The Greenwood Country Store

White Hall

February 7, 2022

My Grandmother Fox and Uncle Pres lived by the Greenwood Country Store. I remember visiting them as a kid with my family. At night we would sit out on the front porch (if I was lucky I got to sit on the porch swing -- otherwise it was some hard-as-hell metal chairs that would rock) and listen to the quiet -- which was interrupted infrequently by cars going by. That was pretty much the nighttime entertainment -- there was a tv but most times there was no reception (the closest station was in Richmond).

I remember how my uncle would take me over to the store for a treat every now and then. We'd walk through the backyard and then through the back of the store. The article mentions a Mr. Young -- I remember him. My favorite treat was rolls of sweet and sour candies that were like Sweet Tarts but came 13 to a roll.

Pretty crazy how much of my family's history is from western Albemarle County.

(I've copied this article without permission -- please don't tell! It is from the Crozet Gazette.)

The article:

The area surrounding Greenwood is flush with history. It is hard to believe that before the arrival of the railroad tracks to that section of western Albemarle County in the early 1850s, there was no Greenwood community, much less a “downtown” Greenwood.

“Uptown” Greenwood got rolling first with the arrival of crews that labored to excavate the rail bed and hand-drill Claudius Crozet’s easternmost mountain tunnel. While Greenwood Depot denoted the temporary end of the Virginia Central Railroad’s line extending westward from Richmond, steam locomotives were refilled with mountain spring water and driven onto a massive apparatus that turned and pointed the engine back east. The soon prospering Uptown greeted arriving railroad passengers with a hotel and general store, and a private boarding school that employed teachers from Jefferson’s University at Charlottesville. A decade later, Uptown faced firsthand the fury of Civil War troops and their bent for mayhem and destruction.

Greenwood’s train depot greatly enhanced life and business in the Greenwood region for many decades. Inadequate modes of transportation and poor road conditions drove passenger and commercial traffic onto the trains until well into the 20th century. The coming of automobiles and, finally, public monies for road improvements, gradually weaned travelers away from the steel rails.

At the foot of the steep roadway leading to the depot sat H.R. Boswell’s store in downtown Greenwood. Depending on wind direction, pungent fumes from his sassafras mill in the side yard often tainted his corner location. Less frequently patronized during the heyday of rail travel, his mercantile establishment nevertheless sat at an important crossroads in the community. Directly across the road stood the venerable blacksmith establishment operated by three successive generations of the Woodson family. Boswell was an active, contributing member of his community, serving on the Greenwood School Improvement League, as supervisor of construction for the village’s 1908 two-story schoolhouse located behind his store business, and as a school board trustee who aided the establishment of yet another community high school building in 1921.

The hugely popular and successful Country Store that had no equal in western Albemarle County eventually replaced Boswell’s store and mill. Their stationery stated “Dealers in Most Everything”. Advertisements of the day left little question that if it were needed for farm, orchard, home or business, they likely had it on hand, or could quickly get it for you.

A devastating but temporary business setback occurred during the afternoon of Tuesday, November 7, 1939. A fire that was believed to have begun in the basement furnace quickly swept through the wooden structure, despite the best efforts of Crozet, Charlottesville and Waynesboro firefighters. Their diligence saved the store manager’s home next door as well as Greenwood High School. After three hours time, only a smoldering heap remained. The financial losses, fortunately insured, totaled more than $50,000, a formidable sum in its day.

A modern masonry building replaced the burned structure, and for several more decades it anchored the community. The Country Store sat on Greenwood’s “hot corner” (the intersection of Greenwood Station Road [Rt. 690] and Greenwood Road [Rt. 691]), to borrow a baseball term easily recognized by Sammy Fox (see obituary below) who, as a youth in the late-1930s, worked at the store for 15-cent wages (while he anticipated his next baseball game). Both before and after the fire, the pace and patterns of rural life could be observed from the store’s long, covered front porch.

Diagonally across the road once sat a massive rock crusher where convicts in boldly striped suits, overseen by serious-minded guards with long guns, broke large rocks into many smaller ones that were used to improve the surface of the road toward Jarman’s Gap. During WWII, around-the-clock village volunteers staffed the Aircraft Warning Service spotting tower, logging and reporting all planes passing overhead. Later, at that same location, the Corner Garage kept everyone’s vehicles in good repair. When its days of service ended, the post office located there.

Nearby, Tobe Moyer’s barbershop might have been open for business—unless a customer or passerby had convinced him to accompany them to a spot where the fish were said to be biting that day. Always dependable Country Store clerk George Ellinger could have been seen daily going to work from his lifelong home on Greenwood Road, gathering day by day his century’s-worth of Greenwood memories.

Sheila Fox grew up just a short walk down the road from the country store. She fondly recalls her father Sammy’s tales of growing up in the village and his working at the store as a youngster. She also remembers the Country Store as it was during the 1960s and early ’70s when it was operated by Walter and Lucy Young.

“In the summers,” she recalled, “my brother, sister, and I would scour the ditches and roadsides to find soda bottles that we would take up to the store for two-cents return fee each. Instant wealth! Of course, we never took the money. We would use our newly acquired funds on the vast array of penny candy that the Youngs had lining the insides of the U-shaped counter cleverly positioned right there at child height. Squirrel Nut Zippers, Mary Janes and Bit-O-Honeys. The list went on and on, each mounded up in its own container. Heaven on earth!

“The store had everything—it wasn’t just a grocery store. There were pots and pans, sewing notions, glassware, apparel, etc, to the left. Then on the right side, it was a grocery store. During our teenage school years, all the neighborhood children would walk up to the store to buy little baby Cokes and honey buns or Juicy Fruit gum, and linger in a warm place while we waited for the school bus which would come down from Newtown and then turn left unto Jarman Gap Road. Greenwood Country Store was a fixture in our little community.”

Today she maintains a presence within that storied institution with sought-after examples of her magician-like expertise creating imaginative and useful furniture and decorative items.

Cherished memories are still shared today by a gaggle of young girls who would arrive at the store via pick-up truck ride from their grandmother’s home several miles away at Casa Maria. Without fail, Mr. Young wittily welcomed the group as they entered the store with a loud, “Hi, boys!” Indignation prevailed, of course, among the little group while they “did their shopping”, but then faded away (until the greeting was repeated during their next visit) while they enjoyed their customary Sugar Daddy on the return trip down Greenwood Station Road.

You know, they just don’t make downtowns—or country stores—like they used to.

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www.SecretsoftheBlueRidge.com or at P.O. Box 88, White Hall, VA 22987. Secrets of the Blue Ridge © 2003–2017 Phil James

Obituary of James Samuel Fox:

I share this because it references him playing baseball in Greenwood in the late 1930s -- the same time my father would have been doing the same thing. Also, there are a few "James" and "Samuels" in my family tree. Is that a coincidence??

James Samuel "Sammy" Fox

James Samuel "Sammy" Fox, 82, son of Ashby Dolphus and Martha Layman Fox, died in the early hours of Thursday, March 18, 2010, at home in his beloved Greenwood, Virginia.

He leaves behind his wife of 59 years, Nancy Hughes Fox; three children, James "Jim" S. Fox Jr., Carol Harlow and her husband, Eddie, and Sheila Fox; and one granddaughter, Jessica Hite Harlow. He is also survived by his sister, Mildred Fox Diller and her husband, James; one niece, Katherine "Katie" Cavanagh; and three nephews, Jed, Tim and David Diller, all of Chatsworth, Illinois.

Sammy grew up in Greenwood and attended Greenwood High School, where he discovered one of his first passions, baseball. He served in the Armed Forces and was decorated with a Bronze Star for his active duty in the Korean War. In later life, he was an avid bird (quail) hunter, reader and history buff. He was a member of Lebanon Presbyterian Church and VFW Post 8436.

A graveside service will be held 2 p.m. Sunday, March 21, 2010, at Emmanuel Episcopal Church Cemetery in Greenwood, Virginia, with Doctor Alan Thompson officiating.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to VFW Post 8436, Yancey Mills, Virginia, or Hospice of the Piedmont, 675 Peter Jefferson Parkway, Suite 300, Charlottesville, VA 22911.

Anderson Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.