SUMMERS COUNTY (Hinton News) – It is time for another edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Each week, local history collector William Jones discusses pieces from his collection and their significance to local history. Some weeks focus on a single item, and others feature multiple related topics. In this edition, Jones presents information on a chain store that once operated out of several locations in the county, CJ’s Store.
To begin the conversation, Jones said, “This week’s piece is a bit different in that it is not any one item of local history per se but yet, a historical archaeological salvage from a local business. A business in Bellepoint, West Virginia, that many folks in our area either went to as a child or heard stories about over the years. The business I am going to be discussing is CJ’s Store.”
This particular business was once a popular store far and wide. Talking about the type of things one might find while shopping there, Jones noted, “CJ’s was a chain of convenience stores of sorts in southern West Virginia much like Little General or Go Mart is today. There were CJ’s Stores in Greenville, Ronceverte, Renick, Maxwelton, Alderson, Shady Spring and Talcott to name a few of the locations. There was also one of their stores in Bellepoint which this article is about. It sat on Greenbrier Drive across the street from Jarrells Exxon and beside Hinton Hardware. Richard and Gemma Leftwich acquired the building in 2016 in order to tear it down and expand their hardware store.”
“Even though I am a local historian and preservationist at heart, this building was in such disrepair it had to be razed. In recent years you may remember the late Otis Long had an antique store in it for its last use as a store. Kent Bartgis who is a resident of Avis told me that when he was a child Pinky Chick Yates operated the store and lived in the second-floor apartment in the building for years. He, as well as Kay Payne, bought candy there after school when they were children.”
Jones has spoken to multiple locals about the area installations of CJ’s Stores.
“Ginger Snider, a resident of Avis, told me that when she was a child the store was run by a man named Turk Gunnoe. She too would go there as a child because it was a good place to spend your candy money unless you crossed the road to Guy Pack’s to buy an ice cream cone,” Jones stated. “I digress, Snider can remember it was a game to see if Prince Rollyson could get your cone dipped before he would drop the ashes from the cigarette he always had hanging out of his mouth. The founder of CJ’s chain of stores was CJ Cashdorf. The ‘old timers’ like my grandfather always referred to his stores, especially the one in Talcott where he was raised as ‘CJ’s Cash Store’. M.T. Moss of Mountaineer Foods bought out the CJ’s chain of stores and they all eventually closed their doors.”
Additionally, Jones said, “The Leftwich family gave me the privilege of removing the fabulous tin ceiling from the building before they had it torn down in 2016 to build their addition. With the help of two of my friends, we worked for nearly a week to painstakingly remove the ceiling tiles piece by piece. The hardest part of the job was removing the elaborate tin crown molding along the outer edge of the building.”
At this point, the tale takes a personal turn for Jones. He said, “I had the ceiling tiles in storage from 2016 until my family purchased my grandmother’s farm/house in Pence Springs. My grandparents Gene and Catherine Jones purchased this farm in 1962. The house is a 1950s ranch style with the original knotty pine paneling and hardwood floors throughout the house. The hardwood floors are from the Meadow River Lumber Company in Rainelle. The house sits on the same site as the Hines Boarding House did in the 1800s. It even has some of the original hand-cut square foundation stones used under the house from when the boarding house burned.”
“The plan after the restoration of the house is finished this summer is to turn it into a vacation rental and call it Hines Boarding House 2.0. The ‘2.0’ is used to denote a more advanced version of an original concept. Since this house sits in the exact same location and even uses some of the original foundation stones, however, the current house will have propane heat, air conditioning, and all of the modern amenities including wifi. It will be a much-improved version of the original.”
Continuing to regale the story, Jones said, “You may be wondering what this house in Pence Springs has to do with CJs Store in Bellpoint? Well as I had mentioned my family is in the process of restoring my grandmother’s farmhouse. The smallest of the 3 bedrooms needed a new ceiling. So we restored the individual ceiling tiles and my father, who is a lifelong carpenter, meticulously rebuilt the ceiling in this bedroom to look much like it would have looked in the original CJs building when it was built in the 1910s from the tin ceiling tiles that I had salvaged from this historic store building in 2016.”
“Not directly related to this piece about the ceiling in CJ’s, it does involve the CJ’s store building. You may remember the old large rusty porcelain ‘Flowers Bread’ sign that hung on the left of this building from the 1930s until the early 2000s, Jones concluded. “My car was broken down so my grandfather was giving me a ride to college at Concord one Sunday evening. We were driving along Greenbrier Drive. We noticed this large sign had blown off the building and landed on the road. Granddad pulled over and we put the sign in the back of his truck to prevent anyone from taking it. We took it home to Talcott and saw Long sitting on the bench in front of Sav-a-lot the next week and stopped and told him what had happened and had taken it home. Long was a trader by nature so he sold my grandfather the sign. It is now displayed on one of our buildings.”
That brings us to the end of another edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Did you know about CJ’s Stores?
If you have a story from the area’s history that you want to share, send us an email to news@hintonnews.com.
