GreeneScene of the Past

GreeneScene of the Past

by Colleen Nelson

It’s a store that serves the needs of a community that is hardly visible if your goal is to drive through Prosperity as quickly as possible to get to the Washington Mall. But it’s a store that has been there since the mid-1800s, owned and operated by a long line of area families and still happily serving those who stop by every day to hang out, drink coffee and get breakfast, lunch and every imaginable snack, lottery ticket, forgotten item or maybe some deli items that you might need before going to work or heading home.

The Bartolotto family bought the store two years ago and have been busy not only keeping it well stocked with snacks, necessities and a deli full of home cooked food and fresh cold cuts, but rediscovering some of the history that lurked behind bread racks and through old doorways into storage areas that once used loading docks to store grain and other necessities of farm living.

Case in point – the handsome old McCray walk in cooler from the turn of the last century that is still used for deli items. It opens behind the deli counter but now its wooden front has been uncovered, mirrored panel and all, and can be admired when walking to the back of the store where resident philosophers Pumpkin and Carl hold court in the morning over coffee.

“They’ll talk to anyone who comes back there!” Sophia Bartolotto tells me with a grin.

I was too late to hear about Prosperity from Pumpkin and Carl, but I did have a wonderful visit with Marie Phillips who lives a few houses from the store, across the road from the Prosperity Post Office that is in a house she also owns. Her husband, Daniel, was the first postmaster after the post office moved from Dunns Station to Prosperity on June 1, 1967 and she raised her family here. Her collection of photographs, school records and newspaper clippings capture much of the day to day history of Prosperity, including an old photo of the store in the 1930s along with the column Margaret Lindley wrote about it. Mary Brownlee Lindley was an early owner, perhaps even the first, who sold it to Sam Swart, who sold it to Elmer Andrew in 1910. Harry Young rented it for awhile but Elmer Andrew took it back and added a garage during World War I. Elmer and his family lived upstairs and sold “general merchandise, farm machinery, fertilizer and feed”. When the Andrews moved out, John and Bernice bought it, rented it to Wayne and Edith Chapman who later sold it to Jim Armstrong.

Margaret’s column was from the 1980s so the store’s ownership ends there but Sophia Bartoletto remembers that next owner, Michael Day, ran it when she was in grade school in the late 1980s. When he died, the Days sold to the Bartolottos and the tradition of a family owned store in Prosperity continues.

Next time you’re driving through Prosperity, slow down and visit. Bartolotto’s Market just might have what you’re hungry for. If you arrive around 9 a.m. you can have coffee with Pumpkin and Carl and hear a tale or two. Sorry I missed them!