Fort Payne & Blue Jug: a Good Combo

11/15/2018 FORT PAYNE & BLUE JUG! THEY GO TOGETHER

It may be a bit early for our Winter to set in, but looks like we got it anyway. In about 3 month, the 5th anniversary of Barb and I living here in beautiful NE AL will be here. Fort Payne is the current “home town” we’ve lived in and loved. (More about the others later.) We had been in Texas for 27 years and we had also loved living there. But we had become septuagenarians and the work I was doing there was better left to younger men.

We had been visiting our son who lives near here for several years and we truly enjoyed every visit, even the fog so thick we couldn’t see the driveway of our BnB one night! We settled on some real estate, and moved in March 2014. An old friend had once referred to small Alabama towns built along side a railroad as “shotgun towns”—“at 9pm, you could shoot a shotgun down the one main drag and not hit anything, not even a dog,” he said. When I told him we moved to Fort Payne, he asked if it was a 1 shot or a two shot shotgun town?. I laughed at the thought of Gault Ave. being the “main drag” and told him—several shots and some of ‘em uphill!

There is more to Fort Payne than meets the eye, and more to Fort Payne than most people realize till they’ve visited often or been living here a while. We’re still discovering new things to like about being here! We’ve got a lot of “firsts” and a lot of unique-to-our-town things. From the mountains on either side, to the historical aspects; from the name, Fort Payne, to the Boomtown era, the hosiery industry, to the present re-vitalization we see almost daily! It’s exciting to be able to participate in 21st Century Fort Payne.

I could veer off into a long essay about the parks: DeSoto State Park and Little River Canyon, as well as the unique, eclectic neighboring village of Mentone, where our son and daughter-in-love live and are active in nearly everything going on there. Steve and Kelly do some very unique things for and with their community, as well. We newbies just see all this as one big fun place to be!

But, I want to tell of another unique Fort Payne item. A few months after we moved here, I was invited to attend a formation meeting of a new program for Fort Payne revitalizing called Main Street Alabama. I was excited to listen to the programs of it, to hear the excitement in others, seeing the ideas flow and getting to know the people who wanted this town to flourish! And now this is becoming a reality as we see changes in downtown and other parts of our city. It is a real pleasure to be here! And yet, I come to what is really exciting for us (and for Fort Payne!)

At about the same time my interest grew in all that makes Fort Payne seem alive, our daughter came to live near us, thus making this even more like a complete “hometown.” (If we could just get our son, the yankee son, to move here from NY, we’d be a completely Southern family, but not likely yet!) But, Sarah’s moving here created another opportunity for uniqueness in Fort Payne. Before leaving Texas, I had become very interested in a small chain of stores which sell Alkaline, AntiOxidant Water, even helping a friend to get one of the stores open. When it seemed best for Sarah to open a store here, we helped her open one of these stores and that truly opened our eyes to the business potential in Fort Payne!

You see, that multi-store company had a rule that towns under 20,000 were too small, but because they knew me and I had opened what had become their number one store, they ok’d the opening of a store here. After a few months, we began to notice people were as excited about our great water as we were, and business growth really started in earnest! Alkalinity is a necessity for every person’s body health. Every nutritionist will tell you to eat more alkaline based foods. Drinking water with high alkalinity aids in that basic need and it tastes like water is supposed to taste! Here in Fort Payne people agree with us about that! FortPayners are forward thinking people!

After 30 months of being in the original company’s system, along with another store in Texas, we decided we could become better wholesale providers by being independent. In August of 2017, Blue Jug Alkaline Water and Health Market became a reality and our store name was changed. With the addition of healthy snacks and locally grown produce and other local health products, our store has truly flourished here in this “too small a town!” Sarah and I are glad we made this our business home and she has done a terrific job of finding worthwhile and health providing products that our customers love!

As a side note, our store here and our partner’s Blue Jug store in Wimberley, TX have become the “flagship” stores for a new chain of individually owned Blue Jug Alkaline Water and Health Market stores: as of this writing, 7 total and two more being planned. We don’t know how big this will be, but remember, it had its genesis in Fort Payne, AL!

Thanks for reading, the Elder