Imprints of the past

Progress can be traumatic, if not grievous.

There’s a valuable piece of land in downtown Greensboro that’s being considered for development. It includes the former site of the News & Record newspaper but it’s also where Banner-Trulove Institutional Foods was located.

The entire property is bordered by Church, Washington and Davie streets. Between the former newspaper and the food warehouse is the block-long Hughes Street.

When I wrote about Banner-Trulove in the May 3, 2023, edition of the Randolph Hub, I said I pointed out the building to my grandson Cody, saying that “the undistinguished cinder block building within a stone’s throw of the bus station” was where I worked when Ginny and I were first married.

“That was my favorite job ever, except for newspapers,” I told him. 

In that column, I wrote, “Banner-Trulove Institutional Foods was a wholesale outlet for restaurants, schools, hospitals and other institutions. The delivery routes covered the Piedmont Triad and even into Virginia.

“Ginny and I had been married for three months when a friend named Ray told me of an opening in the warehouse he managed. My job was to rotate stock in the bins on half the aisles using a forklift to raise and lower pallets. Working the other half was Randy, a hard-working guy who was also a recent hire.

“It was a job that took advantage of my proclivities for filing and sorting. In other words, I could dig it.”

I’ve driven by that building in recent months, thinking about those times and those co-workers 50 years in the past. Several years ago, I even went inside the door and found the interior much like I had left it in 1976. But I wish I had done a tour of the building.

Now it’s gone.

The powers-that-be have demolished not only the News & Record facility but my precious Banner-Trulove. All that’s left of my former workplace is the concrete slab.

I have gone past that empty space several times of late. But last week, when I was in town, I chose to stop and inspect what remained.

I parked my car in the space where our delivery trucks once sat to be loaded. I walked up the steps to what was once a hallway where I punched my time card.

Maybe there was just a concrete floor remaining but I could make out the imprints of times gone by. Over here were the corporate offices and over there was where the calls came in from customers sending in their orders.

Beside that office was what we called the cheese room, a cooled space for mostly dairy products. The Kraft salesman, Gene, was generous in providing us workers with leftover products.

The main warehouse is where Randy and I kept the bins stocked. The metal bins were four-high with the two lower bins for order pickers to draw from.

Farther back, I could see in the concrete the entrance to the rear of the building. Oh look, there on the right is the ramp leading up to where rail cars would be parked for us to unload. On rainy days, we would have to spread speedy dry absorbent on the floor to keep my forklift from sliding while backing up with a loaded pallet. I wound up running into the wall more than once.

Still farther in, I see the ramp that went up to the freezer room. Directly across the center aisle had been a large refrigerated storage room.

At the far end of the once-building were the two doors where I had received freight. Tractor trailers and box trucks would back up to the doors to unload their goods.

On a raised table, I had kept a sheet with a tally of each delivery for Lynn, one of the Banner sons who kept inventory of our goods on hand. On the wall, I had hung a map of the United States with pins denoting towns and cities across the country from which we received products.

All those memories flooded my brain as I walked what was left of my beloved warehouse. But that was 50 years ago, never to return.

And when I looked up, instead of metal storage bins and fluorescent lights, I only saw white clouds floating in a blue sky.

Now someone else owns the land where so much activity occurred, providing food for the region. Soon, even the concrete pad will be replaced by a modern building.

I can only hope that what comes next is worthy of what went before.

Larry Penkava is a writer for Randolph Hub. Contact: 336-302-2189, larrypenkava@gmail.com.