Hold on a second while I put my old cranky guy hat on and complain. We’ve lost so much with the advent of big box stores. Now don’t get me wrong, I still shop there too. Mainly because I have a well-known hardware store in my backyard, and with five kids a warehouse grocery store is an integral part of our lives. Where else am I buying a box of 15 dozen eggs (every few weeks)?

As spring has started to “spring” these last couple of weeks, my wife and I have been planning and working on getting our garden ready for planting. Part of our plans has been the installation of a new fence. The past few years we’ve been using those electric string fences, and while they kind-of got the job done, I think the deer have gotten wise to us. At the end of last season, they easily defeated the system. So, here we go trying to learn how to build a real fence, what materials are best, and how to do this all on the budget of a self-employed sales rep and outdoor writer.

Enter the feed store. I am guilty of not really thinking about certain places sometimes. While discussing our plans, my wife suggested before we buy anything from a box store that we go down to the local feed store and see if they can help us. So, while running some errands one day, we did just that. We walked in, and I was overwhelmed with memories. I remember vividly stopping with my grandfather at small feed stores around the area while he was still working. See, he bought milk for Sealtest Dairies, and he would regularly visit sale barns, feed stores, diners, etc. with his farmers. I’ve been to many.

When you walk into the small feed store in downtown Greensboro, don’t be shocked by what you see or don’t see. Notice the things that spell out exactly its place in local culture. The chairs sitting in the middle of the room, the tractor sale books, seed books, seed packets and cattle feed. This isn’t where the casual gardener comes for zinnias. This is where the guy with 100 head of Herefords and acres of corn comes in to buy stuff. Need anti-viral meds for a herd of cattle? They have it. Need a have-a-heart trap to get the coons out of your chicken house? They have that. Cattle gate? Yep, it’s there. You know what they didn’t have? Clueless associates trying to sell me an extended warranty on a $5 screwdriver.

I asked one of the guys there what he recommended for building a fence on a small garden. We did the math on our perimeter, figured out the amount of wire we needed, discussed the height, the gate options, and even about adding electric fencing to the very top. While talking to him I got introduced to a new lawnmower shop that can fix my zero turn without me having to wait six weeks and another hardware store that actually sells HARDWARE and not yard art and grills! Amazing!!! I need big sturdy fence posts not a new grill!

These types of places have been known for their varying services. Forty years ago, there was a small store in White Plains, Ga. that was called Veazy’s. The old man who ran it had a set of real scales. I mean just like you see in the movies. They weighed grain and feed on them from the time Noah brought the animals off the Ark till it closed I reckon. My paternal grandfather, Claude Pressley, stopped in there every time he killed a turkey and Mr. Veazy weighed it for him. Then he would buy a snack and a drink and head back to our house where he would show them off. You just can’t do that at the QT.

Now, the point of this isn’t to necessarily decry the fall of western civilization or bash box stores. It’s to say that we are losing valuable knowledge and skills at an alarming rate. These guys just knew how to do things that I didn’t. They were also willing to help, willing to share, and patient enough to where they made me feel like a true customer and member of the community.

We need more of this. We need general stores again where you can find help when your car dies on a Saturday. We need hardware stores that have and know how to use real tools! Not just how to plug in a charger. I’m sorry but a Stihl chainsaw is still cooler and tougher than a battery-operated toy when you have an 80-foot pine down in your backyard. We need a fishing tackle store where you can get the latest info on the lake levels, water temp, and what the fish have been biting. And all these places need people who will hang around and talk to newcomers and welcome them to the community. It shouldn’t matter if it’s just for the weekend or for the next 20 years.

How do we accomplish this? I have no idea. All I know to do is try to find these places and frequent them. Buy your seeds from them. If you need dog food, check them out first. Next time go there to buy that new set of wrenches. Check out the prices on bait casters there before hitting the buy-it-now button on Amazon. The prices might surprise you!

—Outdoors columnist James Pressley can be reached at pressleyoutdoors@gmail.com