One of the more concerning aspects of modern life is that we are rapidly moving toward a time in which nobody will know what the heck hoop cheese is. You may, in fact, not know what hoop cheese is, to which I would reply: Don’t admit that to anyone. Just keep reading.

Hoop cheese is a simple cow’s milk cheese whose ingredients are pretty much that: cow’s milk. The dense, orange-yellow cheese is sealed with red or black wax and housed in cylindrical wooden molds, gajillions of which once adorned the sales counters of a gajillion country stores. It was cheap, handy, and filling, which meant a hunk of hoop cheese was a central figure in a nearly long-gone repast: the store lunch.

Not a box lunch. Not a takeout tray. Not exactly “road food,” which could be a barbecue sandwich or even a smoked turkey leg that you could eat in the driver’s seat since you only need one hand to work the steering wheel.

Eastern North Carolinians know they’ll find the provisions for a convenient lunch inside Mom’s Grill in Washington. photograph by Charles Harris

A store lunch. It’s what folks ate at the store between a hard morning of stump hauling, ditch clearing, tobacco topping, woods burning, quail hunting, or bass fishing, and a hard upcoming afternoon of the same. It wasn’t a packed lunch, either, because you had to buy something from the store or else you’d rightly feel guilty sitting on the mercantile’s wooden porch rocker, three-legged stool, or worn pew from the old Pentecostal church down the road.

You didn’t have to buy all of your store lunch at the store. You could bring in an apple you planned on slicing with a three-blade Old Timer. Or even a can of sardines from home. But some financial transaction had to take place to make things right. So you bought an Orange Crush or an oatmeal cookie to fill out the menu. And an isosceles triangle of hoop cheese the fellow carved for you at the checkout counter. Just like those fancy steakhouses carve your prime rib at the table.

When you’re hunting for a store lunch, a wedge or wheel of hoop cheese signals you’re in the right place. photograph by Chris Rogers

While there is no accepted definition of a store lunch, there are accepted guidelines. A store lunch was something to get you through the rest of your day, quick and cheap. You ate it in the cool shade of a country store, on your tailgate, or maybe halfway on the run, because the irrigation pump was almost out of gas or the bulldozer guy was due to show up at any minute and time was a-wasting. Sardines and saltines. Nabs. Peanuts poured down the throat of a longneck “Co-Cola.”

“The beauty of this meal,” wrote the dearly departed Jerry Leath Mills, former UNC English Renaissance professor and chronicler of all that is good and holy about the South, “lies partly in its simplicity — everything needed in the way of place setting are a knife blade and a knee to balance cans on — and partly in its comprehensive nutrition, combining as it does the four major food groups: fat, sodium, sugar, and dirt.”

Jerry Leath Mills knew what hoop cheese was; I’ll take your money on that.

• • •

I don’t want to sound like that guy — that old guy — but a typical lunch these days is something a mule farmer of yore could have stretched out for a week’s groceries. And folks have gotten downright fancy when it comes to a midday meal. Forget the lowly Spam on a Ritz cracker, much less the meat-and-three. (A Ritz cracker? Now you’re getting above your raising.) Everything these days is “artisanal,” which is hipster-speak for “the way my grandmother made it.”

I don’t want anything chic. If there’s a microgreen within half a mile of my bologna-on-white, count me out. I’m not seeking an experience. I’m just hungry. Nothing was elevated about a store lunch except for its inherent simplicity and its psychic attachment to a good day’s work.

Oof. I really do sound like that old guy.

In a 1998 essay about store lunches, scholar Jerry Leath Mills advised that a knife blade could be used as an “all-purpose implement to ladle food into mouth.” photograph by Chris Rogers

I’m still partial to some of the honored staples of the store lunch. Tinned meat I can take or leave, but don’t get between me and a pop-top can of beanie weenies. That’s a bit of a catchall term, but the one to look for is the venerable Van Camp’s brand, with all those fun, luscious E’s in the name: Beanee Weenee. More than once, I’ve sliced my tongue slurping up the last of a short can’s gelatinous goodness. And they are “Inspected for Wholesomeness by U.S. Department of Agriculture.” It says so right there on the can! Practically a salad. But call them “beans ’n’ franks,” and I’ll chase you back to polenta-land. (Fake grits, if you ask me.)

If you’re a calorie-counter or get all judgy over nutritional supplements such as nitrates, you’ll have slim pickings in the store-lunch aisle; there’s just no way around it. The trick is to shift your perspective. A can of Vienna sausages is a tiny nuclear power plant you can hold in the palm of your hand. Depending on the brand, up to 10 grams of protein are packed into those little fellers. Granted, each of those grams is bobbing in a half-gallon of sodium, but hey … you need salt when you sweat, and sweat is what the rest of the day has in store. And vie-ee-nahs in BBQ sauce? That’s nirvana. You’d best stand back. A belly full of those, and I could clear Pisgah with a chainsaw.

• • •

There are yet places in North Carolina where the store lunch is still a thing. Greenville is the epicenter of a miracle called the cheese biscuit, most of which are hefty enough to anchor the Queen Anne’s Revenge. If you can’t get your afternoon work done on a cheese biscuit and a Cheerwine, you have too much to do.

When I roll into a country store, I ignore the ubiquitous hot-dog rollers. They’ve infiltrated every corner of the country like fire ants, and are just as welcome. I’d rather lick a power socket than eat one of those things, but people have to make a living, so I no longer hold such businesses in contempt. If they have hoop cheese on the counter, I can forgive any number of transgressions.

If you’re lucky, a store lunch might include a Cheerwine and an eastern North Carolina cheese biscuit like this one from Lee’s Country Kitchen in Greenville. photograph by Chris Rogers

You have to rummage around sometimes and worm your way to the back shelves. That’s typically where they keep the store-lunch items — deviled ham and potted meat and other comestibles God made for good people. You might even find some dusty Slim Jims hanging on, the real ones, made in good ol’ Garner before the plant closed down. You have to prove your mettle, I suppose.

Some country store owners don’t want a run-of-the-mill Raleighite from inside the beltline gunking up the front cash register. Is that cheese old? Do people really eat pig’s feet? These days, they need the business, or they’d run such folks off the porch with the hard end of a whisk broom.

It’s almost easier to tell you what to avoid when you’re on the hunt for a store lunch. If the store name has the word “olde” in it, you can bet it’s not. Run like a mad donkey is after you. Ditto if it sells firewood in a plastic net bag. If the words “worms,” “grill,” or “feed” appear out front, then stand on the brakes, cowboy. Time to eat. Stick your head in the door and look around. If you can use the same 10 bucks to pay for an oil filter wrench and a pickled egg in beet juice, you’re likely in the right place.