Feature article
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Milkshakes bow out to music at Floyd’s Country Store
By Fred Sauceman
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The Floyd Country Store
LOCATION: 206 South Locust Street, Floyd, Virginia
HOURS: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Thursday and Saturday; 10 a.m.-10:30 p.m., Fridays; noon-5:30 p.m., Sundays
CONTACT: 540-745-4563 or floydcountrystore.com
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Here’s how much the citizens of Floyd, Virginia, respect the music of the mountains. At 6:30 in the evening on Fridays, inside the Floyd Country Store, no more milkshakes. Although the music stage is at the back of the store and the soda fountain and food counter are at the front, staff at the store insist on shutting off the milkshake maker so the whir of the machine won’t disturb the musicians.
In this town of about 430 people, bordered on the east by the Blue Ridge Parkway, the floors of this century-old country store rumble with cloggers and flatfooters, once the 6:30 gospel hour is done and the first bluegrass fiddle tune commences at 7:30.
On this early spring evening, during the first music set, while the Bluegrass Inspirations from Roanoke play, folks reverently stay in their seats. Dressed in matching sage shirts, with images of the cross on their neckties, band members play the music of the country church. Band member Ricky Edwards, a plumber by trade, says there’s a bond with the audience at the Floyd Country Store you don’t find anywhere else.
“You have good crowds, and they know and understand the music. These people are with you when you play.”
On the dance floor, once the gospel hour is over, grandparents clog while they hold their grandchildren. Cabinet maker Shirley Ferris has emceed the jamboree for more than a decade.
“It’s like a big family here,” he says. “Dancing takes everything off your shoulders.”
Built around 1910, the store once sold everything from farm supplies to penny candy. Woody Crenshaw, who now owns the store, calls himself a transplant. He was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, and brought his business to Floyd in 1986. He runs a lighting fixture studio, one of the few decorative lighting manufacturers left in the United States.
Woody and his 45 employees make hundreds of chandeliers and lanterns, primarily for churches and historic buildings. He says when he first moved to Floyd, he expected to blend into the hills and live out the rest of his life growing vegetable gardens. But then he bought the Floyd Country Store.
“This was the gathering place for the community,” he tells me. “People sat around the coal stove and picked their banjos. The store has brought this community together and illuminated the music of this region. Owning the country store is a responsibility that I really cherish.
“What’s so wonderful about it is that in this world of many things being artificial, and so many things across the country being homogenous, there is this very important, unique event every Friday. It’s different than anything else, and it’s also very natural. There’s nothing imposed. People aren’t trying to make an impression. They’re here, enjoying themselves with their families, and what’s really gratifying is to get out on the dance floor late in the evening and just feel the real joyfulness that people have. It’s one of the few things that you can count on being really uplifting, and it’s like that every week.”
At the table just inside the front door, Phyllis Beal, Earl and Shelby Graham, and Wendell Turpin are bidding and calling trumps, deep into a game of Rook. Phyllis says she’s been playing the card game since she was a child.
“This was one of the few things you did growing up. There was Rook, checkers, Monopoly, and that’s about it. This is the best place in Floyd. This is a blessing, a very good blessing. It’s clean, it’s sober, it’s one of the best spots in Floyd. It’s one thing I look forward to every week. I mow the yard and do the trimming and feed the goats, and I’m ready to go to the country store.”
Famished dancers grab bottled Orange Crush out of the drink cooler, next to the soda fountain that dates to 1937. Woody spent a lot of time developing a menu of hot food, too, featuring the flavors of the Blue Ridge.
“We worked to create this very simple menu, so we started with the idea of having beans and greens and coleslaw. Pinto beans are a real staple here, and cornbread. And we decided we were going to have the classic grilled cheese sandwich. The really good grilled cheese sandwich that you remember as a child, and the memory is better than the sandwich.”
Woody took the tried-and-true Sloppy Joe and gave it a Floyd County twist.
“Floyd has a couple of buffalo ranches, and the meat from them is really good. It’s very lean, so for something like Sloppy Joes it works — very lean meat, well ground, with a spicy sauce, on a bun, and some slaw, if you wish. It’s the kind of thing you ate when you were a teenager.”
For over 25 years, the Floyd Country Store has hosted the Friday Night Jamboree, a major stop on The Crooked Road: Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail. The Floyd Chamber of Commerce says the county has more musicians per capita than New York City.
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Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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