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Business in the Blood in Palmetto: What’s Your Story

Posted at 7:11 AM, Jun 18, 2018
and last updated 2019-04-14 15:00:34-04

What’s Your Story rolled into the small town of Palmetto, but even on a day when it felt like a furnace outside it didn’t take us long to find a story, standing outside Budden’s General Store we met none other than Guy Budden himself.

Guy says that he and his siblings grew up in the store. The store was actually expanded from the home where he was raised.

The store traces its roots back to the 1930s. It worked as a kind of depression-era Walmart where you could find anything you needed.

“If I don’t have it I can get it,” Budden recalls was his father’s old saying for the store.

While the store certainly was essential for a small community, opening a business during the depression was a tall task. Budden says that his father’s reason for taking on the endeavor was simple.

“He just loved the store business; he loved the customers.”

Those customers became a fixture in the childhood of a young Guy Budden as he grew to learn the family business.

“It was great,” says Budden. “You met all the customers and the customers were all your friends, you know, a small community.”

Times, Budden says, have now changed.

“Your older people have passed away and the younger crowd is moving on to find jobs.”

But at Budden’s, even time can’t change some things. The original charge box is still used to this day.  “Each one of our customers has a number.”

The store has retained its family feel with Guy’s wife helping to run the store even though she isn’t from the area. Budden’s wife is from Lawtell, but he says he married a foreigner.

Through Guy, the legacy of the store lives on as a fixture in the center of town and the town’s history.

Next week, What’s Your Story will make its way to Breaux Bridge.