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MOUNT HOLLY — Sitting on a counter top in Watson’s Grocery is a box filled with the names of people who carry credit accounts with the store. Selling goods on a month-to-month tab is an old practice that most stores have abandoned, but it’s one the Watsons have kept intact — a vestige of the days when regular customers, sometimes hard up for cash, did nearly all their shopping at the small-town general store.

Now, after 64 years, the Watson family is leaving the business. They sold the store to two local families, and they will close up shop for the last time at 4 p.m. on Saturday....