McCombs Grocery in Faith Takes A Vacation

On a recent trip home to Faith, N.C., I was relieved to find that progress had left the little town I grew up in relatively unchanged. I was greeted with familiar and comforting sights as I rode down main street to drink in the nostalgia that each visit brings.

Except for the huge addition to the Faith Baptist Church that demands you stop and take notice, things looked about the same as they always had. But looks can be deceiving as I was soon to find out and I was unprepared for the shock that yet awaited me.

My first day back involved settling in and getting readjusted to the relaxing slow pace I relish in the south. I was then ready to venture out and adopt the routine that falls into place with each visit home. I awoke early the next morning for a 7:00 a.m. walk around the neighborhood with my father and his sisters, Margaret and Clarice. During our route we crossed paths with Bob Rogers, who also starts his day with an invigorating stride to health and well being. We stopped briefly to chat and it was thus I learned that McCombs Grocery was closed for a whole week so that the proprietor Vern could go on vacation.

I was briefly stunned by this news. This store is the pulse point of the community. Daily activity centers around the reliability of this neighborhood market where shopping is a comfort and no customer request raises an eyebrow. Bob Rogers even recounted the time his wife sent him to the meat counter there to buy two hotdogs. He was skeptical at this request and felt foolish placing such a small order, but Vern, who runs the meat counter, did not blink an eye. He will sell you one piece of bologna if you want. In fact, he'll even make it into a sandwich and sell it to you for lunch. What would the town folk do without Vern there to nurture them through the day. Normal activity was sure to grind to a halt and normal daily routine would be disrupted for many.

I knew McCombs Grocery was a family run business and that Vern's brother Eugene had left to pursue politics and sister Edna had retired. I never considered the consequences of the whole business being run by Vern, who was surely the youngest and most irresponsible of the siblings. Closing the store for vacation! This was unheard of and had never happened in the history of the McCombs mercantile establishment. Surely Eugene and Edna would never have permitted this to happen.

A new dilemma now confronted me and I knew the result would be disappointment. On every trip home I eagerly awaited my first pimento cheese sandwich. The key ingredient is the delicious spread placed between the bread that can only be found at McCombs Grocery in Faith, N.C. No where else in the world does this delicacy exist. It is an exotic blend of mellow and sharp cheeses lovingly grated and bound together with pimentos in a secret dressing. The creator of this concoction I crave is Vern McCombs. It took all my resolve to keep from writing him a letter of complaint at the outcry of closing his doors to the citizens of Faith for something as frivolous as a vacation.