Generations of small-town memories filled the summer air and lined the shelves Saturday morning as Pop’N Shop, an Ellinwood staple for over 40 years, was auctioned off along with its contents and stock.

And even though it marked the end of an era in the small Kansas town, owner Lynda Wood reminisced with fondness and gratitude for the time at the convenience store her and her late husband, Lloyd opened in September 1976.

The store closed for business in December 2019 after Lloyd passed away in September last year. Even when he was sick, though, she recalled Lloyd still wanted to keep working and being a part of the store.

It was that passion that turned a small start-up business into a 43-year Ellinwood institution.

The idea is born

She recalled moving with Lloyd to Ellinwood from the Kansas City area in 1972 when Lloyd got a job in Great Bend with the State of Kansas collecting unemployment tax.

The idea to open a convenience store, Lynda recalled, was borne from their own experiences as a young married couple, with limited transportation and few businesses open late hours in Ellinwood at that time.

“We only had one car. He’d come home and I’d be out of milk or bread or something. We’re sitting at the Dairy Queen one night, he says, ‘Why don’t you just open a little convenience store right there?’ because the grocery stores, one closed at 5:30, and the other closed at 6,” she recalled.

“When we started out, we weren’t too much older than kids ourselves,” Lynda joked.

Lynda told Lloyd at the time she did not feel like she knew anything about running a business, but she feels looking back his work with the state gave Lloyd the knowledge of what licenses were necessary to set it up.

The fact that they had both worked retail jobs previously helped in understanding how to run the business day-to-day.

From start-up to institution

The business whose idea was borne at the Dairy Queen began in a small building just to the east of it, which has since been torn down. The Pop’N Shop moved into its present location in 1979, where they added on for more retail space a few years later.

Her first memory of running the store came on the first night it was open.

“We were putting stuff on the shelves getting ready to open and the football team came in,” Lynda recalled. “We said, ‘We’re not open yet,’ and they said, ‘Can’t we please buy something?’ 

“So we went home that first night and we’d made 50 bucks. We were thrilled to death.”

From that first night onward, the Pop’N Shop became woven into the fabric of the close-knit Ellinwood community.

“The community has always been super good to us. They’ve always been behind us, and we really appreciated it,” she said.

She even remembered fondly how the town’s police department looked out for her, and would drive by and help “keep an eye” on her as she worked the night shift at the store for many years.

She said businesses in town, for the most part, were very close-knit. They tried to work together to keep customers in-town, which meant for the Pop’N Shop, doing their best not to carry like items that might harm other businesses in town.

One thing she said made them successful for so many years, though, is being able to adapt to the changing needs of the community, which meant carrying a lot more than most convenience stores do nowadays.

“We were the first place in town to do movie rentals, and because of the movie rentals, we sold some TV’s and camcorders,” she said. “Whatever we could sell, basically. We tried a little bit of everything.”

Along with convenience store staples, a little bit of everything, she said, included at different times work clothes, sporting goods, hardware, a thriving gun and ammo business, and more. As the store’s era came to a close at Saturday’s auction, evidence of each could be seen scattered throughout.

“It’s all just a matter of knowing what products (your customers) want,” she said.

‘Growing up with the town’

What Lynda remembers most fondly, though, and what made the store a local institution, are the people, and the memories they helped create.

For instance, she thought back on the generations of kids who would hang out in the store’s parking lot on Friday and Saturday nights, and the parents who would call the store to find out if she’d seen their kids.

“I’m the switchboard for Ellinwood,” she joked as she laughed.

Lynda recalled a woman telling her one time how she was concerned to come down to the store with all the kids hanging out, and quipping in return, “Your’s is right there in the middle of ‘em! Those are just him and all his friends.”

“We enjoyed the kids,” she said.

One of the things she loved most is seeing residents who were kids themselves when the store opened come in with kids, and grandkids, of their own, evidence of how the store has grown up with the town, and its customers, through the generations.

In the end, as the store and it’s contents were auctioned off Saturday, she was happy to see that the building was purchased by someone who was born in Ellinwood. Though she does not know what will happen with the building beyond the sale, she is happy it went to someone from the community.

And, possibly, with that, a building full of 43 years of memories for generations of residents can be a part of memories for future generations, as well.