Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 8, Number 32, DeMotte, Jasper County, 7 July 1938 — Customers Can't Enter This Store But This ‘Merchant Prince9 Thrives [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Customers Can't Enter This Store But This ‘Merchant Prince 9 Thrives

“I reckon most storekeepers would make fun of my place,” says Charles R. Corbett, the merchant prince of Ivanhoe, “but my system suits me and my customers.” Corbett prefers to sit on his front porch and talk.

North Carolinian Runs a Department Store Although He’d Sooner Gossip With His Neighbors IVANHOE, N. C.—Charles R. Corbett, Ivanhoe’s “merchant prince,” is getting along all right though he hasn’t had a customer in his store for five years. What’s more, they can’t get in! Corbett’s store is a department store without departments. From floor to ceiling is stacked a mass of miscellany in wildest disarray. Whenever new goods arrive, they are pitched in on top. The stock has so increased that now there is only a narrow lane between stacks—just enough to permit passage of the lean storekeeper. So customers give their order outside and Corbett, armed with a flashlight, goes in and digs out the wanted articles. He can find anything, immediately. Thirty years ago Corbett opened his little store in this village of a half-dozen houses, off the main highway. His stock steadily increased in helter-skelter fashion, until one day a young boy assistant pulled something from the bottom of the pile. Down tumbled a bewildering stack of merchandise. “Gosh,” he said, “howTl we ever get it back?” “Don’t bother,” said Corbett. “We’ve got too much stuff ip here anyway.” So he rented a nearby structure and opened a new store, his present one. He still uses the old store as an annex and has a third building for a warehouse. But the new building has gone j the way of the old because Corbett, though scorning modern ideas of efficiency, is anxious to stock new things. Sixty-five years old, he is usually to be found on his front porch awaiting trade. Since there is no space inside, he has his office in the right pocket of his coat. In the pocket are perhaps 40 or 50 letters, and Corbett explains that he answers correspondence when the no-

tion strikes him. New letters are stuck on the inside of the batch in his pocket and he gradually works them out. “I reckqn a lot of storekeepers would make fun of my place,” he philosophizes, “)>ut my system suits me and my customers. Folks

have got sort of used to my way of doing things, and I believe a change would worry ’em almost as much as ’twould worry me. What’s the use of wasting a lot of time arranging stock and keeping things in order when you cpn set out on the porch and talk to your neighbors?”

You can put your finger on any item in Corbett’s department store., though it may not be the item you want. Here’s an interior view of the strangest store on earth.