State Soda Shop calling it quits

It has served the high and the humble in Raleigh since the late 1920s

RALEIGH -- Friday won't be an easy day for Treva Long, as she fixes people their final chicken salad sandwiches and chocolate shakes from behind the counter of the State Soda Shop, a no-frills breakfast and lunch counter that is one of the oldest businesses in downtown Raleigh.

At the end of the day, she'll flip the switch and the neon signs that promise "Thick Shakes" and "Sandwiches" will be permanently dimmed as the shop becomes an unintended victim of Wake County's growth.

"I'm going to divorce every one of you," Long said she has been telling her regular customers. They are, to her, family. They have been ever since that day 18 years ago when she wandered in after paying a traffic ticket at the Wake County Courthouse across the street and asked for a job.

The shop on the first floor of the Wake County Judicial Services Building at 320 S. Salisbury St. will be demolished this year to make room for a $214 million county courthouse and justice center, scheduled to open in 2013 and supplement the existing courthouse.

But gone will be the grill that has been open since the late 1920s, when it was named for the old State Theater next door, which was torn down to make way for a parking deck. Raleigh's next-oldest downtown lunch spot, The Mecca, opened in 1930, two years after the State Soda Shop first showed up in Raleigh's business directories, according to records kept at the State Library of North Carolina.

News of the closing has been taken hard by many of the shop's regulars -- some dash in several times a week to grab a sandwich and get back to their jobs across the street at the courthouse or other county buildings. Long talked to Jack Raynor, the longtime owner who stepped down from the daily running of the shop two years ago, about looking for new location. But Raynor says this is it.

"They want to know where I'm going," Long said. "Get in the unemployment line, I reckon."

Short orders, indeed

The menu at State Soda Shop is simple: biscuits and eggs in the morning, sandwiches and hot dogs in the afternoon. The more popular choices include the $3 chicken salad sandwiches or the $2.60 egg salad, both made from scratch. A shelf with a few stools serves as the only table, and space gets tight if more than three people are in the shop. Chief District Court Judge Robert Rader swears that the $3 milkshakes, with hand-scooped ice cream, are the best in the city.

On any weekday, sheriff's deputies, lawyers and judges share counter space with recently released jail inmates and those on probation visiting with their officers.

Those who have been locked up usually ask for three things: a Coke, pack of cigarettes and a hot dog, Long said. Often, when she's ringing up an order, she'll toss out some advice to the younger people, telling them to think about the path they're headed down. Sometimes they'll come back later to thank her.

Some customers are so loyal -- and predictable -- that Long and other workers would start preparing their orders as soon as they spot them headed for the shop, Raynor said.

"They'd see them coming across the courthouse and they'd start making their food," he said.

Supplies are dwindling at the shop this week, and the shop's other counter helpers have already stopped working. Only a few bags of chips line the hooks on the wood-paneled walls, and the usually abundant candy and cigarettes are nearly gone.

"I'm running out of everything but energy," Long said.

But business has been steady, with many stopping in to say goodbye. On Wednesday, she used five gallons of ice cream for milkshakes, more than the single gallon usually needed for a day.

On Tuesday, Long closed at 2 p.m., two hours early, because she ran out of cups for milkshakes.

That didn't stop people from pulling at the locked door and knocking to get in, including Sgt. Robert Filosa, a Wake County detention officer who has been working at the jail for 15 years and is a devoted State Soda Shop regular.

He stopped for a pack of smokes, and asked Long whether she had Marlboro Reds.

"You don't care what you smoke, you're in jail," Long quipped. "You'll smoke anything."

Filosa laughed, agreeing. But there was still a pack of Marlboro Reds for him to buy.

Anniversary treat

When Bob Phillips learned that the shop was closing, he knew he needed to take his wife there for their 22nd wedding anniversary this week. The couple met when they worked nearby -- he as a reporter at WPTF radio and she in the station's accounting department. They spent many of their early courtship days in the State Soda Shop, eating egg salad sandwiches and sipping on peanut butter-chocolate milk shakes.

"We got to get in one more great lunch before they closed the door," Phillips said. "It's a part of what Raleigh used to be."

(News researchers Lamara Williams and Peggy Neal contributed to this report.)