It's a Ma and Pa kind of place.

A small-town main street where you can get homemade meatloaf at Chuck's Market on Thursday, a haircut at Sandston Barber Shop on Friday and a tattoo "your mother would love" at Graffiti's Ink Gallery any day of the week but Sunday.

No formalities here.

No fancy suits or slick hairstyles.

Just friendly faces, home cookin' and good old-fashioned foolishness, as Johnny Ragsdale likes to say.

Ragsdale, owner of Sandston Cleaners, doesn't shy away from anyone or anything a trait he learned from his dad, John G. "Happy" Ragsdale, who used to run the place.

"Here's the meanest lady in Sandston," Ragsdale greeted Lindy E. Oakley as she popped in recently to pick up her clothes.

"Oh, shut up," Oakley barked back on cue.

Oakley is the mother-in-law of Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer and one of Ragsdale's longtime customers.

"We always joke and kid," Ragsdale said.

"Behave yourself," she warned.

. . .

Such is life in Sandston.

It may be only 4 or 5 miles outside Richmond, but this community -- along Williamsburg Road, from just east of Airport Drive to Seven Pines -- always has had a soul of its own.

"It feels like we are all part of a family," Joan Regali said.

She and her husband, Frank, are townies. Married for almost 54 years, the couple walk from their house on Huntsman Road three blocks to Sandston Pharmacy and sip Cokes in one of the shop's worn white booths.

Sometimes, Frank will come down and have coffee with the guys.

It's a tradition that started long before Jimmy Mehfoud ran the place. Anyone who's anyone in Sandston remembers Jimmy's father, Tony Mehfoud.

A community leader, a Henrico County supervisor for 20 years and owner of Sandston Pharmacy, Tony had a way with people.

"My father always believed your handshake was your word and your word was your bond," Jimmy said. "He knew all the customers by their first names. No one felt like a number."

As Mehfoud talks, the door jingles. In they come. Out they go. Customers and friends.

They visit all day long. Some even take naps on the blue sofa tucked inside the pharmacy not far from the candy and cards.

If the door's not jingling, the phone's a-ringing.

On the phone by the soda fountain, there are no push buttons, not even a rotary dial. Incoming calls only; they can't use it to dial out. Forget voice mail.

"It's the kind you would have to pick up and say. 'Mabel, connect me,'" Mehfoud said, holding up the receiver.

. . .

There's a blending of old and new in Sandston, and it doesn't stop at the pharmacy door.

Sandston was -- and, to some extent, still is -- a military town, dotted with bungalow-style houses, a Masonic lodge, a post office, library and ballfields.

During World War I, the U.S. government planned to build about 230 bungalows on government-owned land for workers at a nearby gunpowder-packing plant. About half were completed by the end of the war.

After the war, an investment group headed by Oliver J. Sands, president of Richmond-Fairfield Railway Co., bought the property. The community later was named after him.

During World War II, soldiers moved to Sandston with their families. It was during this time that the federal government built the Richmond Army Air Base next door. The community still is home to the Virginia Air National Guard, the helicopter element of the Virginia Army National Guard and an Army Guard armory.

. . .

A number of the community's early settlers still live here.

Virginia H. Yanke, 92, is one of them. Yanke moved to Sandston when she was 16.

She raised two boys and recently recalled how Tony Mehfoud would open the pharmacy in the middle of the night to fill a prescription when one of her sons was sick. The pharmacy delivered medicines back then, too, and ran a tab for those who were short on cash.

"That's good service," she said.

Tommy Jacobsen, 78, has lived in Sandston since the 1940s.

"I got married and settled right here," he said. "It was a nice little village. Quaint. Didn't have all that hubbub."

Alice Baldwin is president of the Founders Club of Sandston. The group, formed three years ago, has its next annual meeting April 29 at the Sandston Recreation Center.

To join, Baldwin said, you must have been born in Sandston or moved there in the 1920s or 1930s. The club has 65 members.

"Anyone who came after 1939 is not eligible," she said.

The group is working on a book on the community's history.

. . .

Donald Tyler, a barber at Sandston Barber Shop, has been cutting hair in Sandston since 1962. He knows all the faces and plenty of names. Back when he started, a haircut cost $1.25, he said.

"This place is as old as dirt," he joked.

Across the street, Doris' Copies Inc. is one of Sandston's newer businesses.

Three years ago, Doris Casey lost her husband, Carlton Casey Sr. Married for 38 years, she had to start over.

A year after opening, life is blossoming again. Thanks to some new customers and Doris' new friend, Tony Gusti, orders are rolling in.

"Tony talked me into it. And fixed it up for me," she said, blushing. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him."

Rex Wiltshire, a pit bull of a guy, took a chance, too.

After working in the fitness world, Wiltshire decided eight years ago to open Graffiti's, a tattoo shop next to Woody's Barber Shop.

His body, while still bulging with muscles, now is covered in ink.

"I just loved it," Wiltshire said of his newly learned art. "It's a lazy man's job. You get to sit on your butt and draw on people."

But don't be fooled, he said.

"It's not like it used to be," Wiltshire said. "Nowadays it's your business-type people who are getting tattooed."

The shop is a shrine of sorts to freaky figurines and artwork. Inside, there are two couches for lounging and plenty of jewelry in the front case just waiting to adorn the latest pierced nose or whatever.

Recently, Jeff Harris, one of the artists, helped Amanda Wiles pay tribute to her father with a tattoo on her wrist that reads, "Daddy's Little Girl."

Wiles' father, Hunter Whitlock Jr., died of a heart attack in 2004.

"I was the baby," she said.

. . .

But if body art and needles aren't your thing, take a walk down Williamsburg Road to Chuck's Market.

You can't go wrong there -- not if you're hungry.

The line for lunch starts forming about 11:30 a.m. Military personnel from the nearby air base are among the store's regulars. They come for pork chops on Monday and Tuesday, country-style steak on Wednesday, meatloaf on Thursday and fish on Friday.

Fried chicken (gizzards and livers, too) and ribs are there for the pickin' every day.

The supermarket dates to the late 1930s. Joe Holt, who has worked in supermarkets nearly all his life, bought the place nine years ago. He was 61 then, the age when many folks are planning their retirement.

"I didn't have good sense," he joked.

He gutted the store, cleaned it from top to bottom and hired meat manager Mike Hale, who has been cutting meat since he was 17.

Hale, 48, started at the old 6th Street Marketplace and has been perfecting his trade at Chuck's.

Taste the Chuck Eye Steak, and you might agree he's just about mastered his work.

"You'll never eat filet again," Holt said.