UTICA, Ind. — In a town of about 800 people, there sits a store that hasn't been used for more than 20 years.
"It was abandoned. It was in really bad shape," Frankie Garrett said about the former Brendle's Grocery Store.
Garrett spent many days there as a kid and worked on nearby properties with his construction company as an adult. Then, in October of last year, he bought the near-century-old building.
"I never dreamed I was going to be selling groceries. Building a grocery store, I could see that. But owning one, not something I ever thought I'd do," Garrett said.
"It just brings back old memories," Armeda Spencer, a lifelong Utica resident said Friday morning, as she stepped into the newly revamped Garrett's General Grocery Store and 3G Package Liquor, at 108 S. Fourth Street.
Many of the town's memories now live on the walls, in photographs, which hang above a number of tables locals can sit at while they eat a sandwich from the store's deli.
"You can come in here and get basically anything you need," Garrett said. "We've got groceries, snacks, drinks, fountain, coffee...It's something new. Utica's back on the map. The only time we get coverage here is with flooding."
The store is just feet from the Ohio River and about a mile from the Lewis and Clark Bridge, and while the town's gained more traffic because of it, Garrett says he plans to keep it simple.
"I want to leave it the small town country grocery," he said.
And that's the way this community likes it.
"It'll be like old times," Spencer said.
It's a place where everyone really does know your name and conversations are always on the table.
"Nowadays, it's fast-paced. You're in the store, grabbing something and you're out. You don't have a conversation. We're high speed. Families are drifting a part. We need more of this," Gary 'Butch' Pope, Frankie's uncle and a longtime resident said.
Equally important for locals - it's close, sparing many the near 40-minute round trip into neighboring Jeffersonville.
"It's a lot of convenience for the people who live around here and can't get out," Garrett said.
Garrett's is open every day from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.