[Adapted from a note posted to Facebook.]

The Batesville Store, formerly Page’s store, is closing. This saddens me more deeply than I can express. To its new owners, and to its current patrons, it’s a place to eat or a place to hear live music. To me, growing up in that tiny town in rural Albemarle County, it was a big part of my world.

It sits at the center of Batesville, Virginia, at the intersection of county roads 692 and 635, a small roadside building that was once a one-pump gas station. It was classified as a country store … a special sort of business in Virginia, where certain rules and regulations are relaxed. It used to be just that. Charley Page and his wife were running the store when I moved to the area in 1968, at age 5. Mr. Page (I never called him by his first name, out of respect) was a big, friendly, kind, outgoing man who seemed like a giant to me at first. He was Batesville’s postmaster, and acted as sort of an unofficial mayor of the tiny unincorporated town. Nothing happened that he didn’t know about.

Mrs. Page was the motherly type, infused with Southern sweetness but possessed of a cast iron will that would assert itself whenever necessary. In my single-digit years, she was like a second mother to me, so much so that my mother never thought twice about sending me on a walk down to that store to get this or that. A footpath of about 1/4 mile led from my house to Page’s, and I walked it thousands of times. Sometimes, Mrs. Page would have to help me decipher the “this or that” which my mother had written in her inimitable nurse’s handwriting. In those early days the store was also the Batesville Post Office, so I’d also get our mail there, General Delivery. Later, when boxes were put in, we rented Box 133.

The store was rustic. The oiled wood floor that squeaked as I walked, the creaky, heavy old wooden door with its jingling bells, the aging refrigerated cases that hummed and whirred, and especially the sound of that huge, ancient cash register, all can be heard in the back of my mind as clearly as digital recordings, burned in by the happiness of youth. I can still “feel” the layout of the store. Just inside the door, to the right, was the counter with the big cash register at the far end. On the left was one of those big, old Coke vending machines with the handle that you had to slam down to eject the bottle. Past that, against the left wall, was the vegetable case. Straight ahead were the dry and canned goods, stretching all the way to the back wall and the meat case.

Walking in past the register and turning right, you’d walk past the post office window, and into an area where bread, the refrigerated milk case, and various toys and hardware items were shelved. Soft drinks were back here, too, stacked up so high that I needed help to reach them. There was a sign that said, “If you don’t see it, ask for it. If we don’t have it, we’ll get it for you.” They meant it.

I have been away too long. I left Virginia in 1991 and I don’t know what became of the Page family, who lived in the big two-story house across the street from the store that was their lives. I don’t even know what happened to “Charles T.,” their son, or the Pages’ daughter whose name I can’t remember. All I know is that the store now has new owners. One of them is a teacher (she taught English, I believe) from my old high school, though she never taught me directly. The other is a fellow I don’t know, presumably her husband. Slowly, they’ve been turning the store into something else, something that it never was before.

They’ve even revised its history. A sign used to hang out front: “Page’s Store, since 1913.” Mr. Page often said that he found out after the sign was made that it was actually founded in 1912, but the sign was expensive, so he just corrected it verbally. Now the new owners’ sign says “The Batesville Store, since 1880.” That’s a neat trick … erasing the Page family’s name from something they spent their lives building, and adding 33 years of history. How ironic.

I visited the store again many years ago on a trip through Virginia. The metamorphosis had not become quite so striking then. They were selling locally-made cookies which were quite good, but it still bore some resemblance to a country store. I didn’t get too upset then. I could still “feel” what the store used to be. Some part of its soul still lingered within those walls.

Recent photographs of the inside of the store are almost unrecognizable to me. The big joint in the floor where two parts of the building unite is still visible, but nothing else is even close to what it once was. I can’t get my bearings at all. I see polished wood, a huge deli case, tables with flower vases, cute kitschy gifts for sale. If Cracker Barrel is a real country store, then so is this, but I respectfully submit that neither entity deserves that title, and that neither could be more disparate from the genuine article.

This brings us to the reason for the demise of the store. The state inspected them recently. Apparently its owners had turned it into what amounts to a 40-seat restaurant. By all accounts the place was regularly overcrowded … there could never be enough parking to support 40 patrons at once at that tiny roadside store. The building itself was never intended to be occupied by 40 people at once. I’m sure modifications were made for fire safety, but along the way, the owners must have lost sight of the fact that they were supposed to be running a country store. They kept trying to become a restaurant, while keeping the “country store” designation which saved them having to comply with restaurant regulations. Country stores aren’t allowed to seat more than 15 people, because they’re not supposed to be restaurants — they’re stores!

Not surprisingly, the state told the owners to remove 25 seats or upgrade their facilities to meet restaurant standards. That’s an entirely reasonable choice to give them, A business can operate as a country store, or as a restaurant, but they can’t have it both ways. It wouldn’t be fair to the other restaurants who are forced to toe the line and do things by the book. I think the state was entirely reasonable in its action. Nothing could be easier than simply getting rid of most of the restaurant seating, adding some merchandise, and running a store again.

The owners, incredibly, opted for a third choice. Their brilliant plan was to close the store, then complain loudly to all who will listen that it’s all the state’s fault and that they’re being treated unfairly. Even more incredibly, people are believing them. Tell people that the government’s being oppressive and abusing its power, and people will come in droves to your defense. They’ve become the next Professional Victims.

Perhaps you think I’m making this up. I’m not — this really happened. Seriously, I could not possibly make up a response this stupid. These people don’t want to run a country store, that much is clear. The arrogance is appalling. If they can’t have their restaurant, with their seating for 40 and their big kitchen and their kitschy salt and pepper shakers next to the flowers on the table, they’ll take their ball and go home, and history be damned.

History be damned. Yes, indeed it has been. There’s hope, of course. The memories are alive. I can’t be the only one who remembers the warm feeling of that place at its zenith — a country store in every sense of the word, a warm place that needed no live music and no prepared foods to feel like home. There must be someone out there with the desire as well as the ability to make this special, almost sacred place come alive again as what it was in the seventies … a store, not an eatery. Until then, I mourn a great loss.