HOT SPRINGS, N.C. — A smoky tang drifted in the cool air over this town of fewer than 600 souls, perched along the French Broad River.
Follow the scent to a campfire, where a man named Andy – who wished not to give his full name – spends each day cooking for his neighbors and all the helpers.
“Because it’s my community, this is where I grew up and what I was taught to do,” he said.
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Across Main Street, its buckled asphalt scraped away and getting repaved, sits the oldest business in town: Gentry Hardware, a landmark. Plywood now hangs on the window with these words spraypainted: “Gentry Hardware Will Not Die.”
The father and grandfather of Jeanne Gentry’s husband opened the store in 1946. When seven feet of water stormed inside the stone walls, drowning inventory and smothering the flood in deep muck, locals swept in like a brigade.
“The town converged on the store, because they want the store to stay,” Gentry said. “It’s kind of an institution of sorts.”
The townspeople shoveled out mud, carried out buckets and bins of items to dry. And unfamiliar people, out-of-towners, came. “Volunteers just kind of showed up, and they’re still showing up, people from everywhere,” she said.
One volunteer, Clay DeFoor, drives 90 minutes from Knoxville, Tenn., to deliver supplies whenever he can.
“I met up with some people here. They were helping and had some stuff for us to do,” he said. “So I’ve been coming back and helping whenever I can on my days off or whenever I get free time.”
The town is renowned for the Hot Springs Resort and its tubs of hot mineral water reputed to have healing qualities. It, like Gentry Hardware, was damaged but unbroken.
“The townspeople will not let us give up,” Gentry said. “It’s a labor of love, so to speak. Sounds kind of cliched, but it is.”
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