The old stores
SEPTEMBER 25, 2007 (TUESDAY) – This was the store in Oletha, the community where I was pastor, in 1952. . You can click here if you want to see a larger picture. That’s Vernon Thomson behind the counter. Vernon was married to Rosa Murray, who was Wanda’s second cousin. Vernon and Rosa lived in the house down the road where Wanda was born twenty-one years before I made this picture. They were sweet, sweet people.
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The store is no more. You can no longer find any trace of it. But when I was pastor at Oletha, this is where I did a lot of visiting. I could go to the store, hang around, and folks would come and go all day. Everyone had a little time to visit, even if their schedule was busy.
There was a well in front of the store, where I dearly loved to get a drink of water. There was no pump on the well. It was open at the top, and there was a wooden bucket hung from a rope on a pulley. Let it down, give time for it to tip and fill, and draw it up. Nice, tasty, clear, cool water. Many times I stopped there just to get a drink of water, but never would I have dared drive away without staying to visit a little while. Nor would I have wanted to.
The interior of the store reflects the appearance of most small stores of the early 1900’s, and probably the late 1800’s as well. The arrangement of the items looked very much like the stores I had seen in Houston as I grew up. There were small stores within walking distance of almost everyone. They are called, “Mom and Pop” stores by nostalgia buffs. When I was a kid, they were just “stores.” You could buy many things for a penny, if you were fortunate enough to have a penny you could spare. I loved to reach in those bins and pull out two great big oatmeal cookies, and put a penny on the counter. Paid in full.
Vernon’s store was just about the same as those I had grown up with, except it was out in the country, and there were not many of those stores. There was another down the road (see below) about five miles, at Seale, and it stayed in business until just a few years ago, when Pauline, in her nineties, finally gave it up and moved to a nursing home. She and her husband, Walter Boyd, had operated the store for many years before his death. After he was gone, she continued to do it alone. That store had a gas pump, too, and I bought many a tank of gas there through the years. (click here for larger picture).
Both stores are gone, now. Paved roads and automobiles took their toll. Now folks drive to Groesbeck, Thornton, or Marquez. Or they sometimes take advantage of a necessary trip to Waco and buy groceries while there. But the old stores linger in the hearts of anyone who remembers them.
It’s hard not to miss those days when people took the time to “visit a spell,” and got to know each other better.