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He ran his country store for 64 years, dispensing hoop cheese, spare parts and kindness

For the past 64 years, Roy Frazier ran the only store in Wake County that sold both hoop cheese and Wolverine boots under the same roof, not to mention pickling lime, honey molasses, fishing worms and plain old gas.

You’d find him behind the cash register, his constant perch starting in 1959, until age confined him to a chair off to the side.

But if you needed an oil filter for your tractor or a bolt that Home Depot didn’t carry, he would rise and root through his bins — rescuing your Saturday afternoon.

Roy Frazier of Wake Forest died at 87 after running his store at the intersection of N.C. 98 and N.C. 96 for 64 years.
Roy Frazier of Wake Forest died at 87 after running his store at the intersection of N.C. 98 and N.C. 96 for 64 years.

He became so well-known at his intersection outside Wake Forest, where N.C. 98 meets N.C. 96, that any lost motorist inevitably got directions starting at Frazier’s Store and going left or right from there.

And for more than half a century, he endured as a happy anachronism, lending out jumper cables when your car got stranded, letting you pay later when you forgot your wallet at home.

“It was a Saturday Evening Post picture every time you walked in the store,” said friend Jim Bell, a friend and frequent customer. “Five or six guys sitting on nail kegs or paint cans, solving the world’s problems.”

Frazier died last week at 87, having lasted long enough as a small businessman that the state Department of Transportation built a roundabout at his country crossroad, managing traffic as Raleigh crept further north.

‘Get whatever you need’

The store he ran with his son Danny adapted enough to have its own Facebook page, where regular posts informed customers that non-ethanol gas was temporarily unavailable, or that local sweet potatoes had just arrived by the box.

Frazier’s endured with Home Depot just 6.8 miles down the road — Lowe’s only 6.2. And though it closed last week for his funeral, a bouquet of white flowers hanging near the door, word is that it will remain happily open in keeping with its founder’s spirit.

“He was around a long time,” said Freddy Timberlake, describing himself as roughly Frazier’s age, paying respects at his Thursday night viewing. “You could get whatever you need. Pair of boots. Bag of fertilizer. Bag of grass seed. He had a big bin of bolts and washers in the back.”

Flowers mark Frazier’s Store outside Wake Forest, where the proprietor Roy Frazier died last week after running it since 1959.
Flowers mark Frazier’s Store outside Wake Forest, where the proprietor Roy Frazier died last week after running it since 1959.

Frazier grew up farming in Wake County and started out in the general store business as a young man built for longevity. He and his wife, Sylvia, a choir director in their church, were married 54 years.

For decades, he and Danny grew pumpkins and sold them outside the store for as little as $1, until he told the N&O in 1990, “We’re about ready to quit. They are a lot of trouble.”

I never met Frazier nor stepped inside his store, but his admirers spread widely enough around Wake County that they turned up in my own Facebook world. In just a day’s time, with just a handful of conversations, I learned enough to write this tribute.

Pete Kelly recalled how, as a kid, he and his brother Poncho would collect drink bottles and bring them to Frazier, who bought them for 2 cents apiece. “It was our little bank and he was our banker,” Kelly wrote in an online tribute.

Donna Freeman remembered how Frazier was among the first to call after her mother passed, asking if she needed anything. “I told him I could use a bag of ice and within 10 minutes he was at my back door,” she wrote. “He was one of the kindest and finest Christian men I’ve ever known.”

We all have a Frazier’s Store

Chances are you have a Frazier’s Store somewhere in your life — a place you walk in and a familiar voice asks, “Whatcha workin’ on today, boss?”

For me it’s Handyman Hardware on New Bern Avenue, where I can buy wood screws, bird seed or a sled.

If I come in all sweaty and agitated on a Saturday, having spent the morning upside-down on the laundry room floor trying to connect a dryer vent, they actually care. They stay familiar without even needing to ask my phone number at the cash register.

When you’ve been around for a while, the world can look like a gallery of things that used to be there, people who used to be home, laughs you used to get, stores that used to sell exactly what you needed.

So I offer thanks to Roy Frazier and those like him, who offer us a hitching post to latch onto while the world we know slides slowly away.

Frazier’s Store outside Wake Forest, where the peeling paint and ghost letters on the sign betray the store’s age.
Frazier’s Store outside Wake Forest, where the peeling paint and ghost letters on the sign betray the store’s age.