Feeling Let Down and Left Behind, With Little Hope for Better

In a moment riddled with economic and social worries, an e-cigarette
shop in Wilkes County, N.C., is an oasis for some young Appalachians.

By RICHARD FAUSSET
MAY 25, 2016

NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Kody Foster had finished his Wednesday afternoon shift at the warehouse where he earns $12.50 per hour. Normally, he would be packing himself into his Ford Focus, with its Bernie Sanders sticker and plaque with the number 48, in honor of the stock-car racer Jimmie Johnson.

But this week, Mr. Foster, 26, couldn’t get the Ford’s check engine light to turn off, and the dealership told him that fixing it would cost $1,000, which he didn’t have. So instead, he borrowed his sister’s ancient red minivan, with its sliding door that doesn’t shut right.

He drove along River Road, the hillsides lush and tangled with kudzu, then up Main Street in this faltering Appalachian town, the largest in a county that has seen its factory jobs wither, its Nascar track shutter and its homegrown business — Lowe’s, the home-improvement chain — move its headquarters to a Charlotte suburb in 2003.

Mr. Foster’s destination, wedged between a pizza parlor and the opioid addiction clinic, was the Tapering Vapor, a bare-bones e-cigarette shop and makeshift lounge that serves as his modest oasis, a place to catch a mild nicotine buzz and let a world of worry float away on banks of big, cloying, candy-flavored clouds.

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