The Enigmatic Nostalgia of a Piggly Wiggly

In some aspects, markers of Southern identity can sound clichéd and near-monolithic: sweet tea; church politics; kudzu, honeysuckle, and privet hedges. Yet, every Southerner understands the divergent vibrancy across the region, whether it’s as benign as the never-ending debate of vinegar vs tomato-based barbecue or as fraught as racial divisions in the Mississippi Delta. 

Still, there are moments and institutions that feel ubiquitously Southern in a way that only other Southerners can appreciate.

Like Piggly Wiggly. 

Grocery store nostalgia may sound absurd when Dollar General stores pop up overnight like wickedly fluorescent mushrooms in the garden. Who hasn’t wondered at the incredulous bright lights, flooding the landscape of an otherwise empty highway that stretches through pine forests, deer, and ticks?

Dollar General clearly knows something we don’t.

Piggly Wiggly reminds me of childhood summer trips with my grandmother to the store in Murfreesboro, Arkansas. There was also The Pig in my hometown of Starkville, Mississippi, that rare Mississippi community not grotesquely obsessed over losing the Civil War.

When I moved to Spartanburg for a writing fellowship, I found unexpected comfort that a new Piggly Wiggly had opened within a very short biking distance from my apartment. Perhaps the marker of a milestone birthday earlier this year has prepped me for homesick moments, particularly in moving to a town where I didn’t know anyone.

This particular Piggly Wiggly had ended a food desert, providing critical access to nearby neighborhoods within an easy walking, biking, commuting difference. Stories of previous 3 hour bus rides by residents going to pick up groceries had even sparked investment in the grocery store by a foundation who wanted to create access. Less than one year after a truly Grand Opening, this grocery store is closing.

It is easy to believe everyone has access to basic needs. Most people don’t grow up in the extreme levels of poverty that can self perpetuate. Many aren’t even exposed to what it looks or feels like. 

Consider the three hour commute by bus for groceries, compared to hopping in a car and, within an hour, coming home with a week of groceries. When someone spends that much time and labor for basic necessities, that’s less energy for everything else: working a job, advancing their career, going to school, reading to their kids, building strong family bonds…  things that can help families break out of poverty cycles.

For me, the Piggly Wiggly reminded me of childhood adventures with grandparents—however imperfect they were. For others, that Piggly Wiggly meant more than just access to a basic necessity for living, but access that also allowed time for other critical life necessities.

This short-lived Piggly Wiggly reminds me of the complicated nature of being Southern: a frustrated love mixed with complex, imperfect, and often detrimental nostalgia, and the layered challenges that still define communities across the South. 

"Piggly Wiggly 060522" by User:JeremyA is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5.