The steady murmur of conversation fills the store as the lunch crowd gathers around the checkout counter. Behind it stands Patti Smith, greeting customers with the same bright smile she always wears. “Good afternoon, Ms. Patti,” one customer says, never glancing at her name tag. He doesn’t have to.
Every day, as customers come into the Martin’s Mill Store, catching up with friends, getting a bite to eat or filling up their gas tanks, they are met by someone many have come to know as simply “Ms. Patti.” Whether someone is having a good day or a bad one, she is always there to “offer service and help people” as best she can. To her, though, the store has become much more than just a workplace. This August marks her four-year anniversary of working there.
“My daddy always told me no matter what job you have, it’s important,” Patti said. “You do it the best you can, to the best of your ability. I look forward to coming to work. It just feels like it’s a part of my life now.”
She first developed her work ethic during her childhood, growing up in a small community much like Martin’s Mill. Each member of her family contributed, helping to provide as much as they could.
“We all worked,” Patti said. “That’s just the way it was. Mostly we did everything ourselves. You have a responsibility to do a good job, and that was really important to me. It’s always been.”
As she got older, she found herself wanting to get out of her small town and see the world. She hoped to become a flight attendant, but, as she said, “the fear of the unknown” held her back from following her dreams.
“I wanted to go places and see things because I’ve never done anything or been anywhere,” Patti said. “I thought that would be perfect. I didn’t have the strength, the fortitude, I guess, to go forward. Fear. That’s what it was.”
Following graduation, she moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. There, she met her future husband, and they soon married and had children together, juggling both their family life and careers in the oil field.
“My sister was living in Corpus, so I moved there and took care of the kids,” Patti said. “I had all kinds of different jobs. I was so family-oriented and afraid to do anything, so I stuck close to home.”
After living in Corpus Christi for more than 30 years, they moved to the Martin’s Mill area. When her husband died in early 2021, she started to look for another source of income, but she never expected that a quick pit stop would turn into a career.
“One day, I just slipped in to get a Dr Pepper,” Patti said. “I saw the sign that they needed help, so I talked to Missy and started to work. When my husband was still well, we would come, get gas, have a burger every once in a while, but I never thought about working there.”
When she accepted the job, she did not know what to expect from it. Learning how to navigate the store, this time from the opposite side of the counter, made her “a nervous wreck,” as she described.
“When you go into a new place to start a new job, it’s always kind of scary because you’re not sure what’s going to transpire,” Patti said. “I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. When you go into actually working at that place, you have that responsibility. That was different.”
During only her first day of working there, however, she realized the experience would be much different than she had originally thought. Instead of an uncertain workplace, she found something else: a community.
“Everybody here was so gracious and friendly,” Patti said. “People come in, and they’re nice and speak to you. It made me feel more comfortable and relieved a lot of the tension that I had. I hadn’t planned on meeting and bonding with the people here. It’s like family, the community.”
As she continues to serve the Martin’s Mill community, welcoming customers, taking their orders with a smile and simply being a familiar face, she has come to know the Martin’s Mill Store is so much more than just a general store. It is a place she belongs.
“I’ve grown to love this place, really, being able to come to work and be with people you really enjoy being around,” Patti said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t come up here. It feels like you’re a part of something. It feels like home.”
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