Okay. I was born in Siler City, Chatham County, in December, December
thirteenth, 1930. I went to high school here, to school here, all my
twelve years. I was born in the country. My parents were farmers, and my
dad was a carpenter. He built several houses here in town. I come to
work here in the Farmer's Alliance a couple years after I graduated from
high school. And I worked here. I was married in 1953. And I've had, I
worked here at the store.
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And I, let's see, I worked here three years, and was married, and my baby
came along, first child. And, so I was out of work. I stopped work here.
And came back to work in about 1968, and I've been here ever since then.
Like I say, I've been a sales clerk and have enjoyed working here. I
worked my way up as manager. The manager that was here when I came to
work here passed away suddenly. And I had been here long enough that the
board of directors thought that I could maybe take the responsibility,
so they gave me a chance to try. So I have been manager now several
years and have enjoyed it. Of course, as we, as time goes on and
businesses have gone out of business in the town. The malls, shopping
centers have come up. We're having a little struggle to stay, but, in
business, but we're able to make a profit, a small profit, pay our
bills, on time, and still have a stockholders' meeting each year. Have
lunch for the stockholders. We don't have a cash dividend for them right
now, but we give them a percentage off on their purchases for the year,
which adds up to a fairly good dividend if they purchase enough through
the year, of course. We hope to, we celebrated our hundred and eleventh
anniversary back in August. And we have a hundred and ten stockholders.
Not all of them live around here. A lot of them live out of state. A lot
of the stock, the way we have gotten so many stockholders is because of
families heiring the stock, maybe dividing between their family. So the
store has been a lot of history behind it. And we just hope to continue
to stay in business.