The Feed Store Was Better Than a Shopping Mall

By Mark Morgan

There was a time when a trip to the feed store was more than just going to buy something.

It was practically a social event.

Now, I don't know how many of you remember the old country feed stores, but they were a special kind of place.

You could walk through the door and smell sweet feed, leather, burlap sacks, and enough dust to make you sneeze clear across Scott County.

There'd be bags of chicken feed stacked against the wall, rolls of fencing wire, buckets, shovels, and more kinds of nails than a fellow could ever figure out what to do with.

And somewhere near the counter sat a couple of old farmers who didn't seem to be buying a blessed thing.

They were just visiting.

I always figured those fellows were part of the inventory.

They'd sit there discussing everything from the price of cattle to whether it was going to rain next Thursday.

One fellow would say, "Looks like we're fixing to get some weather."

Another would look out the window and answer, "Reckon so."

And that would be the entire weather forecast.

No radar. No satellite. No fellow on television waving his arms in front of a green screen.

Just two men who'd been watching the sky longer than most of us had been alive.

And I'll tell you something.

They were right about as often as anybody else.

The feed store was also a place where you could learn a whole lot without anybody sitting you down for a lesson.

If you needed to fix a fence, somebody knew how.

If your chickens weren't laying eggs, somebody had an opinion about that, too.

And if your cow wasn't acting right, you could get six different diagnoses before you made it back to your pickup.

Of course, five of them might be wrong, but at least nobody charged you for the advice.

One thing I remember about those old country stores was that nobody seemed to be in much of a hurry.

A man might come in for a fifty-pound sack of feed and stay half an hour talking about a tractor that hadn't run since Christmas.

And nobody thought that was unusual.

Nowadays, we order things on our phones, have them delivered to the front porch, and sometimes never speak to another human being.

And I reckon that's convenient.

But convenience and connection aren't always the same thing.

Back then, the fellow behind the counter might know your name, what kind of livestock you raised, and whether your grandpa had finally gotten that old tractor running.

He wasn't just selling feed.

He was part of the community.

And the people coming through that door weren't just customers.

They were neighbors.

There's a lesson in that old feed store.

We spend so much time trying to get things done faster that sometimes we forget the value of slowing down long enough to visit.

A conversation might not put money in your pocket.

It might not get your chores finished.

And it certainly won't mend a broken fence.

But sometimes a few minutes spent listening to somebody can do more good than anything you could buy off a shelf.

There's an old saying, "A good neighbor is worth more than a distant relative."

And I reckon those old feed stores proved that every day.

Because when somebody needed help, the same fellows who sat around discussing the weather were often the first ones to show up.

They might complain about their backs, argue about the best way to do the job, and stop three times to drink coffee.

But they'd show up.

And that's what mattered.

I suppose you can buy just about anything online these days.

Chicken feed, fence staples, a new shovel, even a tractor if you've got enough money.

But there's one thing I haven't figured out how to put in a shopping cart.

That feeling of walking into a place where everybody knows your name, somebody's glad to see you, and nobody's watching the clock.

Maybe the old feed store sold a whole lot more than feed after all.

And if those two old fellows are still sitting by the counter somewhere, I imagine they're still discussing the weather.

One of them probably just said it's fixing to rain.

And the other one is still thinking it over.

— Mark Morgan