Ramblin Man: The Value of a Dollar

plus:

PINEHURST perfect weekend p.74

Ma y 2 018 $5.9 9

beauty,

drama & change 20 stories from NC’s borders —

Knotts Island to Clingmans Dome P. 90

from the edge In the far northeast corner of NC, tucked in one of our 49 border counties, Knotts Island isn’t as remote as you might think.

+ market season

Ronnie’s Country Store, Winston-Salem P. 146 6 can’t-miss farmers markets P. 154 BBQ queen of Spruce Pine P. 160

ramblin’ man

Each month, T. Edward Nickens roams and writes on our Carolina countryside.

The

Value of a dollar Lessons learned while working the cash register at Sutton’s Drug Store in Chapel Hill went beyond just making change. written by T. edward nick ens / photography by charles harris

I

’m a cash man, mostly. an endangered species.

One of those folks who still totes a slim wad of “paper money,” as the old-timers call it. Even though my job as a writer involves receiving multiple checks a month, from multiple sources, in wildly varying amounts — not wildly enough, I have to say — I still shove all of that money into the bank. Every penny. And every other Friday, I make a pilgrimage to the ATM on the corner and withdraw a prefigured number of $20 bills. Same number, every other Friday.

That’s my spending money. My portion of the groceries and gas, whatever clothes and toys I need, my tab for restaurants and nights on the town. My wife, Julie, and I pay mortgages and utilities and charities by automatic debit — I’m not a total knuckle-dragger — but as far as disposable income goes, I dispose of it into my back pocket and dispense of it as I see fit. I don’t require a computer program or phone app to ping me when I’m running low.

I don’t rely on a fancy spreadsheet to tell me if I can shell out for another fishing reel or if I should make do with the 20 I already own. When I run out of money, see, I run out of money. That’s about as analog as you can get.

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May 2018

Generations of UNC Chapel Hill students have fond memories of the cash register at Sutton’s, and the music it made with every transaction.

ourstate.com

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Sutton’s Drugstore customers can count on orangeades and BLTs just as good as years past — but checkout goes much faster than it did a generation ago.

It’s not quite that cut and dried, of course. We have savings accounts and credit cards and all the other financial accoutrements of modern life. But by and large, Tedward, Inc., and Andrew Jackson have a close and personal relationship. Cash comes in, and cash goes out, and me and Andy know where we stand with each other at any given minute.

I’ve long wondered where such an old-school approach to personal finance is rooted, and I think I finally figured it out the other day. I was in Chapel Hill to visit my son, Jack, and we stopped for lunch at Sutton’s Drug Store, the venerable Franklin Street institution that has been a source of cherry Cokes and cheeseburgers for decades. When I saw the old NCR cash register, in perpetual storage near the old wooden back steps, I nearly swooned. I worked at Sutton’s for four of the most formative years of my life, as both a college student and a college graduate with no clue what to do next. Working full-time after graduation, I cleared $124.46 a week, and I made every penny pushing the mint-green and lemon-yellow currency buttons on a cash register that looked like it could have been made about the same time as the Titanic.

When I saw the old NCR cash register, I nearly swooned.

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May 2018

These days, you don’t get too much from

checkout folks. “Stick it in the card reader” was the sum total of my most recent conversation with a clerk at my drugstore. Motherboards and the Internet take it from there. You can score a “Paper or plastic?” if you’re at a grocery store, perhaps. A “Thank you, sir,” if the kid running the so-called cash register happens to be from some rare place where folks are still raised with manners. But most of the time, you just sign on the pad with your fingernail like all the other sheep and grab your bag.

Oh, but back in the day — and yes, this is going to be one of those stories. Back in the day, you’d show up at my Sutton’s counter, and the dance would begin. There was a Hey there, how you doing? And a I think you’re in my econ class. Buyer and seller had some skin in this game of petty commerce, something to gain by establishing a quick commercial rapport. I was a fallible human, and could hit the green $3 cash register key instead of the $2 tab with complete innocence. You kept me on my toes. And if I happened to overcharge, things went a lot easier if we’d already established that I was no shyster, just a kid trying to put fuel oil in the heater tank at my duplex while you paid for your acne cream between classes.