From Days Gone By July 23, 1921

July 23, 1921.
                                 THE CROSS-ROADS STORE
                                                 By Dennis Kirk
    Some months ago, while driving along a county road in Johnson County, this State, we seemed suddenly to enter an unusual settlement. A school was near, and the road was full of children, dogs were scampering here and there, hogs wallowed lazily in the fence jams, and a flock of geese greeted us in the usual way that geese greet. After the geese greeted us, we were noticed by the community. Have you ever started to visit a neighbor in the country, and wanted your coming to be somewhat of a surprise, and met a flock of geese down the lane, you know what became of the intended surprise. But it is said a flock of geese once saved the city of Rome, and we guess they did, if saving depended upon waking up a sleeping sentry in their path. We then remarked to our traveling companion that we did not know there was a town just at this particular spot.
    About this time the road in which we were traveling crossed over another road at angles, and the mystery was solved, it was nothing more nor less than a crossroads, with its store, and whittling box to one side, while grouped about here and there, were two or three dewllings, a church, schoolhouse, etc., alltogether a hustling, bustling little village.
    No sooner had we entered the environment of the neighborhood, than we were carried back to a day, now almost gone, when the country cross roads store flourished. Our earliest recollections of a store is of one of these. There was not much in it. No up-to-date figures. The one we have in mind had not even a showcase, but the stick candy they sold was the best yet, if it did get stickey from being exposed to the moisture, and get walked upon by a few flies. The spiral streaks of red that wound the large and juicy sticks have never been equaled in beauty, or juicy sweetness.
    Twas in the country cross-roads store that whittling originated. Here politicians whittled, planned and caucused. This is a day now almost gone. It was the day of the water grist mill, and the slow going ox team. Now the water mills are few and far between. The dams have been broken and washed away by floods, and the streams dried up by droughts, both extremes being caused largely by the cutting away of the forests that once covered hill and valley throughout the Southern expanse. Those were the days. What did we care, if it did take one day to shell the corn, one day to find the oxen, and another to make the trip to the mill and back, we had plenty of time, and did not have to live so fast as we do now.
    But we guess it is well that we move on; but the memory of these old institutions, once so dear to our hearts, is good for the soul, and helps us to better life of today, from having lived the life of that enchanted day, now gone and going; and we think it well to preserve some of its peculiar charm in the song and story of this fleeting age.