GreeneScene of the Past

by Colleen Nelson

When the goods inside E.J. Sanders General Store in Rutan were auctioned off on July 25, 1970, it was a big deal - the Pittsburgh Press came down to cover it.

“They sold the cracker barrel for $21 but the loafers bench went for $75,” staff writer Wyndle Watson tells us. “An old wooden chewing tobacco cabinet, given free to merchants in the days before the foil pouch “sealed in the freshness” was top selling item of the morning session.” A representative of the tobacco firm paid $95 for it.

E.J. contributed to his community in other ways, as a Center Township school

Cheese slicers, stone crocks, old cookie bins, letter boxes from the post office, shirts with detachable collars, faded but still in their boxes, garter belts, straw hats and fancy lace corsets – a parade of the early days of 20th century living went to the highest bidder that day.

It was the end of an era, embodied by those hand-cranked gravity fed pumps in front of the store, filled with Atlantic gasoline. Sure, there were new products to be had here – the candy in the old jars kept up with the times, three pound cans of Crisco replaced rendering lard by hand and new equipment like sump pumps and flashlights were added over the years. But what went unsold in 1910 was still on the shelves when Bud Behm held court with his auctioneer’s gavel over 500 antique dealers, old friends and kibitzers.

The newspaper clippings on file at Cornerstone Genealogical Society capture the unique nature of the man who managed to keep the past alive for 72 years as owner of the E.J. Sanders General Store. Born in Center Township in 1871 and married to Ella Mitchel in 1892, Emerson J. Sanders bought the store that would become his life’s work in 1898 when he was 26 years old. Horses were the transportation of the day and his store carried harnesses, tack and wagons. In 1927 E.J. would add gravity fed pumps that motorists would crank to get the gasoline up to the glass globe so that it would flow into their tanks. Those pumps worked so well he never gave them up. Why fix it if it isn’t broke?

director and a deacon of the South Ten Mile Baptist Church. He was a member of Modern Woodsman of America and would live his life within a three-mile radius of his Rutan store, his loafers bench at the ready for anyone who might stop by.

A 1962 newspaper photo shows him at age 91 standing by the pump as his old friend Cecil McCracken of Wind Ridge fills the five-gallon gas tank under the front seat of his 1913 Model T Ford. The cutline tells us that Cecil was a retired Atlantic Refining Company salesman and that E.J. had a bill of lading from 1899 “in which he purchased parafine wax, axle grease, harness oil, floor oil and caster oil” years before Atlantic began making gasoline. Those were the days when merchandise was sent by train to Cameron “where it was picked up in a wagon sent by the store owner.” When the first gasoline arrived, it came in drums and was used mostly in motorcycles.

“We’ve offered to replace the pumps with modern ones several times, but Mr.

Sanders doesn’t want to change,” Cecil told the reporter. “They are probably the last of their kind anywhere in this area.”

When E.J. was 96 he managed to sell a big piece of inventory before it hit the auction block when Big Country Ranch near West Finley came to buy the last twohorse

steel Kramer Wagon that he’d had in stock since 1910.

There must be a lot of stories out there about shopping at Sanders General Store, or being there that day when Bud Behm auctioned of fa thousand pieces of the past.