Les Jones

Dude Cooper’s grocery store is for sale

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 | Best Of, East Tennessee |

From The Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times:

Dude Cooper’s is a mile or so from YMCA Camp Montvale. In the permissive, litigation-free Seventies we campers used to walk down the country road (with no sidewalks or shoulders to speak of) from camp to Dude Cooper’s store to buy cokes and gum and candy cigarettes, back when there were candy cigarettes, our shorts filled with pocket knives that were part of the required equipment for attending camp. If you forgot to bring a pocket knife you could buy one after dinner in the camp store along with fountain cokes and ice cream and candy bars and comic books.

After we went to Dude’s we’d walk back to camp to shoot rifles and shotguns and bows and arrows, to ride horses and minibikes and canoes, to make model rockets, to play baseball, football, and capture the flag, to camp in the woods and drink water out of the creek without filtering it, and to make out with girls and get lucky to the best of our abilities. When we weren’t doing those things we’d worship God and nature and stuff.

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