Story by: Brittany McGee
Video Story by: Josh Connor
APEX, North Carolina — From the sidewalk, Charlotte Unruh sees exactly what she wants.
Past the picket fence and the colorful wooden rocking chairs, the vibrant knick knacks and the chalkboard advertising custom farm tables, the 2-year-old spies a small lighted tree with a cherry red sleigh through the front window.
“Christmas! Christmas!” Charlotte shouts as she jumps up and down, begging to go inside.
When Charlotte and her parents, Amy and Alan, enter the small country store, they are quickly taken in by the sweet scent from the candles and candy, the creaking hardwood floors and the mish mash of home decor items. The Rusty Bucket feels more like a home than a store.
The owners, Pam and Mack Thorpe, greet the young family and begin doting on Charlotte, who shies away.
Mack, having recently welcomed his 11th grandchild, knows what to do. Guiding the little girl up the wooden ramp that leads to the back half of the store, he lets her pick out something from the candy section.
“What do you say?” Amy asks Charlotte. She thanks him in between licks of her lollipop.
The Thorpes treat their customers like family, and when the pandemic forced them to close the store for 80 days, they missed them.
They missed the customers’ business, too. The pandemic put the Rusty Bucket in tough times financially. Right now, the Thorpes need a big holiday season for the shop to survive. They need to double their revenue to make it to next year.
The shopkeepers opened the Rusty Bucket 17 years ago. Pam had always dreamed of owning a little country store, and after she and Mack left the corporate world behind, they decided working at the store would be their retirement plan.
It’s not work. It’s passion.
When the pandemic began, Pam thought the store would be closed for a week, maybe two. There were things she could be doing, getting caught up on this or that. But it didn’t end.
Rent was due.
Insurance was due.
Worry set in.
Could they keep the store open? What was there after the Rusty Bucket?
Some days were better than others. On the days she began to panic, she would remind herself that she couldn’t control the pandemic.
“I had just decided that what happens, happens,” Pam said.
The Thorpes and the Rusty Bucket aren’t alone facing financial straits. According to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, retail sales are expected to decline more than $500 billion from 2019 to 2020. Foot traffic was down by more than 62 percent, according to RetailNext.
Reviving the foot traffic and bringing the local community back out to fill the historical district’s streets is something the town had been focused on. As members of the Apex Downtown Business Association, the Thorpes have enjoyed being a part of this organization that has previously come together to respond to economic crises.
The organization gelled during the Great Recession, and now the members have come together again for the pandemic. What were once monthly meetings, are now weekly. They’ve also been able to work with Colleen Merays, the small business coordinator for Apex, to communicate their ideas and concerns.
For Pam and Mack, looking out for their two employees and ensuring they continued to be paid has been the hardest part of the pandemic.
Debbie Jackson has worked for the Rusty Bucket for 15 years. Well, it’s not really work so much as it is play. They’re not her bosses, they’re her friends. Pam and Debbie have bonded over their taste in home decor.
“My house looks just like this,” she waves her hand at the rustic aesthetic in the store. “Mine and Pam’s.”
COVID-19 is scary for Jackson because she is both a senior citizen and cancer survivor.
She never smoked.
Never even had a cough.
But she was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer seven years ago.
She lives on Social Security and her part-time job, so the period that the store was closed was concerning. Pam and Mack still managed to pay their employees during that time, fulfilling a promise they’d made to themselves.
However, this couldn’t completely alleviate Debbie’s financial concerns.
Chemotherapy didn’t completely kill her cancer, but she is lucky there is medication she can take to control it. But it’s expensive. At one point, her medication was about $13,000 a month. She is grateful that Medicare and the state pays the majority of the cost, but she is still responsible for the co-pay.
During the 80-day period the store was closed, the Thorpes relied on the farm tables and custom wood signs the Rusty Bucket sells.
Mack builds the custom farm tables, and holds them to a high standard. He walks his customers through the process every step of the way. After helping them choose a style and guiding them on getting the measurements, he places the customer on the build list.
It’s a six-month wait.
When Mack was delivering the last table he built, a formal dining room table, the customer’s husband called her downstairs to see the table in the room for the first time. She stood on the platform of the stairway and began crying.
“The joy of seeing that lady’s tears is a reward that money can’t buy,” Mack said.
Despite the small victories thus far in the pandemic, the store owners all agree. They desperately need money from the stimulus package that has been held up in Congress or there is a real risk their businesses will not survive through the next quarter.
This time of year is when the Rusty Bucket thrives. Mack is a certified professional Santa Claus, so the store tends to be a big hit for the small town.
One recent Friday night, a couple with a 4-year-old boy ventured inside the store. The boy wandered around, taking in the store before stopping at the bottom of the ramp that connects the front and back sections of the store.
“Oh!” the boy exclaimed loudly. “This is the store where Santa was!”
Mack, who was behind the counter, leaned forward and pulled his mask down so his long, white beard was visible to the little boy.
“And how do you know he’s not here now?” Mack asked him.
The boy ran to his parents terrified, before going to sit down to tell Santa all about what he wanted for Christmas.
It doesn’t matter what happens financially. For Pam and Mack, as long as they have these interactions with the community, that will be their Christmas miracle. Everything else is out of their hands.
