Capturing What Life Use to be Like

One of the great things about riding is that you get to see the world around you a little slower. Even with riding the same route, you see things that you missed before that bring some enjoyment to the ride.

So the other Sunday I put the road wheels on the Waltworks to get out for a road ride and to get some distance in. It has been a while since I have been out on the road. I think some of that has been because people seem to not be able to just drive. They have an impulse to have to check their cell phone for whatever has just been posted and not focus on the road.

I took a route that I have ridden many times before and about 30 minutes of riding takes me to a rural part of the county where I live in. On that ride, I rode to an area with an old country church and an abandoned country store. Winterpock Grocery was the name of the store and the place that I was riding in. I started to think about how that store used to be the center of that community. Only about 10 minutes by car could you be at all the superstores where you can buy almost anything you want and even things that you didn't know you needed.

I remember that my Granddad on my father's side had a little country store. I can only remember going there twice but getting a small paper bag of penny candy and an orange creamsicle push-up on my visits. This store to me back to that time.

It got me thinking about the people that would have come to that store to get a soda and hang out and talk with a neighbor or purchase some worms to go fishing down at the creek. That was a much slower time than the 24 hours connected life that we live today.

I figured I would start a little project on the blog and that would be to capture a picture of my rides of old country stores and other things of interest and try to find some of the histories behind them.

The Messenger is a newsletter of the Chesterfield Historical Society of Virginia and on page 7 is an article titled Memories of Winterpock by Hazel Bowman Cole. This location is also a Geocache # GC5HVYC if you are into Geocaching. That is about the area where I took the picture. I hope you find it interesting and I plan on sharing more posts like this.