GRANTSBORO – Alfred Cahoon and his father Hosea W. Cahoon, who died in 1981, began a sales and marketing tradition in Pamlico County in the years after World War II that continues to this day.
Retirement now beckons for Alfred, 76, and his wife Christine, who wistfully concede a career spanning six decades as one of Pamlico County’s most prominent merchants may soon conclude.
“If you talk very much to her about it, she will cry,” he said, referring to his retailing partner and soul mate. The couple will celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary this Dec. 26.
Wednesday morning Christine was behind the cash register, while Alfred tended to other business. Accustomed to bulging shelves for Christmas season shopping, the feisty lady feigned irritation that inventory is being snapped up – a result of ads, incredible deals, and a large sign on Highway 55 that proclaims “Retirement Sale Continues.”
“When the phone rings, I find myself saying ‘I am sorry, we’re out of it.’ Seems like that is all I say,” she pouted.
Alfred nodded in agreement.
“I bet I could have sold a hundred Carhartt jackets with the hoods. That is a popular line of merchandise for us, and it still hurts that we are getting calls for stuff that we have completely sold out of.”
Don’t get the wrong impression. Bargains still abound at Cahoon’s Sport Shop. Built in 1987, the spotless store and huge parking lot is the most recent iteration of several Cahoon-owned locations.
“In 1947, my daddy built the first store while he was on crutches. He previously had a hip operation and was out of work for more than a year. Back then, he figured he was pretty much done in.”
Mere yards east of the county’s biggest intersection (a stoplight came 34 years later), father and son sold furniture first, but the operation later morphed into the county’s first ‘self-service’ grocery store. Alfred Cahoon first lent a hand at age 14.
“He was my hero,” said Alfred. “They said typhoid fever when my father was four years old may have crippled him, but he later thought it was polio that did it. He put a lot of trust and responsibility in me. When I was 18, he sent me to see if we could buy the farmland where this store is today.”
In a recent wide-ranging interview, both Alfred and Christine shared a variety of experiences – many hilarious.
One story in particular illustrates Alfred’s natural propensity for sales. Having become an integral part of the family grocery business – “at one time there were five grocers in Grantsboro,” chuckled Alfred, his father rewarded him with a brand new “1954 Windsor Chrysler – it was green with sort of a cream-colored top.”
Single, 21, and home for the summer from East Carolina Teachers College, Alfred drove the car to James City where two ‘drive-in’ eateries -- The Pig and a second spot known as The Griddle -- enticed young people of that era.
“That’s where girls met a lot of the boys back then,” laughed Christine. “That night Alfred followed me home from the place. I was trying to get away from him.”
But the spiffy new wheels apparently proved to be the difference.
“She married the car, and later learned to love me,” joked Alfred.
Many of the stories have a common element -- father and son were adept marketers.
In May of 1961, Alfred lobbied his father for a second store in Arapahoe, near where the Charter School is today.
That operation must have been something. Alfred’s eyes twinkle as he recalls “the Little Sooper probably did more sales per square foot than any business I know of.”
About that time, Cahoon the younger, always on the lookout for unique sales tactics, could not resist the temptation to take advantage of a promotion being touted by a New Bern radio station.
During one particularly oppressive summertime heat wave, the station offered to pay “one cent for every fly.”
Cahoon and staffers went to work with jars set next to ripe fruit and other lures.
“We ended up collecting exactly 10,143 flies,” recalled Alfred, “and the radio station paid us about $60. I told the bookkeeper that we made a little money on flies that year, but I wasn’t going to report it.”
To this day, Cahoon is one of the county’s most prolific advertisers. He has always taken advantage of ‘cooperative advertising’ dollars. One early and unusual opportunity came from a flour vendor.
“We had a big weekend sale,” he said. “They brought in a huge pallet with 25-lb. and 10-lb.bags and they had this loudspeaker with a cow ‘mooing.’ We would play that thing over and over. Then we would announce: ‘That’s the beef in Cahoon’s meat counter. How much fresher can you get?’ Well, needless to say, we sold out.”
His most recent ‘spokesman’ is Rascal, an adorable black-and-white pooch that has his run of the store, though he typically snoozes in a basket on the floor behind the front counter.
Embodied with a quirky voice in radio spots, and balloon-style quips for newspaper ads, Rascal “is probably the best type of advertising I have ever done,” said Alfred.
As much as they will miss the store, the loving couple admits the time has come for them to move on. Alfred points to several near misses.
“My doctor calls me a miracle man. I have had a bunch of stents and on Aug. 6, 1993, I had a five-way bypass,” he recalled, to which Christine added: “That time I thought I was going to bring him back home in a pine box.”
Though formal plans remain indefinite, this will likely be the last Christmas selling season. Next year, look for the Cahoons to be somewhere else – perhaps on a return visit to Austria where they spent the early months of their marriage during Alfred’s military service.
The biggest change they have seen over the years?
“It is all these big-box stores,” said Alfred. “Anybody starting out in today’s world has to have a lot of money, and you have to look for niches. It’s not easy surviving with a store in this county, but we have really enjoyed it.”
