08/14/2026
The Pimento Cheese Odyssey
This story begins over 60 years ago. I grew up in a suburb of a typical Midwestern city in the 1960s. My mother, however, was from Lexington, North Carolina, and I spent many of my adolescent summers there, living with my aunt and uncle.
My uncle was Dwight Hinkle, the owner and proprietor of Conrad & Hinkle, the local downtown grocery store. When you walked into the store, you were greeted by your first name. You knew the meat was cut by Bruce and the produce was bought fresh each day, right off the local farmers’ trucks.
One of the store’s specialties was homemade pimento cheese, made from a secret family recipe that attracted customers from far and wide. Growing up, we all enjoyed pimento cheese sandwiches for lunch, made with pimento cheese that had been prepared fresh that morning.
As I grew older and had a family of my own, we moved to Greensboro. My children were introduced to many Southern dishes, including pimento cheese sandwiches made from Conrad & Hinkle’s special recipe. More recently, two of my grandchildren—and in particular my oldest granddaughter, Alex—grew to love Conrad & Hinkle’s pimento cheese, both on sandwiches and crackers.
This is where the story begins again.
In 2025, Alex graduated from North Carolina State University on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. After graduation, her wedding was planned for June in Kansas City, more than a thousand miles away. Amid all the extensive wedding and reception planning, Alex knew there was one thing she wanted on the appetizer table: Conrad & Hinkle pimento cheese.
So how could we make that happen?
Alex talked with her father, who lives in Cary, but he was unable to come up with a solution. Just three days before the wedding, there was still no plan in place to get the coveted pimento cheese to Kansas City.
That’s when my granddaughter called me for help.
My first call was to Conrad & Hinkle to talk with my cousin Lee, the present owner and proprietor. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there, and I discovered that the store does not ship outside North Carolina.
My next call was to Lee’s sister, Libby—always the one you can count on. She immediately asked how much we wanted and when we needed it.
Within an hour, Libby called me back. Her husband, Rick, had purchased a pound of Conrad & Hinkle pimento cheese and was standing at the local UPS Store, ready to ship it. When the manager heard the story, he graciously donated the cold-shipping container needed to get the cheese safely to Kansas. He, too, was a fan of this uniquely North Carolina favorite and was excited to become part of the story of this young woman and her wedding.
Conrad & Hinkle’s pimento cheese arrived in Kansas the day before the wedding.
It was prominently displayed on the appetizer table at the reception, where it quickly became a hit and attracted a whole new legion of fans from afar.
I tell this story because, for me, it is a reminder of how people in a small Southern town in the Piedmont area of North Carolina came together to share one of our beloved local traditions—something they are proud of and love—with people they had never met. In doing so, they became a small part of those people’s lives.
I don’t know how many people at the reception knew the story behind the pimento cheese. We tried to tell as many as we could. But in a small way, a town in North Carolina came together and shared a part of itself with people from Kentucky, Oklahoma, California, Washington State, and beyond.
This is why I call North Carolina my home.
P.S. I brought two spoonfuls back to Sacramento, California, where I currently live, to share with my friends. That one pound of Conrad & Hinkle pimento cheese traveled from Lexington, North Carolina, to a wedding in Kansas and then, in those last two spoonfuls, all the way to California. Along the way, something beloved by generations of people in one small North Carolina town was shared with people from across the country. It carried with it not just a taste of home, but a story about the people who made that journey possible.
Rob Davis Fanslau
