I meet my new Facebook friend Patty Novak for the first time in person in the parking lot of Giant Eagle in Dry Tavern. We park at the entrance, wave and grin and Patty tells me this is where the late, great Davis Giant Market once stood. She shows me the two photos she took when the market was still there and I readjust my perspective. The lot slopes down to the line of shops with the Giant Eagle signage that have taken its place. We walk around until Patty decides we’re standing on the historic spot we’ve come to find. “I took the photos from across the road over there,“ Patty points to the grassy slope on the other side of State Route 88. She remembers shopping at Davis Market when she was dating her husband and taking the photo sometime back then. The back of the photo is factory dated 1994.
“Ben Franklin was downstairs. It had everything.”
Patty posted one of her photos as a “blast from the past” on The Official Greene County PA Group Facebook page on June 11 and delighted responses began coming in.
“Loved to go there when I was little. My Mom would let us go downstairs BY OURSELVES!! That’s where the toys were!” “I loved Mr. and Mrs. Tiberi! They always gave me candy. I loved riding the horse out front. Boy the good old days!”
When GreeneScene Magazine editor Danielle Nyland saw Patty’s photo and suggested I write about it, she had some memories of her own about the magical downstairs that is now filled in and paved over but certainly not forgotten.
“My dad used to take me to craft classes and then he’d go upstairs to shop. I was probably ten and I was the only kid with all these older ladies making things – like creating lace outfits on little stuffed bears. I think I made a bear for everybody in my family!”
The Joe Throckmorton family, who also operates Giant Eagle in Waynesburg, bought Davis Giant Market in 1984 and kept it open for eleven years before building the Giant Eagle complex down below that still gives this little corner of Greene County a place to “shop local”. And yes, the bakery, deli and “Kountry Kitchen” hot-food-to-go goodies at either Giant Eagle are certainly worth the drive.
After Patty leaves, I mask up and go shopping for some more memories from long time employees Connie Wood and Louise Kuharcik. Yes, Ben Franklin is gone, but Joe Throckmorton brought the best of it to the new store and much of its variety is still here in the area in front of the pharmacy – magazines, greeting cards, toys, games and decorations of all kinds. There are shopping carts of cool discounts and a family friendly atmosphere that tells you this is where the heart of the community still stops, shops and says hello.
“I started working here when I was 15,” Louise tells me. She and Connie remember the Davis Giant Market days but the past grows hazy when we get to Mr. and Mrs. Tiberi. “You need to call Ida Mary Haftman in Clarksville. She used to work at Davis Market. She’ll remember.”
Ida Mary’s lively voice on the phone makes it hard to believe she’s 90 something.
We talk about Mr. and Mrs. Tiberi but she doesn’t recall their first names. She thinks there was a business there in the 1940s but is hazy on what it was called.
“We didn’t shop in Dry Tavern when I was growing up. There were 26 businesses in Clarksville, that’s where we went.”
When Ida Mary married John Haftmann in 1951, “He was in the service. We moved away and didn’t come back to Clarksville until 1968. I started working at Davis Market in 1970 and was there until 1984. The trucks used to pull in down in back and unload into the basement, she tells me. She has her own photograph of the market. Hers has only one truck parked out front.
I check the phone book and find Tiberi listed, but the woman who answers doesn’t recall any relatives owning a store in Dry Tavern.
Then it’s Ida Mary’s lively voice, calling me back. “I just remembered the name of the place. Twin Gables! I don’t know if it was a store. Could have been a bar.”