Lisa Adams Retires after 25 Years at Cloudcroft’s Allsup’s
After decades behind the counter at the village’s station, Lisa Adams retires having turned a gas station job into a community anchor
If you’ve lived in Cloudcroft for any stretch of time, you’ve been to Allsup’s.
You’ve stopped in for gas, or because the road made you thirsty. And there’s a good chance that when you walked in, Lisa Adams was behind the counter.
Adams retired last month after roughly 25 years at the store. She’d moved up to the mountain from El Paso around 1999, following her son, Kody, who had decided to finish high school in Cloudcroft instead of the city. Her parents had kept property in the area for years, and the family had always loved it.
“We lived in El Paso and it was getting ugly, and it was easier to be up here,” she said. “My son called me and said, ‘I’m going to school up here, what do you think?’ I told him, you’re talking apples and oranges there, dude.” He went and she followed.
She picked up work at Allsup’s shortly after arriving, hired by manager Cheryl Winrow. It wasn’t a position she’d been searching for.
“I didn’t care what I was going to be doing,” she said. “I just needed the job.” She quit briefly for personal reasons, lasted about three or four months at home, and then went back. That was that.
What followed was a quarter-century at one of the few stores that’s a reliable constant in Cloudcroft.
The town hasn’t always had much in the way of year-round retail. Mountain Top Mercantile, Cloudcroft’s only locally owned grocery store, closed over a decade ago, and only recently has that void been filled by Cloudy’s Market. Over the decades, Allsup’s, with its limited but carefully maintained shelves, became somewhat of a community hub.
Adams became a manager and took that role seriously. She tracked what people wanted and pushed for it. Sometimes requested items would draw attention from higher-ups. “I would order stuff that the supervisor would say, what are you doing ordering this?” she recalled. “But if I can find it in the order book, I’m going to get it on the shelf for them.”
For many stretches, the store was the only grocery option on the mountain, which gave it a different weight than most gas stations. Tourists stopped en route to their destinations. Locals stopped in because there was nowhere else. “I did all my shopping at Allsup’s,” Adams said with a laugh. “I very seldom leave the mountain.”
Summer brought snowbirds, older travelers in campers and RVs working their way across the country, and Adams looked forward to it every year. They’d come through once and come back again the next season, checking to see if she was still there. Usually she was.
“They left their mark on all of us to be better people,” she said of those regulars. “They were always so sweet, and it kind of rubbed off on us.”
Over the years she met people from across the United States and Mexico, travelers passing through on mountain roads who wandered in. Movie stars came through occasionally, she’s forgotten the names but not the encounters. She made a habit of asking where people were from. It almost always sparked a conversation.
The winters had their own character. When storms knocked out power and the old store had no generator, Adams and a coworker would stay anyway. A two-person rule kept the place staffed at all times. They dragged Coke cases together for chairs, brought food and books, and waited it out. “We got to know each other a lot better,” she said.
Through all of it, she kept a single goal in mind. “We tried to make it a mom-and-pop store,” she said. “Keep it as family. Everybody that lives here is family, of some sort.”
She’s been retired for about a month now. The first few weeks were fine. Then the small house she shares with her son and his wife on their property started feeling small. She’s been walking the roads to stay busy, checking in on people, staying off the couch. In fact, she’s already picked up part-time work cleaning rooms at The Grand Cloudcroft Hotel.
“I just can’t sit at home,” she said. “That’s my deal.”
With her extra time in retirement, she has daughters in the Dallas area she’s planning to visit. Former regulars still reach out. A daily check-in text from one, a call from another, and she’s still in contact with the current staff at the store.
“The people made my career,” she said. “The people. I’ve very seldom ran into anyone that was not nice.”
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