There is a moment in all our lives, collectively or individually, when you know something has irrevocably changed. For Judy Rozzelle, Monitor columnist and the Mountain Island area's unofficial historian, that moment came in 1983 when she and her cousin were sharing a cup of hot tea and discussing the opening of the (then) new North woods subdivision.

"Some folks from (Northwoods) had run over Aunt Elma's chickens," Rozzelle said. "That was when I realized you could not stop anything."

Since that day in 1983 Rozzelle's hometown, the quaint little crossroads known as Shuffletown, has slowly disappeared. It just about disappeared altogether in mid-July when its most enduring landmark, the 47-year-old Shuffletown Grocery, closed its doors for good. The store closing was a real blow to long-time Shuffletonians.

"(The reaction) blew my mind," says store owner Anne Edwards. "It is so upsetting, I just wanted to say good-bye to the faithfuls and sneak out. To see these big burly men really upset about it (the store closing) ... you think they don't care, and it makes you feel good to know that they feel we treated them nice -- that gets me upset."

Old-timers may have more mourning to do soon. Cook's Volunteer Fire Department, another Shuffletown standby, is also its last legs, the result of Charlotte annexation that has made the VFD superfluous.

Just the general course of progress is enough to make some Shuffletown veterans cry. The old crossroads are drying up. The only good news on the horizon is that the place is about to be memorialized in literary form.

Rozzelle's ongoing collection of stories and memories of Shuffletown will be published as Shuffletown USA in August.

Disappearing is bad news, but having a book written about you is a pretty good feat, especially for a place that was never much of a place, and who's very name is something of a mystery.

Multiple stories

You'd figure there was a good story behind a name like Shuffletown, but you'd be wrong.

There are several good stories. Although the place is covered with old-timers, there's no agreement as to where Shuffletown got its name. In fact, almost everyone who has ties to Shuffletown has a different story about the origin.

M.B. "Pinky" Dunn, whose father donated the land on which Cook's Presbyterian now sits, says the name came from a traveling salesman.

"Back in the Civil War era there were traveling salesman and one came through the cross roads, actually it was a dirt road," he says with a laugh. "The nearest pavement was after the war and four miles away at that."

Dunn says the man asked "what might this place be called," and that when he was informed it had no name, suggested that it be named after Sheffield, England, since there were ironworks at the crossroads and Sheffield was known for its ironworks. Eventually, somehow or other, Sheffield turned into Shuffletown.

"That was what my dad always said," Dunn says.

Others say it came from the "shuffling" of cards during games played in the area.

Rozzelle, has her own story: It was named after the farmers who would "shuffle home" after drinking too much at a local shop..

This story, like the others, have made it into her new book, which is technically a work of non-fiction, but in truth is mostly a work of emotion.

Shuffletown U.S.A.

Rozzelle's new book was really a form of therapy as much as anything. Rozzelle knew she needed to do something to mend the heart she broke - hers - when she sold the family home on Rozzelle's Ferry Road in 2000.

"I felt like a traitor (for okaying the sale)," she says. "But, I just couldn't keep it up and after the eighth time I was robbed I realized maybe it was time to go."

The home still exists and is being preserved by the City of Charlotte as a historic landmark. But the land that once belong to her family is now Rozzelle's Crossing, a townhome development across the street from Mountain Island Village.

To cope with the loss, Rozzelle began to collect and write down vignettes about the people and places that made Shuffletown so special.

"The people we grew up with were like a dysfunctional family, but in the best way," says Rozzelle. "It was like growing up like Huckleberry Finn."

How else, she says, would you explain a man who would bite the head off a 20 penny nail and later supposedly bit a man's finger off in a fight. Or the two brother's who played outrageous pranks on one another. Actually, they were not truly brothers. Slick was the youngest of 10 children in the Cameron clan. When his older brother went off to war, he left behind a wife and son, named Jim Bob. Since Slick and Jim Bob were only a year apart in age, they came to view each other as brothers.

Each would try to out do the other's prank -- from brownies laced with Ex-Lax, to a wild turkey tied in a car to goats dressed as reindeer on the roof -- all marked with a signature brick.

Rozzelle points out that she used the real names of only family members and Gail Haley, the illustrator of Shuffletown U.S.A. and a childhood friend.

"I changed all the other names," she says with a laugh. "The Rozzelles and Gail signed a release. I did it mostly to protect myself."

But she says anyone who lived in the area will know who the true people are behind the tales.

In fact, she has even more stories, and plans to write a second volume. Her hope, she says is that as Shuffletown fades away it spirit will remain.

"When did neighbors stop knowing each other?" she says. "All of these small places are disappearing."

Haley says it was certainly not a perfect time -- many of Shuffletown's residents during its glory years were small farmers who had enough to put on the table and keep a roof over there head -- but that it was not a bad time either.

"We believed Shuffletown was the center of the universe," Haley says with a laugh. "It had a heart, it was a place of family."

Closing the Grocery

Anne Edwards' father built Shuffletown Grocery in 1946 at what would be considered the "crossroads" of the community, the intersection of the Mt. Holly-Huntersville Road and Rozzelles Ferry Road. It was not however, the first store in the area. That honor goes to Fast Ferry.

"It had the post office and a little store," Edwards says. "Evelyn McGee, her grandfather ran it. She gave me an old ledger they had to keep track of who bought what. It goes back to the 1800s."

Shuffletown, while certainly on the map (thanks to Edwards' father), was never really considered a "town."

On July 16, Edwards closed up Shuffletown Grocery for the last time. The store had been in her family since 1947 and had been hers for the last 14 years.

"When dad (Ed Rozzelle) turned 70 he wanted to retire and he leased (the store) out," she says. "When I came in in 1984 he had rented it to a man who had given to his daughter. She had let it run down and I felt like one of us kids needed to run it, but I never thought I would do it."

In fact, her father did not want her taking over the store, believing women should not work outside the home.

"He could be a hard man," she says. "He was direct, he did not mince words. ... But then I had one girl come in who told me her family home burned down and she says she would always remember that my daddy bought them furniture for a new home. He would take people money or food for Christmas -- but most people did not know about that stuff."

Edwards cleaned the store and knew she was making progress when female customers started coming back.

"It had turned into a not very good place," she says. "There was a bunch of lecherous men who came in, so when women started coming it we knew we had cleaned it up."

Over the next 14 years Edwards faced much tougher challenges. She was having trouble walking due to chronic pain in her back and was battling the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the old gas tanks.

"I finally had to bite the bullet and spent a half-million of my own money to clean up the store site," she says.

The EPA drilled more than 80 holes on her land testing for contamination beyond her property. None was found. But the holes had ripped up her parking lot and made it difficult to get business into the store. That was during the early1990s.

"It was very frustrating," she says. "I did everything the state told me to and I was never able to accumulate money for the lean years."

Not long after that, Edwards finally decided to have surgery on her spinal cord, which laid her up for a year. Upon returning she worked hard to build back up her inventory and even got her gas pumps replaced.

"I got them up and some man died in his car and (crashed and) mowed them down," she says with a laugh. "Weird stuff just kept happening."

Her customer base was slowing eroding away as well. Edwards says many believed they could get better deals at the big chains, one in particular, though she says her prices were on par with theirs.

"My business has been down and I can't have sales like I used to," she says. "It is just a whole bunch of little things."

Last year she took out another loan to help the store and vowed it was the last time.

"My banker told me I should have closed a year ago," she says. "But I kept believing we could do it."

Edwards says she will also miss the boys from the neighborhood who would come back every summer to work for her. Bill Lewis, one of her favorites, began working for her as a teen and came back to the store every summer through his college years.

"After my surgery the boys would drive me around, they called me 'Driving Miss Daisy,'" she laughed.

As to the future, Edwards admits she has not thought about the future.

"Dean Carter used to come in and say he was helping his daddy, who was doing nothing, so I guess I will help Dean (do nothing)," she says. "I just want today to go quickly."

On July 16 it was impossible to get into the parking lot of Shuffletown Grocery. The store itself was mobbed. One employee commented that they would be there until midnight.

VFD RIP?

Steve Sanders has been with Cooks Volunteer Fire Department since 1988.

"When I was 17 I joined as a junior fire fighter," he says. "My dad was a volunteer firefighter for a long time."

Cook's VFD has been a part of the Shuffletown community since it open its doors in 1953. They are active in the community, participating in open houses, birthday parties for local kids and teaching children what to do in case of a fire.

Today, Sanders is the captain of the firehouse that, like so many institutions in Shuffletown, is slowly vanishing. As the area has been annexed by the City of Charlotte, the city's paid fire department takes over coverage. As a result, the area Cook's covers has dwindled.

"Right now we cover Shuffletown and part of Coulwood, all the way to Two Points area to the river," Sanders says. "They have annexed some of it and they are working to annex more. At that point 40 percent of our district will be annexed. Eventually they will annex it all."

Sanders says he figures by 2007, all of the area will be annexed and he figures at that point Cook's will cease to exist.

"Cook's could go under contract with them (Charlotte Fire Department)," he says. "It would be a two-year contract to help cover the area. But in the history of other annexations around Cooks, they (CFD) have never taken that option."

"Whitey Ridenhour of Whitey's Shop is our primary truck driver in the day and he will drop what he is doing to help," says Sanders, who himself owns a construction business.

"We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he says. "It gets to be a full-time job, but I don't mind. It is helping the community and it is something we enjoy."

Cooks currently responds to about 175 fire calls and 400 medical calls a year.

And while they enjoy and take pride in their service to the community, Sanders says the changes around Cook's are painful to watch.

"It is tough," he says. "I have lived her for 34 years, all my life and it is tough to watch. It is all steadily going away."

Until the annexation is complete, Sanders and his men are committed to continuing to serve the community.

"I try not to think it (closing Cook's)," he says. "We will probably have a community day where people can come and join in in the last weeks. But I don't like to think about it."

Everything changes

Dunn says that while change can be painful, ultimately, he believes it is for the better.

"I don't see progress as bad, it is good," he says. "And it depends on your definition of progress. Farm life is tough. It's a good life, but it was a hard life. We had no electricity until I was 14 and no running water until after World War II."

Neighbors knew each other because they sat out on the porch -- not to be social, but because in his words, "it was the coolest place in the house."

Today, Dunn says he misses some of the closeness of the community he grew up in. "You rarely saw a stranger," he says. "Some of the things I yearn for -- like the people I grew up with. I miss the friendship of yesteryear, but I have other friends today so I do not consider it a tragedy. It is just a different way of life."

Edwards says that in the end, nothing can remain the same forever.

She recalls some residents' distress over the cutting of trees to make room for a parking lot one time.

"I said something about it to Aunt Nancy and she said she was glad they were cutting the trees down, they were ruining her new shoes," she says.

"I guess if Aunt Nancy can accept change, I can too."