Land sale puts the future of Munden’s Store in doubt

VIRGINIA BEACH

Orange is the color of energy.

That’s what marketing folks say, and so it’s become the color favored by food joints and convenience stores everywhere – including the Citgo gas station at Indian River and Princess Anne roads in Pungo.

There is no orange at Munden’s Store, across the street.

Munden’s is a dingy place, a stubborn holdout against orange and all comers in the way of trends and business models for the past 100 years.

Some say Munden’s is the longest continuously running commercial operation in Virginia Beach. The two-story building was built in 1908. It probably hasn’t had a fresh coat of paint within your lifetime.

For 47 years, John Munden has run the place. Now, its future is uncertain.

The property’s been sold. Munden said he’s paid his rent through June. After that, he says, he doesn’t know what happens.

“There might be a Wawa here one day,” said Munden, who is 74.

Munden was a sort of adopted son to Kermit Land, who, along with his buddy Enoch Capps, built the place. The two lived across the street from each other on Princess Anne Road, a few hundred feet from the store.

Land rented to Munden on a handshake, told him a lease is no better than the paper it’s printed on. When Land died, his family honored the arrangement. Today, Munden’s Store, a couple other buildings and the 6-plus acres they sit on belong to Nancy Caton, Land’s granddaughter.

“It’s definitely a landmark,” said Caton, who moved to the North End of Virginia Beach when she was a girl, after her father, Kermit Land Jr., died of melanoma at 26.

She said she’s selling for personal reasons: “It’s hard, but I have to put the needs of my family first.”

Many know who the buyer is, but neither the seller nor the buyer will confirm it. And the deal has not been finalized yet - so there’s no paper trail.

Munden said the new owner hasn’t clued him in on his plans, and whether they include Munden’s Store.

Some say the building that houses Munden’s should be preserved. Barbara Henley, the City Council representative for the district, is among them.

“It sure wouldn’t be Pungo without it,” said Henley, a Pungo native. “It’s an icon.”

She’d like to see City Council set up tax incentives. She said the store is a shoo-in for state and national registries, if the owner would apply for the designations.

Munden is game, but would prefer folks show their support by buying the stuff his daughter, Lindsey, cooks up every day – egg, chicken or tuna salad, clam chowder, chili, deli sandwiches.

“Don’t just ride by and say, 'Look at that place; I hate to see it torn down,’” said Munden. “Some people ride by and don’t know what this place is.”

Today, Munden’s is divided in half – deli on one side, tavern on the other.

It once sold everything from fencing to feed to groceries – “anything I could find someone might want to buy,” Munden said. He even operated a post office.

Business is strongest in the morning, when a group of local men, most retired, use Munden’s as a meeting place. The rest of the day, business inside the deli is at a trickle.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s dead, this type of operation,” Munden said. “The only thing that keeps it going is me.”

The intersection has a history of commerce that dates to its incarnation as an Indian village. In more recent times, there were stores like Munden’s at all four corners of Princess Anne and Indian River roads. It was known as “Downtown Pungo.”

Brock’s sat where the Citgo is. There was Pallett’s, and Fentress Grocery.

Those old stores are long gone; Munden’s is the last holdout.

The porch, its planks covered with plywood boards, slopes dramatically in spots. The floor is splintered and worn in places – even to the subfloor.

In a strong wind, you can hear the building pop and snap. But structurally, Munden’s is sound.

And it’s never been renovated, so it looks much as it did in its Land and Capps’ days.

Metal plates are wrapped around the porch posts, put there to keep horses from chewing the wood. Glass connectors from early phone hookups remain. A set of dual electrical wires line the ceiling inside, a leftover from when a generator at a nearby ice plant provided electricity. Its source of heat is a potbelly stove.

The rich brown color of the wainscoting on the ceiling is neither walnut nor oak. It’s nicotine. Take a rag and put a little elbow into it, you’ll see the boards are white underneath.

The second floor, closed to the public, has boxes of apothecary bottles, still full of stuff called “Penorub,” “Swamp Root” and “Dr. LeGear’s Hog Worm Powder.”

There are cartons of slip-on rubber boots and leftovers from the telephone company that operated out of the building – hand-crank telephones and century-old accounting books.

There is a roll of linoleum on a rack, from a time when consumers bought linoleum in “rugs” of 7½ by 9 feet and 9 by 12 feet .

Munden, an admitted packrat, says it’s all junk. But you can tell he knows better.

A couple generations ago, people said “Downtown Pungo” with no sense of irony. As the commerce disappeared, downtown became a tongue-in-cheek thing, a sort of joke.

But the green line – Virginia Beach’s line in the sand, past which development would not encroach – became a blueish-green line, then a blue line.

Soon, city water and sewer lines will run all the way to Indian River Road, to the foot of Munden’s Store.

The way Munden figures, this intersection is what Kempsville was, or Acredale, 40 years ago.

John Munden looks through his window at the Citgo, at the customers fueling up. Just that day, a new Subway shop had opened inside the store.

“Sometimes, you think, it’s getting old and wore out,” Munden says of his store.

“You think, maybe it’s time; maybe it’s time to see the light.”

John Warren, (757) 221-5114, john.warren@pilotonline.com