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The new generation
Brothers William Cooper (left) and Russell Cooper Jr. continue the tradition of working at Cooper’s Country Store, which has been in the family since 1937.
Photo by Tim Hanson
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For the record
Owner Russell Cooper dusts off the old ledger books used to record purchases and settle accounts before the story upgraded to computers and electronic payments
Photo by Tim Hanson
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Tending the flock
Jay Woodward, a Cooper’s employee since he was 17, keeps a watchful eye on the barbecue pit that grills 50 chickens at a time.
Photo by Tim Hanson
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Check out
Cashier Kelley Cooper has been greeting customers and ringing up their purchases for decades.
Photo by Tim Hanson
Before the COVID-19 pandemic introduced face masks and social distancing to the American scene, retired farmer Herbert Hammond’s daily ritual involved a mandatory stop at Cooper’s Country Store for a cup of coffee.
Hammond, 86, a native of nearby Kingstree, lives only a few hundred yards from the store, and he looked forward to meeting with his friends to catch up on community gossip and maybe spar over some prevailing political issue of the day.
The virus put Hammond’s routine on hold, and only recently has the one-time sharecropper begun to return to his pre-epidemic custom.
Such gatherings have been common ever since the store was built by Theron Burrows back in 1937. He operated the business until his death in 1974, and then his son-in-law, George Cooper, took over and ran the place for the next three decades. Finally, in 2003, Cooper sold the store to his nephew, Russell Cooper, the current owner.
Cooper’s Country Store sits at the intersection of state Hwy. 521 and Martin Luther King Jr. Road in Salters, the unincorporated community of less than 4,000 people in Williamsburg County.
It is a two-story affair, the upstairs portion being an apartment where Burrows and his wife lived until 1954. A balcony extends forward from the apartment and covers a modest two-hose gas pump in front of the store.
Downstairs, in the store’s narrow aisles, customers will find a dizzying array of items—groceries and farm equipment, plumbing supplies, buckets of paint, knee-high snake-proof boots, machetes, fishing poles, animal traps, live crickets, cold beer, and a deli counter that keeps employees hopping to serve hungry customers six days a week.
Near the front door, a rocking chair and two pants-polished stools await those customers, like Herbert Hammond, who just want to sit a spell and talk with their neighbors.
“We have a very diverse customer base,” says William Cooper, one of Russell Cooper’s two sons. “We see people with every level of income, every age—every segment you can divide people into. A customer might come in here to get a propane tank filled or buy a pound of bacon or get a two-by-four to fix his fence.”
William’s brother, Russell Cooper Jr., says the store does not sell as many groceries as it used to but makes up for it by selling other items.
“We still have a full line of hardware and building, plumbing and electrical supplies,” he says. “We have a wide variety of things to choose from.”
At one time, country stores like this one were common in rural South Carolina. They served a population of working people who could not always easily travel to one of the larger towns to make their purchases.
These days, however, such stores are rare, and the few that do remain, like Cooper’s, sometimes become repositories of period memorabilia and aging documents that show how business was once conducted.
Owner Russell Cooper, for example, still has several oversized accounting ledgers that were once used to keep track of the store’s business transactions. In days long gone, he says, customers would buy groceries on credit and then make payments on their accounts at the end of the month. He pulls one of the big books from a storeroom shelf, blows a layer of dust from its cover and opens it to a random page.
“This ledger here is from 1960 to 1961,” Cooper says, pointing to the neat handwriting of the store’s original owner. “This customer bought some pancake mix for 27 cents, five pounds of flour for 62 cents, $1.80 worth of gas and a pack of cigarettes for 75 cents.”
Other tokens of a bygone era are scattered throughout the store: a couple of old-time cash registers perched on a top shelf; a decades-old, razor-sharp, crosscut saw hanging high and safely out of reach of customers; a mule-powered, farmer-guided Boy Dixie plow; an ancient, well-worn Dixie Cups dispenser; and a 12-drawer cabinet filled with Old Hickory shoelaces that once sold for 10 cents a pair.
“Things have changed, of course,” says Russell Cooper. “When I was a kid and first started working here, I remember seeing an older gentleman bring a mule and a wagon to get his groceries. And years before that, there would be maybe 10 mules and wagons tied up out there in front of the store.”
Cooper isn’t the only one to witness the decades of change. Jay Woodard, for instance, began working at Cooper’s as a 17-year-old back in 1976.
“We once had a service station here,” he says. “I used to do all the car oil changes and tire fixing. We don’t do that anymore. Probably the biggest change I’ve seen is the way people do business now. Everything is credit cards. Hardly anyone uses cash anymore.”
These days, as might be expected, inevitable concessions to changing times have been incorporated into the business. The store maintains an active presence on Facebook. Its page has more than 4,000 followers.
“Got a new assortment of straw brooms in,” reads one recent post that included a photo showing a dozen or so brooms with gray, red or black handles.
And then there is the food.
During the week, Cooper’s sells as much as 300 pounds of barbecued pork and around 300 barbecued chicken halves, says pit master Laverne Darby, who has worked at the store since 1975. And when Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, he says, the store adds barbecued turkeys to their list of offerings.
All of the barbecuing is done using seven pits—at least one of which can hold up to 23 turkeys or 50 chickens at a time—located in a shed behind the store.
Back inside at the deli counter, Darby says he keeps busy slicing meat and cheese and making sandwiches for workers in the area who find Cooper’s a convenient spot to pick up lunch.
Right next to the deli counter is a walk-in, wire ham cage where whole, salt-cured country hams are hung and which sell, especially during the holidays, by the hundreds.
Unlike other now-shuttered country stores, Cooper’s enjoys a favorable location on a state highway that brings a steady flow of summertime vacationers headed for the coast.
“The beach traffic has always come from Columbia, Spartanburg and Tennessee,” says the senior Cooper. “Some families have been coming year after year, and we have gotten to know them by name. We’ve watched their children grow up and get married and watched them have children.”
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Get There
Cooper’s Country Store is located at 6945 Hwy. 521 in Salters. Hours of operation are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday–Saturday. Barbecued pork and chicken are available Thursday through Saturday. For the latest updates on what’s in stock or cooking on the pits, visit the store’s Facebook page or call (843) 387-5772.