JOHNSTON COUNTY — At Creech’s Pharmacy in downtown Selma, a little girl wiped smudges of chocolate ice cream off of her freckled face.

“I’m gonna be on TV,” she yelped. “Can I see it? Can I see it?”

Cameraman Randy Fulp tried to ignore the girl’s pleas. Instead, he focused his camera on Hannah Parrish and Devin Cockrell, two North Johnston High School students who work behind the counter at Creech’s. Fulp filmed as Parrish and Cockrell piled ice cream on cones for two other young girls made giddy by the video camera.

Moments later, a woman escorted the three youngsters out of the drugstore, shaking her head and trying her best to hide a smile.

The film crew rested for a moment. They had ice cream themselves and tried Creech’s orangeade. But soon it was back to work. Fulp moved his camera outside to shoot through the window, while director Scott Galloway scouted the next location a few blocks away. Nearby, Mike Lassiter, executive producer, finished his ice cream. Next, the crew shot cars whizzing down the streets and pedestrians on the sidewalks.

Those moments — and many others — will be part of a documentary that Lassiter is making as a follow-up of sorts to his book, “Our Vanishing Americana.” The 244-page coffee-table book, with photos from all 100 North Carolina counties, captures old drugstores, grocers, barbershops, hardware stores and other vanishing slices of American life.

Lassiter said he enjoyed talking with the shopkeepers featured in his book. “The folks on the inside had interesting stories to tell,” he said in a phone interview before the shoot in Johnston County. “That is why this documentary has been so special and enjoyable. Through the documentary, I can introduce people to some of the people I met with. There are interviews with these folks that are 80, 90 years old that have been running these businesses since the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.”

After earning his law degree from Campbell University, Lassiter joined his father’s law practice in Statesville in 1994. It was there that he noticed that drugstores, hardware stores and other staples of Main Street were disappearing. I n 1999, Lassiter decided to see if the same phenomenon was taking place elsewhere in North Carolina. Six years later, he published his book.

“It was tough because I have three kids,” he said. “That is why it took six years, because I couldn’t do it every weekend. I had to pick my spots. For a while, I could leave one afternoon and go to nearby counties, but it became more difficult to do that. I did spend one Thanksgiving by myself. I went to Golden Corral.”

A producer in Davidson suggested that Lassiter turn his book into a documentary, which will air this fall on UNC-TV. In Johnston County, Lassiter and his film crew visited Smithfield, Selma, Clayton, Micro and Benson.

In Smithfield, the crew dropped in on John Watson, owner of Friendly City Barber Shop. Watson sat in his barber chair, smiling at the camera and talking about his shop, which is adorned with sports memorabilia, photos of his clients and a rusty, red 1963 Coca-Cola machine.

Many times, Watson thought of selling the machine, but could not bear to part with its history. “I could have sold it a dozen times, but I said, no, that’s part of the barber shop,” he said.

Watson went to work for the barber shop in 1947, when he was in his early 20s. Back then, straight razors were common in shops, Watson said.

“I enjoyed the razor cut,” he said. “You don’t pick up a razor and start cutting hair. You’ve got to learn how to hold the razor where it will balance any way you want to use it. You have to have that balance. That is going to be your first trick right there.”

In 1979, Watson moved Friendly City Barber Shop to North Bright Leaf Boulevard. His customers followed him, and some have relied on Watson for five decades now.

“We want them to leave friendly,” Watson said. “We want them to be happy so when they go, they feel like coming back.”

In making his way across the state, Lassiter has met many people, including a 97-year-old barber in Alamance County who has been cutting hair since 1927. The storeowners came from different backgrounds, but all shared one thing in common, he said.

“What’s interesting to me is we asked the same questions for all the storeowners,” Lassiter said. “We asked them, ‘Why are you still here?’ They say, ‘I do it because I enjoy talking with people and giving a service to people.’ In the end, that is what this is all about. The CEOs of these businesses, they are not in some office somewhere. They are right behind the counter.”

Lassiter’s book, “Our Vanishing Americana,” is available at Orchard House Booksellers in downtown Smithfield.