Well, if you happen to go by Tesh's Grocery in Huntersville any morning between 6 and 8 a.m., you'll think you've stepped into the Huntersville convenience store version of the Cheers bar.

But you'll find Lynn Mason or Mark Tesh behind the counter, and standing around drinking coffee, instead of beer, you can count on meeting David James, Wayne Beaty, Bill Smith and Tim Furr.

This particular morning happened to be Mason's to open.

James tends to hang around longest, since he's mostly retired.

Smith, distinctive for his long, mostly white beard, will chew the fat until Duke Power opens the grounds of the McGuire Nuclear Station to fishing. Then, he's gone for at least a few hours.

Beaty still works at Joe Gibbs Racing, in research and development, and Furr, at 35, is the youngest of the morning regulars and still has to head off to his job with Sears Contract Inc. Right now, he's working right down the road at the huge, new Hendrick Auto Mall under construction. Furr is a foreman on a drywall crew.

"I'm a young buck with the old ways," Furr said.

And even as those guys are talking, Mason is greeting a steady flow of customers by first name. A lot of them are filling up with gas and picking up a cup of coffee or some chewing gum. Others are getting their favorite snuff. Mason knows most of them, and many of them call her Ms. Lynn.

And that's really the way Mason and the rest of the Tesh family want customers to know their small grocery/convenience store at McCoy and Hambright roads – by their customers.

On Feb. 2, Tesh's Grocery celebrated its 30th anniversary since Mason and her parents, Herb and Ruth, opened the doors for the first time. On the back wall behind the always-fresh coffee is a banner that proclaims:

"Only by the grace of God and you, our customers, we celebrate 30 years in business. Thank you!"

Herb and Ruth Tesh bought the store after the former "Li'l General" location closed. Though Herb Tesh also worked for the U.S. Postal Service, they had a pedigree in small grocery stores, including the former Sandridge Grocery, which is now the Grab n' Go, and the Forest Park Superette in the Mallard Creek area of north Charlotte. But until 1982, they had always rented their space.

The Teshes had five children: a girl and four boys. Mason has worked in grocery stores since she was 15, and when her parents decided to buy their own building, she helped them open it. Over those three decades, a succession of Teshes has worked at the store. Ruth Tesh retired from the store in 1986, and Bill Tesh, who had lost his job at Duke Power, came into the store to work with Mason and their father.

Herb Tesh stepped away from the store in 1990, and a cousin, Mike Smith, joined Mason and Bill Tesh, and they continued to operate the store until April 2002.

Herb Tesh passed away in 1999.

In 2002, Mason and Mike Smith left for other opportunities, and Bill Tesh continued to operate the store until he retired in February 2011. Then, Ruth Tesh took over the store again and operated it with Mason and brother Mark Tesh. It's a succession of ownership that customers have come to appreciate.

The store opens on weekdays at 6 a.m. and closes every night at 9 p.m. Mason and Mark Tesh rotate the shifts. Their mother, who's 78, comes in when she wants, but customers see her stocking shelves, filling the cooler with drinks or running the register when she's there to check on the business.

Three other employees fill in the remaining shifts: Cindy Shields, Kim Frost and Diane Blackstock. Mason says that help is essential and gives her and her brother some time off. "And we all work as a team to make the store run well," Mason says.

Asked the secret of a small store competing with bigger grocery and convenience store chains, Mason said, "We try to respect our customers and ask them to respect us."

Part of that respect is keeping their prices — gas and groceries — as affordable as possible. The store is surrounded by a diverse economic group, from a mobile home park to sprawling, fairly new subdivisions. And they all look for value as well as convenience.

"We're pretty competitive," Mason says. "We carry bread — it's a private label — for $1.49 a loaf. Except when the grocery stores are having a sale, we try to be competitive on everything."

But as important as their prices, the Teshes obviously operate their business on a first-name basis. People come in because the Teshes are neighbors. James, who says he's been a morning regular since the store opened 30 years ago, adds that the store serves the "best coffee in town."

"They offer good service," James says. "Seems like they always have the cheapest gas. And they have a lot of friends and family and customers. They treat people with respect."

The store has really grown up with the community. When Mason started, Harley Sherrill and Coleman Reames, the namesake of Reames Road, still kept cattle in the area, and they were part of the regulars who came by in the morning. Sherrill and Reames have since passed away — "along with a number of other outstanding customers," Mason says — and a host of subdivisions have sprung up on all that farmland.

The Tesh family is thankful for the support of the residents of Wildwood Green, Cedarfield and other communities, Mason says.

And it's probably safe to say, their customers are just as thankful for the treatment they receive on their regular visits.

It's early into the commuting rush hour on a recent Tuesday evening, and just feet from the store's row of fuel pumps, evidence of the constantly changing world around it begins to swallow the corner on which Tesh's Grocery stands.

Cars streaming north from Charlotte and west from I-77 toward their Huntersville homes and beyond begin their four-way-stop dance at the intersection, backing up in a line 10 to 15 deep at some points, and the Tesh pumps and parking lot stir to life.

Shields is at her customary station behind the counter, grinning warmly at everyone who walks in. It's a genuine greeting, as there's not a single soul who enters the store that Shields doesn't call by name.

"Hi, Terry, how've you been?"

"Hey, Buddy, what else can I get for you?"

Name after name, face after face, they are all part of an extended family once they walk through the Tesh's Grocery swinging glass doors.

And the conversations aren't limited to those between Shields and her customers. A reporter with a camera raises the curiosity of one man who stopped in to buy a few cold ones on his way home.

His story goes back to the days before Tesh's Grocery, when he used to delivery gas to the store when it was still Li'l General. Traffic was a mere shadow of what it is now and the homes that dotted Hambright and McCoy roads were few and far between.

"This here was out in the country, darlin'," he says.

The store remains a part of the community it grew up with, and new regulars, like Tim Furr, who married into the nearby Walker family, seem to find their way here. And some come through several times a day, just because it's comfortable stopping by. Bill Smith, the fisherman, says he probably drops in "15 to 20 times a day" since he only lives a half-mile from the store.

Smith loves to tell James, Furr and Beaty about the fish he pulls in and throws back, and of course, they try to get to the truth of that.

"We try to solve the problems of the world," James concludes.

— Lori Helms contributed to this story.