GreeneScene of the Past: Thomas Store

The house that sits at the top of Grimes Hill gives little indication it was once one of the many small mom and pop service stations that studded State Route 18 from East View to Garrison. But thanks to this aerial photograph that Charles Thomas had taken when he and his family owned and operated the store, we have a birds eye view of what it looked like in the 1970s. The EXXON sign and narrow standing pumps are a time stamp, as is the truck. The building sits at the fork where Toms Run and Triumph meet the highway. Turn left on Rt. 18 and it’s 13 miles to Hundred. Turn right and it’s 14 miles to Waynesburg. In the 1970s you could pull in, get gas your gas pumped and maybe buy an RC Cola and grab a loaf of bread if you didn’t feel like driving to town. The store would open when Charles Thomas got out of bed. And like Walmart, it was even open on Christmas.

“Dad said we had to be open because there were people who would forgot to buy batteries for their toys! Or they forgot milk.” Eileen Thomas Jones laughed at the thought of predating Walmart. “We lived in our store. It was our life. We opened when Dad got up and closed when we went to bed.” 

When Charles and Rhoda Thomas bought the business from George and Pearl Bissett in 1948, it already had gas pumps, along with a store that sold all the little things passersby might want to grab on their way home or on the way to work. Two years later only child Eileen was born and the family franchise was off and running.

The store was “an open design with the living room beside it. You could stand by the pop cooler, look through the doorway and see what we were watching on TV.”

Eileen remembers shoppers lingering for a football game or mid afternoon soap opera. She remembers the layout of the store, from the attic that got finished and turned into her bedroom to the supplies that were kept in the basement that she had to fetch upstairs every evening to restock the shelves.

“I learned how to pump gas but I never learned how to add oil. I’m surprised Dad never taught me. When Dad went to work, Mom ran the store and I helped. Mom would start supper and then someone would come and she’d open the store. Supper was usually late or warmed up. It was hard to tell when Dad would get home—he worked for Penn DOT and the game commission.”

What happened during hunting season when business was bustling and bragging rights were taking shape are memories that still bring a chuckle. “There were many a coon treed and deer shot around the big circulating heater. The air was a blue haze of cigar, cigarette and pipe smoke.”

What passed for a deli was the stuff of country cuisine. “We packaged our own hot dogs in one pound bags and got cheese in blocks that had to be cut. Some wanted slices, some wanted pieces.” One regular would stop by for one slice of cheese, which he sandwiched between the layers of a chocolate whoopee pie and called it lunch. Another would buy an “RC Cola and a bag of Planters Peanuts and he’d open the bag and pour the peanuts into the pop and drink it. I’ll never forget that!”

Music from the 1960s came in on radio signals that were loud and clear on the ridge roads of the Warrior Trail. “Pat Glover and I spent a lot of time back then walking on the roads with our radios listening to music – country, rhythm and blues Gary Pucket and the Union Gap…It’s hard to imagine kids doing that now.”

By the time the 1970s rolled around Eileen was off to college, then home to teach at the newly constructed Graysville Elementary School in Richhill Township.

She knows this photograph was taken after 1972 because that’s when the store got new siding. The store would stay open until October 1979, a month before Charles Thomas died.

When Eileen Thomas married Bill Jones, the couple bought the farm just around the bend from Terry and Carlyn Grimes on Rt. 18. The Steeler Country logo on their barn is something of a landmark. “I didn’t go far. I’m a West Greene girl. We’re blessed to have good neighbors and we love living here.”