Your Friendly Neighborhood Grocer the Lifeline of the Great Depression

Submitted by
Rebekah Sheats

Immediately to the east of what used to be Jackson’s drugstore on East Dogwood Street is a narrow, unassuming storefront housed between the old drugstore and Gellings’ florist shop. Most recently it was home to the now defunct Lazy Lizard Pizza Company. The building is currently being renovated by Scott McPherson and is advertised as the future home of Scoops and Waffles. Its history is a long and varied one, beginning as a general merchandise store in the mid-1800s and passing through various phases in the following decades.
The ground floor of the small building was used as a general store in 1903, with the second floor converted into a photographer’s studio. A few decades later it became home to the Harris Grocery store, a longtime fixture of the Monticello community.
Clower Winfred (known better as C.W.) Harris was a native of Georgia who moved his family to Jefferson County around 1921. A man of medium build with blue eyes and light brown hair, Harris—though a newcomer—was quickly accepted into the close-knit Monticello community. He first opened his store in a small building on the corner of Cherry and Washington Streets, but by 1924 he was ready to expand his merchandising offerings. He moved across the block to a new location, of which the local newspaper noted, “This gives Mr. Harris more room for his increasing stock of goods.” By 1929, he had moved again, this time to the small building on Dogwood Street (which would one day become the Lazy Lizard), which he rented from Homer Rainey. Here Harris’ grocery store would remain for the duration of its existence.
During the Depression, several grocers handled the needs of the Monticello community, but Harris’ was one of the most frequented. His store offered “a supreme line of groceries, meats, fruits, vegetables, canned goods, and a variety of other merchandise.” Described as “a little store” or perhaps more appropriately “just a cubbyhole,” C. W. Harris managed to fit a large and varied selection of goods in the small, narrow building housing his establishment. His son Waldo also worked in the store as a clerk.
A 1930 article in the Monticello News noted of Harris’ grocery: “The store is recognized as one of the most popular in the city, for the reason that there can be found in their stock at all times the very things you need to make the table attractive and most inviting.” Harris constantly added to this attractive stock. In April of 1931, he advertised an exciting “demonstration of superior bread and cakes at our store.” The event would feature “the new loaf of Bamby Five Cent Bread,” and Harris promised of the demonstration: “There will be sandwiches served. Come enjoy some of these good eats.” Good food and bargain prices were what the store was known for.
But these weren’t the only thing that drew the crowds to Harris’ grocery. His prices were good, but more importantly, C. W. and his family had lived in the little community long enough to earn the confidence and trust of the town. By 1930, Harris was already renowned for his “obliging and cordial treatment extended [to] each individual customer.”
It’s easy to be friendly with someone when they’re paying you for it, one might object. The assertion is true—and it makes Harris’ treatment of his customers all the more remarkable for the simple fact that he often didn’t get paid. In the midst of the Depression, when cash was scarce and becoming more so with each passing day, Harris didn’t mind putting things “on account” for his customers.
The Sledge family was a typical example. After Sheriff Lamar Sledge was killed in 1932, his wife Rena struggled to make ends meet as she labored to provide for herself and her three young children. Eight-year-old Jim Sledge was often sent to Harris’ to pick up the groceries the family needed for the day. “Mr. Harris, Momma says she wants thirty-five cents’ worth of hamburger meat,” the boy would tell the grocer. “And she needs three pounds of potatoes and two pounds of rice, and she said to just put it on her tab.” Harris obligingly filled the order, wrapped the meat, and gave the packages to the child to take home to his family. He then recorded the transaction in his account book. Maybe he’d get paid for it one day, and then again maybe he wouldn’t. But he never said a word about it.
“Just put it on the book,” Harris would hear from his customers again and again. It was an everyday occurrence at the little store. Sledge noted, “I don’t know if he ever got paid. But he sure saved a lot of families in those years.”
How Harris managed to remain open is a marvel, but his store continued to do business throughout the 30s and into the 40s. Harris was a simple, hard-working man (often working 48-hour weeks), but his system of credit and his unspoken generosity prevented him from ever becoming “prosperous.” Though he owned his own home, it was a modest residence in every way. In a section of town where house values reached $10,000 to $15,000 in 1930, C. W. Harris’ home was appraised at $2,000. By 1940, he had moved into a smaller residence on Waukeenah Street valued at a mere $1,250. Yet he never seemed to mind. “People just don’t realize how much he did for families during that time,” Jim Sledge recalled. Helping those families, it seemed, was reward enough for C. W. Harris.
Perhaps the Monticello News put it best when it informed its readers in the ’30s, “You owe it to yourself to patronize the Harris Market.” Harris, it noted, was “doing business on the square, interested in every patron and the community as well.” As the News realized, it was selfless people like Harris who kept the community alive during the direst days of the Depression and beyond.