It isn't every day that you see a local store hit the big one-zero-zero, but Pratt's Country Store in Knoxville is hanging up streamers for its centenary milestone – having opened its doors back in the Roaring Twenties, it's clear this corner shop at Tazewell Pike and Jacksboro Pike has defied the odds and outlasted the Gatsbys of its time.
According to WVLT, the secret sauce isn't all that complex, just good old relationship, "People have grown up coming in here, I’ve grown up carrying out groceries for people, they treat me like their son or grandson," Perry Pratt, the owner of the family-operated emporium, imparted those words; meanwhile, chitchat from the Fountain City corner suggests that more than just your usual produce and dairy have been flying off the shelves, with talk of history and communal ties being the real hot-ticket items for a century.
Festivities weren't just a modest slice of cake and polite clapping kind of affair, as WBIR reports—there were contests that would have your grandma reminiscing on the good old days, including the heft of an adding machine. Props to whoever could guess the number of food stamp tokens in a jar echoed a bygone era when these tokens were the lifeline for many a household.
In a small but undeniably heartfelt commemoration, as per the official Pratt's Facebook page, there was a brief moment of nostalgia on the front porch. Congressman Tim Burchett and Knox County Glenn Jacobs were there to tip their hats to not just a business but a piece of local fabric that's stayed woven into the community for 100 years, you bet parking was a bit of a jig, with officers stepping in to wrangle the traffic and to make sure it wasn't a free-for-all.
