Nannies Market owners Don and Peggy Nixon (below) are looking for someone else to reopen and operate the community store.

Photos by SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Nannies Market, owned by Don and Peggy Nixon, has closed after 50 years in business. The Botetourt County store was a gathering place for locals, the kind of place where people could stop in and get a deli sandwich as well as the news about their neighbors.

Nannies Market owners Don and Peggy Nixon (below) are looking for someone else to reopen and operate the community store.

HAYMAKERTOWN -- When the sky is gray and the icy air nips at your earlobes, you'll find the regulars -- farmers, retirees and sundry idlers -- huddled in the back here inside Nannies Market. But when the weather's tiptop and the sun's a scorcher, you'll find them out swapping tales on the front porch.

"We do have some porch fixtures -- we call them the Haymakertown Council," local dairy farmer Jeff Henderson said of the store's faithful patrons.

Henderson himself is one of the regulars -- or at least he was until recently -- at Nannies, located on Catawba Road nearly halfway between Mount Union and Haymakertown in Botetourt County. Like the other regulars, though, Henderson has had nowhere to go to catch up on local news for the past few weeks. Nannies had shut its doors.

The store's closing has grieved and vexed the community. Residents now have to drive more than five miles to buy their groceries. But the inconvenience is not what they find most nettlesome: The store was in some ways the community's very heart, an out-of-date center of an old-fashioned country lifestyle.

Southern Botetourt has become increasingly suburban over the past two decades, with farm fields turning into housing tracts and narrow country roads pulsing with new commuter traffic; but Nannies has always remained a solid link to the area's rural past. As sure as the creeks run high after the rain, local residents could count on bumping into their neighbors when they went to pick up a few odds and ends at Nannies. That's how short trips to the store so often turned into long afternoons of slow conversation.

"The old store has stayed basically the same," said Ryland Horne, 66, who grew up in rural Botetourt and stopped by Nannies nearly every day to warm his hands on a cup of hot coffee. "We sit around and talk about all the world's problems, who died, who's in the hospital, whatever comes up."

And so it has been for roughly half a century. The market, originally known as Guy's Store, opened in 1951, and though it has occasionally closed for brief spells and changed ownership a few times, it has always rebounded.

Workers from the local quarry and cement plant made the place their favorite lunch stop, as did truckers. Farmers and retirees turned it into a breakfast hangout. And parents brought their children in for Popsicles and cookies.

"It's important to the women in the community," said Karen Henderson, Jeff's wife. "I call it a pop-in. You just pop in and get what you need, or you send your husband. And when you're there, you catch up and see people you don't always get to see."

The thick sandwiches made behind Nannies' lunch counter were named in honor of local communities -- one rare roast beef was known as the Blue Ridge, for example, while one turkey breast sandwich was called the Buchanan. Other sandwiches went by the names of patrons. The H.O. Kelley featured rare roast beef, turkey and ham.

"Nannies is kind of a neighborhood institution," said County Administrator Jerry Burgess, who often dropped by for coffee on his way to work and ordered box lunches from the store's deli. "It's a good old-fashioned place where people just feel comfortable."

The store's latest owners are Don and Peggy Nixon. Don Nixon, a 61-year-old car dealer, and Peggy Nixon, a 68-year-old retired banker, bought the store 10 years ago after moving to Fincastle. Peggy Nixon said they were looking for something to do as they got older, and the store seemed like a good adventure.

They ran it until about eight months ago, when they leased it out, giving up the day-to-day operation. But the sour economy forced the man they leased it to pack it in earlier this month: He locked the doors and moved out. Now, the old store, which the Nixons remodeled to resemble a log cabin, sits by the side of the road with no patrons on the front porch for the first time in a decade. The parking lot is empty. The lights are off.

"I can hardly go anywhere without seeing someone who asks me when it's going to reopen," Peggy Nixon said. "We definitely want to get it open, especially for our community folks. We've always made people feel at home, and we've loved them all."

Despite the Nixons' hopes, the future of Nannies is uncertain. The Nixons have no plans to reopen it themselves. And there's no guarantee the Nixons can find a buyer or someone willing to lease it. Local residents, meanwhile, drive by the empty building and wonder if they'll ever be able to stop there again.

"It brought everybody together; you kind of found out little things there," Jeff Henderson said. "It's one of those kind of places where nobody thinks about how important it is to the community until it's gone."