The Mountain Eagle
WHITESBURG WEATHER

Locals start up six new businesses across Letcher Co.

New and unique shops are now open here


Finishing touches were still being applied to the Pine Mountain Parts and Apparel store located on U.S. 119 in Whitesburg, near Howard’s Carpet. The store, owned by Donnie Adams, specializes in motorcycle parts and clothing. (All photos this page by Sam Adams)

Finishing touches were still being applied to the Pine Mountain Parts and Apparel store located on U.S. 119 in Whitesburg, near Howard’s Carpet. The store, owned by Donnie Adams, specializes in motorcycle parts and clothing. (All photos this page by Sam Adams)

Bing Crosby dreamed of White Christmas, Elvis Presley had a Blue Christmas, but some new business owners are hoping their Christmas will be green.

Green like money, that is.

At least four new retail businesses have opened in Whitesburg in the past two months, and two in Jenkins this fall. In Neon, non-profits are giving the town a facelift, and there are several businesses expanding throughout the county.

The new businesses are following a nationwide trend. It’s not unusual for entrepreneurism to blossom during hard times. As of September 30, more new businesses were started in the U.S. during 2021 than in any year on record, and most of those are small businesses. Figures for the fourth quarter were not yet available, but with three months left in the year, 1.4 million new businesses had started in 2021, compared to 1.14 million in all of 2020, itself a record year.

Whitesburg Mayor Tiffany Craft said she thinks the sudden influx of business is because of the downturn caused by the pandemic last year, when many businesses laid off workers and were ordered to close as a public health emergency.

Whitesburg barber Brent Vance is the owner of Brent’s Catfish, located at Ermine near the Walmart store.

Whitesburg barber Brent Vance is the owner of Brent’s Catfish, located at Ermine near the Walmart store.

“I think that they see a light out of this pandemic. They have an opportunity to make their hometown better,” she said. “They see what the pandemic did, and they want to take their shot.”

All of the new business are run by local people, and they are all niche businesses with specific customers in mind. Whether it’s reptiles, country cooking, motocross and ATVs, or professional clothes for women, these four businesses are something different from the usual here, and so far they’re drawing crowds.

1842 Boutique, downtown Whitesburg

Katie Jeane Caudill, 31, of Whitesburg, opened her clothing store for women in November, and said she has been amazed by the number of people who have come in and the support she has received from people in the community.

She has worked in several boutique chains like J.Crew and Lilly Pulitzer, and always wanted her own store.

Katie Caudill recently opened the 1842 Boutique in downtown Whitesburg. The shop’s name comes from the year Letcher County was founded.

Katie Caudill recently opened the 1842 Boutique in downtown Whitesburg. The shop’s name comes from the year Letcher County was founded.

“I was raised in retail,” she said. “Dad and Grandpa had Caudill Lumber, and I remember sitting up on the counter watching them work.”

After high school, she went to Morehead State University and majored in business administration, specializing in small business management. Though she finished college several years ago, and had her company name registered for a year, the time was finally right to start her own business .

When the Cozy Corner closed, she snapped up the space.

“The Courthouse Café (which was next door) was my first job when I was 16, so everything has come full circle,” she said. “I’m just so excited to be downtown.”

Caudill said she loves Whitesburg and loves the history of the downtown area. The store name — 1842 — is a reference to the date Letcher County was formed and the date Whitesburg was designated as the county seat. The building it’s housed in was built in 1914 as the Letcher State Bank, and is a contributing property in the Downtown National Register Historic District.

Lennie Holbrook displays a lizard that’s for sale at L&B Reptiles at Ermine, which he owns with his wife, Bella.

Lennie Holbrook displays a lizard that’s for sale at L&B Reptiles at Ermine, which he owns with his wife, Bella.

She described her store as “eclectic,” with clothes that aren’t typically found in the area, but she agreed when a customer offered “chic” as how she saw it.

“Chic, upscale, things you can wear out somewhere,” Caudill said.

The store is “size inclusive,” with clothes in sizes XS to 3XL. She said since it opened, she has had customers in from Lexington, St. Louis, Miami, and Canada. One was from the area originally, the others were visiting friends or here for business and stopped by because they saw the sign.

“My target audience is working women and business casual,” she said.

1842 is not just a brick and mortar store. She also sells clothing online to supplement the local business.

Pine Mountain Parts and Apparel, Ermine

In motocross circles, Donnie Adams is a force to be reckoned with.

A regular top-10 finisher in MX races across the country, the Cowan native has moved back home, and plans to open a store here today (Dec. 22).

“ My first motorcycle came from a yard sale,” Adams said. He started racing and won, and then kept going to bigger events around the country. He ran Motovated, a track and racing series in South Carolina, and has built tracks all over the country for other people. The most recent track he built was in Pennsylvania earlier this month.

Adams got a $10,000 scholarship to attend the Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Florida, and now plans to put that education to use while he continues racing his own motorcycles. He started running MX races here while he still lived in South Carolina, but he has closed his track there and returned home permanently. The local races have been going for more than a year and have built a large following.

“ We’ve been getting about 200 riders. My biggest crowd down there (Isom) was 225 riders,” he said, adding that the number did not include spectators and crew. “I think that’s pretty good.”

That many motorcycles will need parts, and the riders will need apparel for riding. That’s where Pine Mountain Parts and Apparel comes in.

The new store is in the old Pine Mountain Rent to Own building, which some may remember as Larkey’s Chevron, at Ermine. The owners have cut a garage-size door in one end, and Adams will use a room on that side as a repair shop for dirt bikes, all-terrain vehicles, side-by-sides, and some Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Adams said the store will carry parts and accessories that riders can’t find locally, and can order parts and have them in a day. It will also carry helmets and other clothing for motocross, ATV and utility-terrain vehicle riding, street bike apparel, and promotional T-shirts.

Adams has raced for 25 years – since seventh grade. Now he’s bringing a second generation into MX and bringing MX back to where he started.

“Graduated from Whitesburg High School in 2000. I went to Cowan Elementary where my little daughter Xoey goes, and she races with us,” he said.

Brent’s Catfish, Ermine

When he’s not cutting hair, Whitesburg barber Brent Vance is cutting fish.

At 29 years old, Vance has opened his second business in town, and so far the crowds seem to be happy he did.

Brent’s Catfish, a hole-in-the-wall drive-in that features farm-raised catfish, shrimp, chicken, and barbecue, opened about two weeks ago in a vacant store building on KY 2034, across from the Subway restaurant. It has run out of food long before closing times on at least two of those days.

Vance said he thinks he has a handle now on the number of fish fillets customers will buy, and the numbers are a little shocking for a place with fewer than a dozen parking places.

“We thaw about 600 pieces of fish every night for the next day,” Vance said.

Vance said he thought hard about what kind of restaurant people would want. While several restaurants have catfish on the menu, none of them specialize in it. He added a few other choices for families who have differing tastes.

“I wanted to do something that we didn’t already have,” he said. “Everybody does hamburgers and hotdogs.”

The small parking lot has been full most days around lunchtime and dinnertime, with customers standing outside their cars to wait on their food, which is cooked fresh after they order. There is no indoor seating, and only limited outdoor seating, though he said he might add more picnic tables in spring when it gets warmer. For now, he said the business he’s getting is about as much as he can handle and more than he expected.

“We’re not even doing a drive-thru because of being overwhelmed,” he said.

Vance himself can get a bit overworked. He has a video feed from the restaurant to his barbershop on Main Street, and manages both in addition to serving as pastor of a church in Fleming-Neon.

And the customers keep coming at lunchtime, sometimes parking on the roadside to grab a two-piece catfish dinner, a catfish sandwich or catfish bites. He estimates he’s had hundreds of repeat customers.

“When you first open, you can’t please everybody, but we’ve probably pleased 95 percent of them,” he said.

Vance comes by entrepreneurship naturally. His mother, Lisa Vance Maggard, owns a boutique, hair salon and medi-spa on East Main Street, Whitesburg.

L&B Reptiles, Ermine

When most people see a snake, they want to kill it. Lennie and Bella Holbrook want to pet it.

Lennie decided he could make a business out of that love for snakes — and other animals — after his daughter, Bella, expressed an interest in reptiles. Someone offered to buy a lizard they had at home, and the idea was born to buy and sell animals a lot of people won’t even consider touching. If they would consider it, Holbrook will get the animals out of their cages and let customers experience lizard love for themselves.

“A lot of people like to come in and look. I’m different from a regular pet store. We let people hold the animals and pet them,” he said. “I want to sit down with people and talk to them about the animals.”

He started off by selling exotics at FleaLand indoor flea market in London about a year ago, and opened up L&B Reptiles on US 119 North in the old R.C. Cola plant at Ermine October 31. Though the store’s name says “reptiles,” it actually carries other animals as well. The cages in the store last week also held guinea pigs, chinchillas, a South-American kinkajou, and an African crested porcupine that he took out of the cage. The tiny rodent has quills like other porcupines, but he explained that it’s a myth that porcupines throw those quills. The long, stiff hairs are barbed like fishhooks, and when a predator threatens them, the porcupine raises its quills and charges backward at the attackers, sticking the stiff, barbed hairs in their faces. The porcupine then runs, pulling its quills out of its own skin and leaving them in the enemy’s faces.

They still good pets, however, Holbrook said as he held the baby porcupine in his arms and petted it. While small now, African crested porcupines are the largest porcupines in the world, growing to up to three feet long and up to 66 pounds.

Another favorite, Holbrook said, is an African turtle that is 30 years old. Named Bowser for the villain in the Mario video games, the turtle is too big for the regular plastic terrariums. It lives in an open-topped, wood and wire cage on the floor of the shop.

Other cages hold bearded dragons, chameleons, California king snakes, and a more common local species – hognose snakes.

The hognose is known locally as a “blowing viper,” because it puffs out its neck like a cobra, then rolls over and plays dead if that isn’t enough to scare a predator – or person – away.

The store can be hard to find open. Holbrook has kept his regular job at Intuit, so he doesn’t open until 5 p.m. on weekdays, but he’s open at 12 on weekends, and said he’s available 24 hours a day to talk customers through the experience of owning one of the exotic pets.

“You know you’re going to get ice cream if you go to an ice cream truck,” he said, “but I like putting the chocolate and the sprinkles on top.”

Leave a Reply