Crystal Lineberry, East Rowan
Mostly I survive off of Aldi, the Dollar General and yard sales, so I am the exception to the shopping patterns in East Rowan. Most people in East Rowan when they go shopping they don’t think about Salisbury–they head South to Stanly and Cabarrus.
Having Concord in Cabarrus County speaks for itself on why it is so attractive to “money-spenders”.
The secret about Stanly County is getting out. The Badin Road Drive-in (A Drive-in Movie Theater) is popular with the 20′s crowd and some medium income families in East Rowan. Albemarle, in Stanly County, has a strip of businesses located on 24/27 that can satisfy almost any purchase one would want to make, including plenty of choices of what to eat.
I’ve went to Stanly County myself to Christmas shop. I really thought it was a secret, but come to find out a lot of East Rowan folks simply head South.
The proof is in Richfield, NC. Twenty years ago, it was “a gas station” and today, it’s “a town that’s on the edge of Stanly County”.
I’ve got friends that live right across the river, off I-85 in Davidson County. They used to hit the interstate and come to Salisbury to spend an evening on the town, but they stopped going to Salisbury about 5 years ago when they felt that the crime got too bad. The little town on the other side of them, inside of Davidson County, called Tyro, is growing.
An older man recently told me that “everything a farmer says can be useful advice to city folk if they would just apply it”.
He laughed a little and said, “When it comes to Salisbury,” he paused for more laughter, “Sometimes it takes a little manure in the soil to get things to grow right, but if you use too much, then you’ll just have a pile of dung.”
