.  He estimates that there are only about 70 retail businesses now in town, many of them now supporting the legal operations related to Snow Hill’s role as county seat for Worcester County.  Restaurants abound, patronized at lunchtime by county employees.

In earlier times, when industry boomed and workers were paid in cash on Friday or Saturday nights, the local movie theater was a main attraction.  The first movie theater, which had opened as Mason’s Opera House, was on the second floor of a commercial building.  A fire broke out in the first floor store and the building was declared unsafe for use and was substantially altered.  The theater was rebuilt with an entrance off the sidewalk.  There was also a “colored” theater in town.  Other facilities that relieved the workingman of some of his pay were second story pool halls.  The butcher shops, Gus recalls, would often display their products on the sidewalks, with carcasses hung up on hooks outside their shops.

By establishing Western Auto in 1951, Gus took advantage of the post World War II boom in the auto industry, which had been starved by both rationing and the virtual lack of the production capabilities that had been converted to the making of tanks and jeeps.  Farm communities had prospered during the war years, as did most of the manufacturing sector.  The time was ripe for auto parts stores.

As the years progressed, Western Auto added other lines to its stock.  Children’s express wagons and bicycles appeared in the newer departments of Western Auto that had been added upon acquiring the neighboring stores.  Gus tells of an incident in selling a bike to a young lad wanting to establish a paper route.  He didn’t have enough cash for an outright purchase so he bartered with Gus to pay for it over time – not by cash but by services.  The paperboy delivered the newspaper free to Gus.  The value of the paper delivered was 84 cents per week.  Both parties agreed to the terms and over many months, the bike was paid for in full.

Pop-Pop, now approaching 80, is at Western Auto most days and for much of the day.  The family store is disappearing almost before our eyes.  May “Pop-Pop” and what he represents, be with us for a long, long time.

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