At the time of this photo, it was Ferguson's Super Market, owned by Newton Ferguson, a family friend of ours and lifetime member of our church, Pleasant Grove UMC. My dad, Robert (Bobby) Layton, took it over in 1973, I think it was, and had it made into a Grocery Boy Jr., a chain founded by my mom's sister and her husband, Joe and Doris Denning of Cary. The store got a new front, the garage part on the left was enclosed, and the old gas pumps were removed and new ones installed. It MAY have also been added onto on the right side, but I'm not certain about that. Anyway, this is the store that my dad and mom (Ellen Layton) ran for 17 years as a Grocery Boy Jr. They were starting to become interested in retiring when the city made the decision for them -- with the plan to greatly enlarge the intersection where the store was located (Creedmoor and Leesville roads, at the time). That was when the city was completely redoing and extending Millbrook Road into a wide, east-west corridor to serve north/northwest Raleigh, taking parts of Shelley Road, North Hills Drive, Leesville Road, and Pleasant Grove Church Road to rename as Millbrook and run it all the way to Glenwood Avenue (Hwy 70). Millbrook Road used to dead-end on Six Forks Road until all the moving and renaming of roads occurred to create this corridor. The creation of a big intersection eliminated the Leesville Road name at that location and led to the demolition of the store.

I grew up less than a mile from that store. I remember many a Saturday afternoon walking up to that store looking for glass bottles to turn in so that I could get something to drink or some candy. Catty corner to that store was a store called casuals store I have a picture somewhere of my neighbor from across the street sitting on the steps there before they tore that store down. Looking at the pictureThat is shown here I remember that the telephone booth had moved next to the store near about where that truck is parked.

Yeah, Cashwell's Store. An even older and smaller store than Ferguson's/Grocery Boy Jr., located diagonally across that same intersection. Mom and dad became friends of Mr. Cashwell. His store closed many years before the Ferguson's/Grocery Boy Jr. did. Whatever land remained from it after the intersection expansion became incorporated into the parking lot of the shopping center that's there now.

I lived on Leesville Rd growing up from 1970-1980. About a half mile from this store. I too would walk up to the store looking for soda bottles to redeem. Crazy as it seems but I still have pretty good recollection of what it looked like on the inside.