PISGAH STORE

Today, it is our pleasure to present to you our new report on the Pisgah store. The Pisgah store is a bit different than some of our other Pisgah subject matters in one regard. Most of Pisgah’s important structures are gone. Most of our records are lost. Many of our elders have passed on. And much of our history has been forgotten. There aren’t many places left to ask questions and turn to for answers.

However, when it comes to the Pisgah store, we have 2 very valuable resources still available to us. Those two resources are Sandy Winner and Tom Winner. In case you’re not aware of it, Sandy and Tom’s parents, “Ernie” and “Bea” not only ran the Pisgah store (and later restaurant) from the mid 40’s to the mid 70’s, but they even lived above the store, too, and it was a part of their everyday life for around 30 years.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down to a phone conversation with both Sandy and Tom for an interview. My great Pisgah friend, Terry Wood Cully, helped me with the interviews and was able to join in on our interview with Sandy. I would like to thank Terry for everything she does. It would be much more difficult to bring you reports such as this one without her help. She is an invaluable part of what we do here and she is also a great friend. 

I would also like to thank both Sandy Winner and Tom Winner for their time on the phone, answering questions, sharing details, and helping us preserve the history of the Pisgah store. Both Sandy and Tom love Pisgah as much as anyone else I have met and I thank them both for sharing their knowledge, experiences, and memories with us. I consider them both my friends. 

While this report will touch on as much of the history of the Pisgah Store as we know about, our primary focus and many of our details will come directly from the period when the Winners ran the store since they were available to share those details with us. 

INTRO

Before the large supermarkets of today, customers depended on small, nearby family-run general stores for their daily needs. In the Pisgah area, that store was the Pisgah Store. The earliest mention we have been able to find for the Pisgah Store was a newspaper article from December 1885 that said Thomas Spainhower was the owner of the store at the time. We kept track of every mention of the Pisgah Store and its owners in the newspaper articles that we would read and have provided a store ownership log attached to the end of this report for reference purposes. If the earliest mention we have found so far is 1885 and we know the store was demolished in late 1975 or early 1976, then we know it was around in one form or another for at least 90 years.

During those 90 years, the store changed hands many times and it was referred to by various names. It was common to see it referred to as the “Store of (Owner’s Name)”. In the mid to late 1890s, it was referred to as the “Coker Bros Store”. In 1921, it was referred to as “Pisgah Store”. In 1932, it was referred to as the “Red & White Store”, and in 1935, “Harry Fox’s Store”. In an ad put out in 1947, it was referred to as “Winner Grocery”.

For just shy of 30 years, from 1946 until his death in 1974, the Pisgah Store was operated by Ernie & Bea Winner. That’s 30 years out of the 90-year history of the store that we know about. The Winners ran the store for around 1/3 of its lifespan. As near as I can tell from the records that we created from the information we were able to find, that’s much longer than any other store operator in the history of the store – by far.

THE WINNERS

Bernice E. Winner (30 NOV 1913 – 13 JUN 1912)
Bea Winner was born in Scott County, the daughter of William and Anna Northrup Seeman. She married Ernest R. Winner on March 29, 1941. Bea was a disciplinarian. She was a hard worker. She was refined. She was stand-offish and quiet. Bea worked for the Black family in Jacksonville doing housekeeping for motels for 30 years. She was fondly known as “Grandma Bea”.

Ernest Ralph Winner (4 OCT 1903 – 13 OCT 1974)
Ernie Winner never met a stranger. He treated people fair and square. He was a hard worker and a good provider. Ernie wasn’t very strict. He was not a disciplinarian, but you didn’t want to cross him, either. He was a great guy with a heart of gold. It has been said that he probably gave away as much or more than he ever sold in the store – especially to kids. He was also a jokester. Ernie was “quite a character” according to Jack Kilver. “He had his own colorful way of relating a story or joke”, said Craig Wood. Ernie was also a great cook. He cooked at Lahey’s Tavern and the Moose Club and he worked at stores such as Sears, Vick’s, and Schiff’s, selling shoes for 34 years in a row. He liked to wear white tank top style undershirts and smoke cigars.

HOUSE

There was a house with 7 rooms above the store and I believe it was probably customary for the store operators to live there. I know the Winners lived there. And I also know that Thomas E. Smith, his wife, Adlee, and their family lived there. The Smiths were the store operators in 1922 and 1923. They were also my cousins, so I have heard family stories about them living above the store. I also interviewed my Aunt Marjorie Witham about growing up in Pisgah. She was around town during the Harry Fox years of the store. She told me the man who ran the store lived upstairs.

Sandy Winner told us she was 2 1/2 when they moved to Pisgah in 1946. Her brother, Tom, was just 5 or 6 months old. There was a 2-car garage and a set of scales on the backside (North side) of the house. Ernie also had a large garden in the yard, as he was quite the gardener. He decided they needed sheep, a goat, and some turkeys in the yard, too.

To get to the house, you could go in the front entrance of the store and then walk all the way through the building and enter there. This was the way they would most generally get into the house, but there was also a back entrance that faced the highway. You could also get to the house that way. Sandy told us the upstairs area of the house was large and really nice.

The living room was located in the front of the house and Sandy told us it was rather large, probably 15×28 or 29 feet, she would guess. It had an oil burner stove. There was also a dining room, a small kitchen with a sink and pantry with a potbelly coal stove, and 4 bedrooms. There was no running water until years later. The two front bedroom windows faced South. There was a train track nearby and the train would wake you up, rattling the windows of the house and store. There was also an outhouse for when nature called, and Tom Winner said you would learn to plan ahead and take care of your business quickly when it was cold outside. One day, Ernie was in his robe, making his way to the outhouse when the big Tom Turkey decided to be ornery and chase Ernie around the yard. Ernie hollered, “There’s Thanksgiving dinner right there!” Another time, he was butted in the rear end by the Billy goat.

Tom would be awakened by tractors many times because they were loud and they drove right underneath his bedroom window. Tom’s bedroom was also right above the restaurant, which came in handy when it was time for Tom to wake up. Ernie would go down early and make preparations for the restaurant. When it was time for Tom to wake up, Ernie would take a broom handle and beat on the ceiling of the restaurant, which was the floor to Tom’s room to let him know it was time for him to wake up and come down. When Ernie beat on the ceiling, he expected Tom to get up. He didn’t want to have to ask him to wake up a second time. Ernie and Bea believed in hard work and so do Sandy and Tom.

STORE

Bea and Ernie ran the Pisgah store starting in 1946. Initially, Bea ran the store while Ernie worked in Jacksonville, selling shoes. Ernie later left the shoe business and joined Bea full time in the store and restaurant. The Winners rented the store property from Albert Curry. Mr. Curry would take goods he needed from the store in exchange for the rent.

The Pisgah store was the only store in the immediate area. The other nearest stores were located at Rees Station, Waverly, 1 or 2 stores in Franklin, and Jacksonville. During the early days of the store, they were open from 6am to 6pm, 6 days a week.

The Pisgah store sat on the same ground as the present-day elevator office. The rear of the store faced highway 104. The front porch of the store faced an easterly direction and it usually had 3 or 4 chairs on it for people to sit and talk a bit. Robin Snelling remembers that the porch was sloped. Terry Cully remembers the wooden screen doors off the porch. She says they were on big springs that would close the doors with a loud bang.

Sometimes people walked to the Pisgah store. Other times, they came in cars, trucks, and even tractors and horses. There were white posts on the front of the store where people would tie their horses while they shopped for goods. One day, someone had their horse tied up and it got startled by a loud noise and jerked the post loose from the bottom. Those posts had wear marks from where the horses were tied up over the years.

On the North end of the porch, there was a 3×3 bread box where the delivery man could deliver the bread in the wee hours of the morning. The bread box remained unlocked, but no one ever stole any bread from it. When bread was delivered, the bread man would let the lid drop and it would bounce open and closed 3 or 4 times with a loud bang that would often wake Tom Winner up, since his bedroom was nearby.

The store also had a gas pump on the South end of the porch. John Smith tells us, “The original pump had a glass cylinder on top that held several gallons of gas. There was a handle on the side that you pumped the gas into the cylinder. Then the gas was dropped through a hose into the car tank.” Sandy Winner says the gas pump was gone by the time she graduated high school in 1961.

Inside the store, they sold all kinds of general merchandise including groceries and dry goods. They would buy yellow farmers gloves by the bale. They sourced most of their dry goods from Red & White Wholesale House in Jacksonville. Other supplies were delivered to the store by route truck. There was a truck that delivered milk, eggs, ice cream, and cottage cheese. The ice cream man would deliver extra Dreamsicles for Sandy. Another truck delivered potato chips. Sunbeam delivered the bread. There was also a produce truck, and don’t forget the candy truck. Speaking of candy, ice cream, and soda pop, we were curious about what the rules were for Sandy and Tom, growing up in the store, when it came to helping yourself to treats. They both said the rules were that you could have what you wanted, but you knew not to take advantage.

When you step inside the store, you would find the potato bin on the left-hand side. There would be 4 or 5 kinds of potatoes during potato season. Out of season, there would be 2 kinds. You could also find a soda pop cooler. It was not electrified. It had ice. There was also an old refrigerator. It wasn’t electrified, either. It was an old Lapland Monitor model. It had 3 doors at the top and 3 doors at the bottom. It had tin and wainscoting. The Winners would go to Jacksonville Ice House and buy 3 or 4 50lb blocks of ice. They would chip one block up for the soda cooler. Then they would slide the other 3 blocks into the 3 bottom doors of the refrigerator to keep it cool.

The driveway for the store was paved with soda pop tops. When you would buy a soda from the machine, you would open up the lid and it would fall into a tray. Ernie would empty that tray out the door and everyone would drive over them. Old soda lids everywhere – Bubble Up, Fanta, Grape, Strawberry, Cream Soda, Orange, Frosty Root Beer, and more.  

In the earlier years of the store, they sold work clothes, shoes, and hardware along with the groceries. The Pisgah Store may not have been a big store, but it was big enough to purchase half a car load of flour when the train came through, according to an account given by Jack Kilver.

There was a showcase in the store that was missing some glass in it. One day, Hank Witham grabbed a young Tom Winner and stuffed him into the showcase and then blocked his exit so he had to just sit there, unable to move or escape. I guess Tom found himself on display in the store for a while that day. This was all done in good fun, I was told. They liked to tease, joke, and have fun with each other.

Sandy didn’t work at the store or the restaurant. She was busy working her own jobs, but both Tom and Sandy helped out when they could. Tom remembers helping to sack groceries and carry them out, sometimes. One year, Tom got an old pedal car for Christmas when he was a young boy. There were pop cases stored in the back of the store and Tom had to help out. So, he drove his pedal car to the back, loaded it up with a few cases of pop and tried driving to the pop cooler to fill it up, but it was so heavy, it made his pedal car pop a wheelie and he had to have some help to get the load moved.

There was also a pot belly stove in the store. John Smith said, “The pot-bellied stove goes back to the late 30’s or early 40’s. (I) got warm by it many times.” People would take their cold, wet gloves off and throw them on the stove to dry. Sandy says, “I remember my dad would have the belly of that stove fire red. (It’s a) wonder it didn’t burn down!!!”

Tom still remembers some of the prices of items when they ran the store. He said you could buy sandwich bread for 27 cents per loaf, milk for 49 cents per gallon, and bacon for 69 cents per pound. They also carried bologna, cheese, candy bars and chewing tobacco (they kept extra for Mutt Robinson). Cigars and cigarettes ran 15 or 20 cents.

At one time, they must have bought local produce from area farmers to sell, too. In the early 20s, the store ran an ad that said, “Highest prices paid for country produce.” We were also able to track some of the grocery prices through the years by researching old newspaper ads the Pisgah store would run. An ad from 1932 priced 4 cans of Tomato soup at 25c, 5 lb. sugar at 23c, bacon at 15c, and toilet paper at 20c for 3 rolls.

OW Rimby, the store operator in the early 20s put out an ad in 1921 that read, “Bring a $10 bill to my Pisgah Store and get…” 1 sack of flour ($1.75), 15 lbs. sugar ($1), 6lbs navy beans (.40), 1 bushel potatoes (1.49), 2 lbs. good coffee (.35), 2 lbs. prunes (.35), 3 cans salmon (.50), 1 gallon Karo syrup (.65), 1 lb. bacon (.85), 21 bars Luna soap ($1), 6 boxes Search light matches (.38), 2 cans peas (.25), 1 bar toilet soap (.07), 1 family size oats (.28), 2 cans corn (.25), 3 boxes spices (.25), 1 can J.C. peaches (.18)

Pisgah Store served the Pisgah community, and thus had lots of Pisgah regulars. Some of the regulars in the store during the years the Winners ran the store were Leonard Wood, Bob Wood, AE Curry, Curry May, Curtis Crow, Raymond Leadill, Raymond Hayes, Earl Smith, Jess Wilson, Arvell Knapp, Wendell Wilson, Virgil Smith, Jim Baise, Mutt and Marge Robinson, Lora and Gus Kilver, Kenny Robinson, Ron Becker, and Ruel Becker to name a few.

Some of their regular customers would have bigger orders or they would order more often. Jess Wilson bought goods every day. Jess was a strong man. He could build anything. He would often get bologna, cheese, bacon, and three kinds of gum: spearmint, juicy fruit, and double mint. He would buy peanut butter and white and dark Karo syrup. He would mix the peanut butter and syrup together for his supper. He also smoked a pipe, so he bought Prince Albert in a can, and he would buy a lot of it, so they ordered it in bulk for him.

Earl & Mary Smith would come in on Saturdays. They always had a large order because they had 5 kids to feed. When Earl or Mary came in the store, one kid got to tag along. Their job was to buy candy for the other kids at home. One Saturday, Earl came over to the store with Johnny in tow. It was in the early days of the store, because Ernie took over the store with all the contents still in the store and one of those contents included a slot machine. Earl gave Johnny a nickel to buy some candy, so while Earl was buying groceries, Johnny was looking around the store. He saw Jess Wilson playing the slot machine and not having any luck. Johnny knew he was supposed to stay away from the slot machine, but it sure was fun to watch. When Jess finished playing, Johnny couldn’t help himself. He dropped his candy money in the machine and wouldn’t you know, it paid off. All of a sudden, lights were blinking and bells were ringing, causing a big commotion. He won several nickels and a few tokens, worth $5 or $10 each. That was big money back then. Ernie tried to cover for Johnny, but Earl knew what was going on. Earl confiscated the tokens and let Johnny keep the nickels. Johnny got a spanking when he got home. The worst part, though, is in all of the excitement, Johnny forgot to buy any candy. 

The store also served as one of the area’s school bus stops for some of the local kids over the years. And in the Winter, when the weather was bad, the school bus ran an emergency snow route and you HAD to meet at Ernie’s because that was the ONLY stop the bus would make in town. Jeff Dixon said, “I know I sure have some good memories of being at the store to catch the bus…Ernie would usually give me some candy or a brownie. I also heard some words from some of the farmers I shouldn’t have repeated at such an early age, because they got me the belt from grandpa.

”The store was pay-now for most, but they had charge accounts for those who were trusted. They kept a charge book with carbon copies so the customer could have a copy. In the store, they had a big safe with a dial lock. You would raise the lid and drop the front down. This is where the charge book was stored.

The store kept a lot of money on the books, so sometimes the shelves would get bare. Many farmers only got paid once a year when they sold their crops, so the rest of the year, they may need to charge their goods. So, when the farmers would get paid and settle their accounts at the store, it was a big deal. Ernie would make 3-4 trips to Jacksonville to the wholesale grocers there to replenish the shelves. Having fully stocked shelves was a big deal. It boosted morale and made everyone feel great.

I interviewed my Aunt Marjorie Witham, who was in her nineties at the time, about growing up in Pisgah. She grew up there when Harry Fox ran the store. She said we were lucky to have Mr. Fox at the grocery store. He let our family run a tab all Winter long when there was no work (and thus no money). He would allow us to repay him in the Spring when work resumed. I imagine such occurrences were very common in farming communities where the work was seasonal.

The Winners put out a newspaper ad around Christmas time in 1947. It said, “Merry Christmas and a Happy Prosperous New Year is our wish to our customers and friends. Winner Grocery Pisgah, Illinois” The Winners never sold alcohol in the store, but Ernie did make a Tom & Jerry drink mix during the Holiday season. It was a creamy mix with hot water and booze (your choice of whiskey or rum). It was served in a Tom and Jerry bowl and cups. One season, Albert E. Curry took Ernie up on his offer for one of these drinks. He finished his first one and then took another. After finishing the second one, Mr. Curry said, “Two of these would put a bee in a man’s bonnet!”

A newspaper article from 1898 informs us that the store was once robbed in its earlier days using a fire poker from the school to break in. The post office was in the store at the time. They were robbed of $7. They lost a number of boots and shoes. We also read in a newspaper article from March 1924 that high winds took the roof off the store, causing considerable damage. The store was owned by AF Ruble of Franklin at the time and was managed by John Probasco. Sandy Winner also remembers a train derailment by the store one time. She said the train crashed into a man right outside the store.

The Winners kept the Pisgah Store running for 15 or 20 years. Eventually, larger stores moved into nearby areas where people wanted to shop. They had very large inventories and could offer lower prices. Things got too competitive and the Pisgah Store could no longer stay in business. Since Ernie was a great cook and had experience cooking at the Moose Club and one of the taverns in town, turning the store into a restaurant seemed like a natural transition.

RESTAURANT

There may have been a lull of 2 or 3 months in between the closing of the store and the opening of the restaurant while they made plans and preparations, but the Restaurant opened up in the early 60’s. Even though the store ceased to exist in its former full glory at that point, they did still carry some store items in the restaurant, just not as many as before. The restaurant didn’t have an official name. Most folks just called it, “Ernie’s Place”. And while Ernie was a great cook, Bea did a lot of the cooking, also.

Curtis Crow and Raymond Leadill were the early bird customers. They were always the first to arrive – even before Ernie would open. Ernie opened up at 6am, but they would arrive as early as 5:30am and Ernie would just wave them on in. The restaurant was not open on Sunday. They would close on Saturday at noon unless it was harvest season or unless people were still hanging around and/or being served. Back then, you didn’t just close up on people. You stayed late if they were still there.

When asked what she recalls about Ernie’s Place, Terry Cully remembers, “…the wood plank floors with mismatched tables and chairs with farmers sitting around drinking coffee. There was a big ceiling fan always churning the air.” Jack Kilver said, “If you were fortunate, you got a table under the fan. No air-conditioning, but if you got under the fan, it was the best table in the house.”

Terry Cully continues, “But most of all, (I remember) that big long candy counter!!!”

Kimberly Ann Willner recalls, “I so miss the old store. (We) used to go up there with a nickel and come home with a big bag of candy.”

“Ernie’s was the best for lifesavers. Ate lots of candy from there before fishing…I always stared at the big pickle jar”, remembers Susan Harrison

Peggy Mulquin said, “I used to go with my dad and get chocolate soda or coke in the Coke machine we had to get our bottle through the maze.”

Reggie Toler added, “What a treat in 1950 when I was 10 to cross the highway from my Uncle Earl Smith’s house to get ice cream!”

The Pisgah Store was a hangout for the farmers, but when it became a restaurant, that’s when it REALLY became a gathering place. And when folks would gather at Ernie’s, there was always a lot of laughter and jokes.

Blackey Tribble would stop in with his Standard Oil bulk truck. One day, he had a supervisor riding along. They made their usual stop at the store. While all the guys were standing around chatting, someone gave Ernie the signal and Ernie dropped a solid steel stove poker on the ground behind the supervisor and it made a really loud bang. The supervisor jumped. The loud noise scared the daylights out of him. He jumped up and ran out to the truck and locked himself in it. He didn’t know the guys there were all pretty close and liked to play jokes on each other. It was always all in good fun.

The governor of the state of Illinois at the time, Dan Walker, a Democrat, came by one day for a photo with Ernie. Al Curry wanted to be in the photo with them, too. Ernie said, “Well, I guess one photo with a Democrat won’t hurt.”

In 1964, they were building a new elevator in Pisgah and a crew of really big men were there to do the job. They would eat at Ernie’s Restaurant while they were on the project. They were really big eaters. One day, one of them hollered, “What’s to eat today, Ernie?” Ernie hollered back, “What’s the difference? It’s the only restaurant in town!”

There was a large menu board that hung at the back of the store over the old coffee pot. It listed what was served each day and the price. When the restaurant first opened, plate lunches were $1.10 except for fried chicken day, which was Monday. That was a 3-piece chicken dinner with potatoes and gravy, green beans, and coleslaw. The price was $1.25 on Mondays. Monday was the biggest day in the restaurant. They would prepare chickens and peel potatoes ahead of time to be ready. They would sell out of their chicken dinners every Monday. Another day was tenderloins. Also served were beef and noodles, meatloaf, steak sandwiches, fried ham and egg sandwiches, veggie soup, and chili – Ernie made the chili spicy! Chili was popular in the restaurant and that was good because as Ernie and Bea got older, chili could be made up ahead of time and was easy to prepare and serve later. John Ebrey said Ernie’s had the best goulash ever! And Bea’s famous coleslaw was served every day. There was also iced tea and Ernie’s 10 cent cup of coffee to drink. Hamburgers were tougher to cook in the restaurant because you had to stand over them and tend to them while they cook. Ernie needed stuff that allowed him to multi-task. The recipes for the store weren’t written down. They were made from memory.

There were 4 booths down one side of the restaurant that would hold 4 people each. There was a large round table right in front of the pot belly stove. It was the warmest spot in the place. It would hold around 8 people. Then there were 3 more tables or so of 4 seats each. These were the real antique style tables with claw legs. We guess the restaurant would hold around 36 people. And sometimes, it got crowded in there – especially on Mondays for Fried Chicken and on the day they served ham and beans with cornbread. Those were popular days that attracted a crowd.

Craig Wood recalls, “Wow, (I) had a lot of lunches there, especially at harvest, and the occasional Coke or Pepsi. Mr. Ernie’s stories would be my favorite memory. A hamburger off the grill was always good, but Ernie’s specials were always good.”

Ned Seymour tells the story that when Ernie had lunches, some men would eat and then smoke and put their ashes out on Ernie’s plates. So, to make a point, Ernie bought some ashtrays and started serving their food on them. That stopped them pretty quickly.

The restaurant ran up until 2 days before Ernie died. Ernie passed away from a massive heart attack on October 13, 1974. The restaurant was done when Ernie died.

DEMOLISION

Sandy Winner tells us, “The store was torn down board by board by Amos Western in 1975 or 76”. Bea Winner bought a mobile home shortly after Ernie’s death and moved it in South of her sister, Lora Kilver’s driveway. Bea lived there until she moved to Jacksonville in 1980.

A 1974 newspaper article advertised a “Sale of Goods from Old Country Store. Estate of E.R. Winner.”
The sale included a large coffee urn, meat scales, tables and chairs, restaurant booths with tables, rugs, a dining room outfit, a dresser, 2 fans, 1 lot of paint, an old record player with records, a coal heating stove, a dish washer, a black and white television, a window fan, and 2 old cupboards.

After the store was torn down, a new elevator was built on the property in 1975 or 1976. If you visit the property today and if you look carefully, you can still see some of the bricks from the store in the ground. That’s the only visible remainder and reminder of the store on the property.

CONCLUSION

The store, restaurant, and house may no longer be standing today, but their memories live on in our hearts, our minds, our stories, and the few remaining photographs we have. The Pisgah Store was a part of the Pisgah community and served the Pisgah community for more than 90 years. It played a pivotal role in some of our lives and the lives of our ancestors who lived in Pisgah before us. It is our intention to serve the Pisgah Store, just as it has served us for so many years, by recording this report to preserve as much of its history as we have been able to uncover. May the memories be preserved for our future generations of those who love Pisgah.