The farm store at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm

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• We  had  a  store,  or  what  we  called  a  commissary,  on  the  farm  which  was  quite  common  in  rural  communities  because  they  provided  the  basic  necessities  that  had  to  be  bought  by  the  workers  and  by  our  family  as  well.  What  happened,  usually,  was  that  the  purchases  were  on  credit.  And  payment  for  the  different  items  were  made  on  payday,  or  sometimes  even  at  the  end  of  the  season  when  the  crops  were  harvested.
  
  The  stores  were  convenient  for  three  reasons:  One,  they  were  close  by  and  most  of  the  transportation  was  on  foot.  Secondly,  the  land  owner,  the  larger  ones,  owned  the  store  and  wanted  to  make  a  profit  on  items  sold.  And  third,  the  people  who  lived  on  the  farm  or  nearby,  quite  often  had  no  credit  rating  in  town.  Whereas  a  land  owner,  that  owned  the  store,  would  know  them  and  if  they  wanted  to  buy  a  pair  of  shoes  or  a  shirt  or  some  tobacco  they  didn’t  have  to  worry  about  credit  because  they  had  ready  credit,  since  the  landowner  knew  them  well  and  since  the  landowner  knew  that  when  he  paid  them  for  their  work  he  could  collect  the  bill.
  
  This  store  was  not  kept  open  all  the  time  but  it  was  open  all  day  Saturday,  because  that  was  a  day  for  major  purchases,  that  was  the  day  when  workers  were  paid  and  when  they  paid  off  what  they  owed.  The  rest  of  the  week  the  store  was  closed  except  when  anyone  wanted  to  make  any  kind  of  purchase.  Both  we  and  they  were  out  of  the  fields  during  mealtimes.  So  almost  every  time  I  ever  sat  down  at  a  meal,  someone  knocked  on  the  back  door  and  wanted  to  make  a  purchase  from  the  store,  my  daddy  would  throw  the  keys  across  the  table  to  me,  I  would  get  up  and  miss  part  of  the  meal,  walk  out  to  the  store,  unlock  it,  sell  five  cents  worth  of  chewing  tobacco  or  a  bottle  of  castor  oil  or  two  pounds  of  sugar,  make  a  ticket  showing  that  the  person  had  bought  something  on  credit,  lock  the  store  back  up,  then  go  back  to  our  meal.  I  hardly  ever  remember  going  through  an  entire  meal  without  having  to  be  interrupted  to  go  to  the  store  and  open  it  to  make  a  sale.
  

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