A century of seed and service
on the Market

By BETH MACY
THE ROANOKE TIMES, 3/25/97

So one day they're just sitting there, Kent Agnew and his dad, Frank, co-owners of the landmark seed store on the Roanoke City Market. It's a spring day in the late '80s - the heyday of big, bad Dominion Bank - when in saunter The Suits, bankers Warner Dalhouse and David Caudill.

Drawers of seeds line the wall behind the cash register. Virtual Tour of the City Market

A photographer is trailing them, weighted down with equipment and lights. It seems they need a picture for Dominion's official Annual Report, something artsy and black-and-white. Heavy on the local color. Frank Agnew, 88 at the time, doesn't know who The Suits are - and wouldn't give a homegrown fig if he did. But he obliges their request, allowing them to set up shop next to the woodstove, in front of the oak seed bins that have housed the likes of Better Boy and Sugar Snaps for 90-some years.

Heck, he even appears in the photo, although unlike The Suits, Frank Agnew is looking away from the camera, perhaps admiring the view of pansies for sale on the table outside his store.

Sowing a century

The Channel 7 crew might even tip their ``REAL NEWS'' hats, turning the billboard space over to Kent Agnew and his crew of seed-sellers.

But Agnew Seed is indeed the real, true thing.

It's one of the few remaining swatches of authentic local color, like the steam clouds that swirl over the East End Shops. And it's too dignified to stoop to such P.R. ploys.

Wood screws aplenty

A shy person at heart, Kent prefers talking diatomaceous earth and Rotenone over the nature of retail, farming and change. During the course of a two-hour interview, he gets fired up about one thing and one thing only:

It seems a fellow wrote a Letter to the Editor at The Roanoke Times last year, lamenting the influx of ``cutesy'' shops in the market area - and the demise of basic downtown shopping outlets. He wrote: ``There may be 12 places to buy a candle snuffer, but no place to buy wood screws, toothpaste or groceries.''

``Well, that is a wood screw,'' Kent huffs, handing over one for proof.

``We sell wood screws. That would run him about 2 cents.

``I came real close to writing a Letter to the Editor on that one,'' he adds.

``Real close.''

A few words on smell

Walk into Agnew Seed, and the smell is the thing.

It jars the nose hairs at first, then trails into the background as you meander among the horseradish roots, onion sets and chunks of lye soap. A rough guess at its composition: one-third insecticides, one-third seeds and one-third dust particles dancing free-form, like hippies, in the shafts of light.

Blindfold me, put me on a plane to Antarctica, then open up a bottle of that smell under my nose - and I will recognize it instantly:

The smell of 301 Market Street.

No dot and no com

How real is the local color at Agnew Seed?

It's so real that recently a shopper spotted a rusted tin of Radiator Repair fluid - still marked at its '50s-

era price of 49 cents - and bought it not for his car, but to display as an antique.

It's so real that you can pull out the bin marked Early Prolific Straightneck Squash and find the signatures of store clerks dating back to the 1930s.

It's so real that the guys at Agnew actually use the circa-'20s National Cash Register dinosaur that Frank Agnew bought used - for $2,500 - in the '50s. Developed before the advent of sales tax, the register doesn't add in the 4.5 percent; the guys figure that on a calculator. But the cash still goes in the NCR.

Agnew Seed is an experience so real, you can't buy it at the likes of Lowe's. Last year when all the vegetable leaves in my garden turned yellow overnight, I hightailed a sample down to clerk Mel Messer, who prescribed the correct fungicide on the spot. My Better Boys were deluxe.

It may cost a little more at Agnew, but the service you get makes it worthwhile. Buying Burpee seeds at Lowe's is like consulting the Wal-Mart pharmacist for your cancer.

Wouldn't you rather have a doctor's advice instead?

A fragile institution

It's real and it's local. And if you don't believe it's fragile, then I challenge you to cash a check anywhere these days from Dominion Bank.

Kent Agnew fancies himself growing old at Agnew Seed, like his father did. Frank Agnew worked at the store from 1946 to 1988. He died in 1990 at the age of 90.

But you don't have to be an economic-development expert to notice that candle snuffers are in on the Roanoke City Market, whereas stove flue covers are out. And Agnew Seed is the one selling the flue covers - the kind that look like paper plates with pastel landscapes painted on them ($2.59).

The kerosene heater struggling to warm up the place on a brisk March morning may seem like local color. But unfortunately, it's real, too: The clunker of a furnace bit the dust last fall, and the Agnews haven't been able to replace it, yet.

With the decline in farming, the seed-sellers have had to take into account the Martha Stewart factor, for better or worse. This means you can now buy a CD holder, a fireplace popcorn popper and a Katharine Hepburn gardening hat when you come in for your annual pound of winter rye.

``Martha might make us clean it up a little,'' Messer says. ``But she would definitely love this place.''

The next time you see one of those ``Think Globally, Act Locally'' bumperstickers, here are two things to consider:

2. You don't have to run out to the suburbs to buy wood screws.