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Sterling Market will shut doors
By Tim Bousquet
The Daily Citizen
Thursday, May 27, 2004 12:43 AM CST
When Charles Sterling leaves work Saturday, he'll be closing the door on 95 years of Judsonia history.
On First Street along the railroad tracks, the Sterling Market has been center stage for the epic history of the gritty eastern White County town. It has seen the business section build up around it and the railroad depot, then migrate westward in pursuit of car travelers on the highway. It has seen immigrants arrive to buy dry goods on their way to new homesteads and the hope of new lives. It has seen the street before it clogged with strawberry merchants and farmers bringing product to market.
Like the rest of town, the matchbox-size store saw death and destruction from the tornados of 1952. And like the rest of town, it picked itself up and rebuilt.
The market took everything the 20th century could throw at it and survived as one of the oldest family-owned enterprises in White County. But while it overcame the vagaries of history and weather, the challenges of 21st century economics have proven insurmountable.
"The stuff we buy wholesale is more expensive than what Wal-Mart sells it for retail," said Sterling. "I've seen the handwriting on the wall the last few years."
Sterling has kept the market afloat by supplementing his convenience store stock with a seasonal trade in seeds and garden supplies. He saw regular customers through the spring planting season, and now is closing the operation for good.
"Saturday's the last day of business," he said. "I just live next door, so if some of the regulars come by and knock on the door, I'll sell them any stock I have left. But I'm not retired. Come July, I will start trying to see if there's something else I can do."
Sterling started working in the store when he was four years old, as his great aunt Emma taught him how to count change. He took over the business as his own in November of 1981.
As he has for 23 years, Sterling sat behind the cash register Monday. The stock had dwindled in expectation of the closing, but the pine plank floor and a couple of welcoming wooden stools gave testament to a bygone era when the general store was the community meeting place.
Bo, a 10-year-old black lab sprawled in front of the door, uttered a single lazy bark as Sterling loaded two bags of fertilizer into a customer's truck. The dog was indifferent as Sterling's mother, 92-year-old Mildred Sterling, walked up to the store from the family home next door.
"My grandfather [J.C. Johnson] was a nurseryman from Louisville, Kent.," said Mildred Sterling. "In the early 1890s he loaded everything he owned into a boxcar and moved to Judsonia. He had his wife, four boys, five girls and all the animals when he came to town. When they got here, they stayed in the 'immigrant house,' which was where all the newcomers stayed, until they found a place of their own."
Johnson started a sawmill, and soon built a three-story inn across from the depot. In 1909, using wood from the mill, he built the store. The Johnson House doubled as the family home, and it and the store have remained in the family ever since.
Mildred Sterling was born in 1911, and recalls throngs of revelers crowding the street in front of the store on the Fourth of July, the biggest holiday of the year. Several other stores were built along the block, she said, and the depot was substantial, with large waiting rooms and a telegraph office.
She has an undated photo showing the depot, the block of stores, the Johnson House and several dozen horse-drawn wagons loaded with ice and strawberries waiting in line to unload at the depot. A tree stood in the middle of the road in front of the house.
"The ice was loaded into the [train] cars to keep the strawberries cool," she said. "The young boys made some good money loading the ice cars. Sometimes they worked through the night loading all of the cars."
The bustle of the depot area diminished somewhat with the arrival of the highway on the west side of town.
It ended completely with the arrival of the tornados.
Two, possibly three tornados swept through Judsonia on Friday afternoon, March 21, 1952. At least 50 people were killed, and another 350 injured. The town lay in shambles, with very few buildings left standing.
"My father, Lindsey Johnson, was right here in the store that day," said Mildred Sterling. "He said he better go check on my Aunt Bernice, and he went out, around the corner. They found his body the next day."
The store, too, was demolished, as was the Johnson House.
"We rebuilt the store right on the old foundation," said Mildred Sterling. "We used the same wood. My aunt and I sat out there and pulled the nails out from the boards, and pieced the tongue and grooves together. It looks about the same as the old store."
A modest house was built to replace the Johnson House.
As recently as the 1980s the store still had a general store feel to it, said Charles Sterling. But in recent decades he moved to selling snacks, sodas and cigarettes along with the garden supplies. His mother, who still has a weekly shift at Healthway Pharmacy across town, has spelled him from time to time at the cash register.
"It went from being a mom and pop store to being a son and mom store," he said. "I don't have any children, so this is it."
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