The music seeps out into the street, coloring it with nostalgia.īluegrass music is the sound of the Great Depression, the prison gang, and the American railroads. A thin, bespectacled bassist keeps the pace swift. Once in a while, they recede, and the ancient’s voice sings out among them, some simple melody with a keening edge and a lyric about an unfaithful woman. Snatches of a tune percolate from a thick cloud of improvisation, and the notes themselves seem to move around the group in a swarm, settling for a short while on a banjo, next buzzing gently in the strings of a mandolin. The music is flighty, cheerful, virtuosic. A haphazard collection of banjo, guitar, and fiddle players-men in their 50s and 60s wearing baseball caps and checked shirts-jams along with him. And in rows of folding chairs, a small but appreciative audience faces the back of the store, where an ancient gentleman in a cowboy hat picks furiously at a mandolin. Peering in, you see a chrome counter where a man in a boat-shaped paper hat mixes malts and milk shakes for the clientele, as if the Fonz himself were about to make an appearance.
On a Monday evening, the quaint stretch of brick is eerily deserted, but jaunty strains emerge from the only lit storefront, the Soda Shoppe. Its two bars sit empty, even at night, while the three old-fashioned ice cream counters do plentiful trade. You can buy antiques or hardware but little else. Belmont’s Main Street holds only a handful of shops.
The wealthy suburb of Belmont, North Carolina, is proud of its “historical downtown.” Half an hour east of Charlotte, Belmont could as easily be in Connecticut or New Hampshire, or any of those states that like their houses date-stamped and their tiny town centers carefully preserved from the creep of corporate America. Read more stories of transformative trips on the Travel Tales home page- and be sure to subscribe to the podcast !
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