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CLAUDE T. WILEY GENERAL STORE 2011

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CLAUDE T. WILEY GENERAL STORE


Photos by Drew
On Saturday our real reason for driving out to Social Circle was to see the old Claude T. Wiley General Store.  I saw some pictures of it online last week and I knew it would be a perfect excuse to get out of the city and to see a bit of real southern history, and when I showed Drew the photos of the place he was all in.  The general store has been going since 1920, and when you walk in it’s easy to imagine it back when it started.  One entire wall is lined with floor to ceiling shelves that you have to climb a rolling ladder to access.  There’s a loft full of old furniture, (probably original) glass display cases, and a working cash register from 1922.  The place with its large windows and green peeling paint sort of reminded me of a little general store clear-out sale I went to a few years back in Royston, Georgia.  They had the same feel to them, only while the Royston store had been closed and boarded up for years the Claude T. Wiley General Store has been going ever since it opened.  It was funny to see new-ish merchandise mixed in with deadstock boxes of shoes that had been probably sitting on the shelves since the 1930s.  There were old ’40s sewing supply boxes next to things from the ’80s (ancient computers in the store’s “computer museum” and even a Bedazzler).  I went through some boxes of old rust-stained farm dresses from the ’40s and fell in love with a few pairs of ankle boots, but the real treasures in the store were the old wooden crates and seed bags sitting high up on the shelves.  I ended up buying an old cornbread pan while Drew got a wonderful painted Coca-Cola crate to take back to Atlanta (the land of Coca-Cola).
The woman working at the store was in her 90s–I should have asked, but I’m pretty sure that she’s one of the children of the original owner (her brother and sister also work at the store from time to time).  She was as nice as can be.  She wore a wonderful old 1960s coat and had one of the best southern accents I’ve heard, the really proper and old-fashioned kind that I’ve only heard just east of Atlanta and that I always imagine in my head whenever I read Flannery O’Connor dialogue.
If you’re ever in the Atlanta area and want to see a real living part of the old south, the 40 or so mile trip out to Social Circle is definitely worth it, if only to walk in and see the general store.  I couldn’t really find much about it online, but you can find it right downtown at 109 S. Cherokee Road.  And I promise that you’ll love it.

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