If you're a stranger when you walk through the door at Louie's P&R, it's a good bet you won't be when you leave.

Tony Gualdoni will see to that personally.

"When somebody comes in and I don't recognize, I make it a point to find out who they are and where they're from," Gualdoni said. "I feel like once I get them in the store as a customer, I can get them to come back."

Gualdoni is the owner of Louie's P&R, a fixture in Herrin for more than 100 years. The Gualdoni family has been involved with the store for more than 50 of those years.

Located on East Walnut Street, Louie's P&R is a throwback to the days when neighborhood mom-and-pop grocery stores flourished and long before one-stop shopping at Wal-Mart Supercenters.

In linear distance Louie's is located only one block off North Park Avenue, Herrin's busy business district. However, if distance was measured by heritage and tradition, there would be no way to measure how far removed Louie's is from today's megastores.

Observant visitors to Louie's will notice three things immediately the very moment they enter the building. First and foremost is the smell, best described as "just plain good."

With a variety of daily meat specials, Italian sausages, salameats and other ethnic favorites along with a daily soup special Louie's has a wonderful aroma all its own that words can't adequately describe.

The second observation is that the store is spotlessly clean, "so clean you could eat off the floor," as the saying goes.

And lastly, a look around at the cash register, tile floor, glass-enclosed meat counter, light fixtures, family photos on the wall and just the overall décor it's obvious that Louie's has the feel - and in many areas the look - of a 1950s grocery that has somewhat begrudgingly entered into the 21st Century.

During a recent interview with Gualdoni, the logical first two questions, particularly for somebody not familiar with Herrin's rich history, was "who's Louie" and "what does P&R stand for?"

Louie is Tony's father, Louie Gualdoni, who purchased the store in the mid-1950s. Tony Gualdoni's answer to the second question illustrated that more than five decades ago Louie was an astute businessman.

"The store was owned by Charlie Parigi and Emil Ruggeri and was known as P&R Market, so when my dad purchased it instead of changing the name of the store he just added his first name in front of P&R," Gualdoni said. "Everybody had known it as P&R Market for years and years and he didn't want to lose that."

Factoring together when the store was purchased by Louie and the fact that Tony Gualdoni will soon celebrate his 51st birthday and it's fair to say that Louie's P&R has been a constant his entire life.

"All my life, this is all I've ever known," Gualdoni said. "I sacked groceries here when I was a kid. I was basically raised in a grocery store. My dad spent a lot of time building this business; he was gone all the time and worked really hard. I'm thankful, though, that he did because we have a very good business now."

Gualdoni also branched out and began his own brand of sausage in the early 1990s, made weekly at the same location that houses the store.

"Even before my dad bought it, one of the things that the store was known for was their line of fresh sausage they made, salameats and Italian sausage," Gualdoni said. "We had a lot of people coming in to buy sausage every week so we just decided that instead of them coming here maybe we could take it to them."

Gualdoni said more than 1,100 pounds of Louie's P&R sausage is now delivered weekly throughout Southern Illinois in an area that includes Harrisburg, Marion, Murphysboro, Du Quoin, Benton, West Frankfort, Johnston City, Christopher, Zeigler and Sesser.

"We do it all in one day," he said.

Gualdoni, who began working in the store full-time in 1977, went in with his brother and purchased the store from their dad in 1992 and then became sole owner in 2000. He attributes the success and the ability to stay in business when many small groceries have folded to two things.

First, he noted that the ability to diversify has been a staple of the business throughout the years.

"We really can't compete by selling cans of corn and green beans but our meats and unique Italian and ethnic items is what brings customers to the store," Gualdoni said. 'We also have the sausage company on the side. When you're little you have to diversify because you can't go head to head with Wal-Mart and Krogers."

But, Gualdoni quickly credits the tradition of Louie's and the faithfulness of loyal customers as the greatest reason his business continues to thrive.

"The tradition has always held up," Gualdoni said. "We have a great and loyal customer base and every day somebody tells us how much they appreciate us. We have great customers, period."

Even though Louie's is a Herrin fixture, Gualdoni said the store draws customers from all over Southern Illinois and also has longtime out-of-state customers.

"We even have people drive down here from St. Louis," Gualdoni said. "They tell me that they can't get meat like this in St. Louis."

Even though there is no in-store area to eat Gualdoni said Louie's still has a bustling daily lunch crowd. When asked what the favorite sandwich is from the large variety made daily, Gualdoni said "anything with hard salami" sells well and added that homemade potato soup is the biggest seller of the daily soups offered.

"We have a big lunch crowd for takeout food," Gualdoni said "We're only one-half block from the hospital and I can tell when the menu there is not good. We have specials every day and we have a big lunch crowd every day."

Along with a full selection of meat products, Gualdoni said there is one other item he sells that you can't put a price on.

"When I see people come in I go up and greet them and I really think I sell my business to every customer that walks in the door," Gualdoni said. "The customers we have, I feel like we're a part of their life, we ask about their families. I encourage my employees to do the same thing.

"I'm in their face as soon as they walk in the door," he said, "asking them how they're doing or about the ballgame. We talk Cardinals baseball, talk about the Herrin Tigers, anything you want to talk about. I try and give them a great, friendly atmosphere because I want them to know I appreciate them when they're here and we want them to come back."