50 $ense: The “Triple Stop”

FAQS

Where do you buy groceries? Is there anywhere to buy paint?Can you mail a package from the island? Does mail get delivered to your door? Is there a gas station? How do they bring the gas  across the water? 

These are just a few of the dozens of questions asked by inquisitive visitors.  These questions can easily be answered with the “triple stop”.  What is the “triple stop”? The Island Hardware store, the post office, and the gas station.  It takes less than one minute to walk from the hardware store to the post office and about 30 seconds from the post office to the gas station. 

The Cooper brothers  continue to  meet the needs of Islanders by bringing in essential groceries, personal products, specialty food items, and even that last minute greeting card and gift wrap that no one remembered to bring.  These items are displayed right alongside all of the traditional items you would find at a hardware store, including custom mixed paint.  There are days in the winter where absolutely the only place on the island to get a cup of coffee is the Island Hardware Store. Even though you may have a Keurig machine at home, venturing out of the house for a two minute drive, that social “cup of joe” and a friendly hello, is just part of living on an island. 

Let’s not forget to check our post office box. The mail is flown in daily via Griffing Flying Services.  If you’d like to mail something, it’s best to have it at the post office by 8:45 AM for outgoing mail. Mail only leaves the island once a day.  There is no door-to-door mail delivery service here on the island… just good old-fashioned post office boxes. It is not uncommon to hang out in the parking lot and chitchat and say hello to a dozen people as they make their daily mail stop.  You just gotta love the small town vibes! 

To assure you’re going to make it home without running out of gas, the gas station is located right next-door to the post office.  Gasoline is brought to the island on a red barge called the Cantankerous.  This vessel makes roughly 180 trips a year and holds approximately 7000 gallons of gasoline. If you’re on the island in the evening, you can definitely catch the Cantankerous heading out of the bay then down  the  west side of the island on its way to Catawba for its nightly run. The barge then returns to the downtown Miller Ferry dock and offloads the fuel onto a truck, which then heads to the gas station to pump it into the tanks.  This is an integral part of the what makes the island community so unique.  

Here’s my 50 $ense:

Take a moment visit the hardware store, mail a postcard, &  read the signs at the gas station.  Soak up the small town vibes!