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- [S74] Atchley Funeral Home Records, Volume IV, 1987-1999, Larry D. Fox, (Smoky Mountain Historical Society), 10 Jan 1995.
Mary Ogle Ogle obituary
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 12 Mar 2007.
Butler's store featured in new Ogle print
By: GAIL CRUTCHFIELD
Community News Editor
March 12, 2007
PIGEON FORGE - Randall Ogle remembers with fondness the old Butler's store where he would catch a bus up to his summer job in Gatlinburg and where he could get both a bologna sandwich and a bag of nails.
As part of his Sevier County Historical Prints collection, Ogle is recreating the old-time grocery store once located on Old Mill Avenue. The nostalgic print shows the store flanked by a barber shop and surrounded by vehicles of the time.
"It was kind of like Mayberry," Ogle said of the area back in the 1950s.
By that time, Harold Butler was running the store started in 1919 by his father, Shirley Butler, and his uncle, Dave Butler.
Though a county native, growing up in Gnatty Branch, Ogle researched the store before he put paint to paper, finding articles about the store at the public library.
Along with the store's starting date, he also learned of how Shirley Butler was known to be lenient with his customers, extending credit to farmers until their crops came in. Shirley Butler also began what was referred to as "The Rolling Store," in the late 1930s, bringing the store to customers who couldn't come to him.
"Leaving Pigeon Forge by 5 a.m. traveling through Little Cove, Wears Valley, Boogertown and Richardsons Cove, making a different route every day," Ogle's research indicated. People would trade what they could for the items stacked on the shelves inside the truck. Chickens, eggs and furs were popular trading items, and chicken coops were carried on top of the truck.
Dorothy Burchfield Butler said it was her husband Charles, Harold's older brother, who drove the truck every day before high school. "That made for a long day for a young man," she said.
The boys' mother, Stella, held a weekly quilting session above the store, she added, and the men who worked to build the road through the National Park would stop at Butler's each morning to buy bologna and cheese sandwiches for their lunch.
In later years, the store began selling fishing licenses and bait for the fishermen who cast their lines at the Old Mill.
The store was closed in 1994, when Butler retired.
Ogle did take some artistic license with the print.
The window of the store has a painted sign advertising "Mary Lee's Pies."
Mary Lee is Ogle's mother.
"He puts her name in all of his paintings," said his wife, Jayne Ogle. He usually hides the name, she added, but put it on the window advertising pies because she made wonderful chocolate pies.
To the left of the store is Earl's Barber Shop, but no such business existed there, he said.
"Earl's is where I get my hair cut on Chapman Highway," Ogle said.
The signed and numbered prints are $25 and will be available beginning Wednesday. They will be sold at Ogle's gallery across from the Old Mill and down the street from where Butler's was located. Still owned by the Butler family, it's now a souvenir shop. The prints will also be available at The Mountain Press office on Riverbend Drive.
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