Martin's Furniture in Bluewell closing after more than a century in business

Aug. 21—BLUEWELL — Today the idea of somebody knocking on your door and asking if you're looking for furniture would be odd, but it was all part of doing business for a furniture store that served the coalfields for more than a century.

The Moyer Martin Furniture Store off Coal Heritage Road in Bluewell was opened by the late Moyer Martin in 1918. His son, the late Jimmy Martin Sr., later took over the business. Then his son, Jimmy Martin Jr., kept it in operation after he passed away in 2018.

After more than a century in business, the store will be closing at the end of August, Jimmy Martin Jr., said Monday. Sitting in the mostly empty building, he recalled how the business grew gradually after Moyer Martin, whose name is still on the building, first opened it.

"We had a store at Thornhill right next to McComas, and then he bought the company store in Yukon, W.Va.," Martin recalled. "Then after he got that one going, he bought this one in '49 and put this room on it, and we opened it in '53. We had two running stores back in the Sixties and Seventies. One here, one in Yukon and dead in the coalfields."

Moyer Martin Furniture specialized in furniture, appliances and anything else for the home.

"Mattresses. Dining room. Living room. Back in the day we sold scatter rugs, curtains; I think they even done some toys back in the day, back when grandpa first started. It was dry goods and furniture and everything," Martin said. "It leaned more to the furniture as we went on."

The way the store sold its merchandise was drastically different than the way it's now done in the internet age.

"We had at one time three on-the-road salesmen that worked McDowell, Pocahontas, Princeton door-to-door," Martin recalled. "We sold furniture sight unseen to folks for years and years. I can remember as a kid on Christmas Eve we'd have three trucks sitting out here loaded up to the top. We'd do it from 8 o'clock up to six or seven when you got through. Two men on a truck. You'd set up furniture door-to-door. It was sold sight unseen. They'd say you bring me a two-piece living room suite, we'd pick it out and take it to you. You don't do that anymore. And you're not going to go door-to-door anymore. You might get shot. It was a different time."

Martin started working in the store when he was 6 years old. His duties included sweeping the floor and helping put furniture together. His father gave him a new position after he graduated high school.

"He had one of our salesmen who passed away. He was over Pocahontas and Abbs Valley," Martin recalled. "I took his place sitting at the company store in Pocahontas. I did it the first three days of the month, and then I went door-to-door from Bluefield, Va. all the way to Bishop, collecting (payments) and selling furniture."

Martin said that he didn't carry a catalog with him. The buying was literally done sight unseen.

"No, they'd tell me what they wanted and I told them what we had on the floor and they'd take it," he said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time it was no bringing it back. They took it. It was different times back them. Very different."

The furniture's style didn't matter to the buyers, Martin recalled. What mattered to them was how they could pay for it. In the days before direct deposit, working people and Social Security recipients could get their paychecks or benefits checks cashed at local stores.

"No, as long as you were putting it on credit, 90 percent of it, making payments, most of the coal company people. You could set your watch by what time they were coming in on the third (of the month), back when the checks would come in the mailbox," he said. "We would make two or three trips to the bank to cash government checks. They'd come in and make their payments, the wives or the husbands would look around the shop and if they needed something, we'd add it to the count and we'd deliver it."

When direct deposit of checks be into being, the new practice dramatically impacted area businesses.

"When they took Social Security out of the mailbox and put in direct in the bank, we lost about half our traffic in here every month that quick," Martin said. "Nobody ever thinks about that. All the stores up in here, Warden's Market, cashed checks. Carolina Market. Walker's. We all cashed government checks. You had your favorite that you cashed your check with. And back then, some of it was sign your X, cash your check and move on. They couldn't even write."

The fact customers could cash their checks right in a store meant they could start spending their money immediately in that store.

"They could buy more, pay more, take it home and do their grocery shopping, whatever." Martin said. "You had your cash in hand and you didn't have to deal with the banks. And when the government put it in direct deposit, mandatory, you had to go to the bank. Cuts your traffic."

The fact Moyer Martin Furniture did not have a printed catalog is something other stores don't have these days, either. Other changes in the business landscape made it harder for small retailers to operate. Manufacturers want big orders.

"Now you hardly get catalogs of anything. It's all on the internet. And there's nothing I offer here that you can't buy on the internet and have it delivered. All I have left is service, and it's gone, because the big companies don't want to sell to us," Martin said. "If you're not a chain store, they don't want you. They want tractor-trailer truckloads of stuff, merchandise. They don't want to see me buy three or four living room suites, three or four bedrooms. I used to go to Galax (Va.) and pick up a couple of bedroom suites at a time. Every time I needed something, I'd go get it."

Much of the service the store provided was for the appliances it sold.

"I used to sell tons of appliances. My dad, he was an authorized Frigidaire repairman back in the day," Martin said. "We did a lot of service calls. We'd be out one, two, three o'clock in the morning working on refrigerators that broke down and freezers, and we did a lot of oil furnace work. We'd install oil furnaces and you'd be out underneath a house four or five o'clock in the morning because a furnace line had froze up. But you don't do that now. It's a thing of the past."

Martin's parents have passed away, and "it wasn't the same after that," he said.

"It's been been a long journey, but it's time to quit," Martin concluded.

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com

Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com