I woke up this
Sunday morning thinking back to the 1960’s. I am especially remembering Red and
Alice Frye on this particular day. Red and Alice Frye had a store in the Pipers
Gap area near the North Carolina/Virginia border not that far from where we live.
On
Sunday mornings, Red or Alice or sometimes both, would deliver our copy of the
Journal and Sentinel newspaper that was published in Winston-Salem. The first
section I read was the sports. The reason for that was if there was a Jim
Crockett wrestling show at the Lexington, NC YMCA on Saturday night, there
would be a nice article about the matches. If we were lucky, there might also
be a nice ad about the upcoming matches in Greensboro or Winston-Salem.
Red and Alice also
sold comic books at their store during that time. Besides Bill Whitaker at the
Canteen newsstand on Main Street in Mount Airy, Red’s store was another place I
could buy “funny books” as most people called them back then, for a nickel, which was below retail
prices. You see, the retailers had to cut the top third of the comic book
covers that they did not sell, then send those back to the distributors. After
that the unsold copies were to be disposed of. Red would get these unsold
comics from stores such as Nowlin’s
(spelling may be incorrect) Supermarket who sold National Periodical
Publications (DC) comics and Jim Young’s Toast Supermarket who sold Charlton
comics. Both of these stores were located near each other on Highway 89 in the
Toast, NC area.
Today I say thank
you to Red and Alice Frye for providing me with so many great memories.
