Bennett's caching carry was a corner store. More neighborhood grocery than 7-Eleven.

Half of the store was stocked with groceries. Nothing too fancy. Meat, bread, chips, milk, sodas, or coke, as they say in Georgia.

The front of the store is where it was at. There was a lunch counter, the old-fashioned kind.

These served hamburgers, barbecue, fries, and the best chili dogs around.

The store was owned by William Carroll Bennett. His family was well-known in town. They'd been there for several generations.

Everyone knew Bennett as a kind and gentle man. His employee, Rebecca Browning, was also well-known and well-liked. Friendly, and sweet.

She was usually behind the lunch counter.

The store was on the south side of Adel, Georgia, near the outskirts of town. It was a long, concrete, block building on West 9th Street.

There was a warehouse or plant down the way that made particle board, and a few houses scattered nearby.

Directly behind the store were the railroad tracks that sliced the small city in half.

So it was popular with the guys who worked on the railroad. People like Lloyd Crumbly, an engineer who drove freight trains for nearly 40 years.

We'd stopped very quite often. We'd have to work a little place called Warehizer.

It was right beside the track. We could just get off and go in and get us a hamburger for lunch and then go finish the rest of our customers.

We enjoyed them. They were really nice people.

It wasn't just the railroad people who loved it though. The store was a real neighborhood fixture.

Here's how Gale Bennett, the owner's widow, describes it.

It was actually really a family business because my girls grew up there. They grew up judging people out, working in the store, getting hot dogs and their birds at lunch.

That's why they had one of my garden schools.

When somebody didn't have enough money for groceries, her husband often gave them credit until the end of the month.

Yeah, he did. He did that. And especially those that were on fixed income that had such a security.

He would let them get groceries until they got their train at home and the end of the month or the first of the month.

The community genuinely loved Bennett and Browning.

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