I am a person who finds spiders to be very "Icky". Therefore, I am always on the prowl for them. Which has led me to discover that there are apparently "Spider years" when the spiders are seemingly out of control, and yet other years when they seem to have vanished. They perhaps respond to humidity levels or something, I'm not at all sure, and almost don't want to know, but I can tell you this ...
There were summers where I would literally patrol the entire inside and outside of our old location, with a long-handled brush every day at 4:00PM. I did this at that exact hour because the sun was in the right spot to show the webs. Every single day I would remove literally hundreds of webs!
When I was satisfied that I'd gotten them all, the brush would be dropped into a bucket of extremely hot soapy water until I was sure anything in it was dead. Next day same exercise, same result. It nearly drove me mad.
On the other hand, there were years when I would not find a single spider or web. Go figure.
So, in defense of the fine folks at Pop's I suspect that you happened to have come upon those spiders during a "spider year" and even the most diligent hunting wouldn't have kept them at bay.
