JOHN HARVEY
Spanish Music.com
THE MERCANTILE
The Mercantile was divided into three parts, the left part of it was a pharmacy where they could fill prescriptions. The lady who handled that area was Botello’s wife, Mele. She was an actual pharmacist. They also had a long soda fountain counter where they sold hamburgers, hotdogs, strawberry sundaes, malts and milkshakes. Mele did all of that also.
I remember Schletze used to always go there everyday. He’d sit there, drink some coffee, read the paper, eat breakfast. The owner of the mercantile, Stokes, would come over and sit and talk with him. Schletze had a big ranch and gave work to the people there. He planted onions, cotton, different things all of the time. I worked there for the heck of it with my friend, Sige. We worked in the fields picking the crop.
The Mercantile in 2009
The owner of the Mercantile was James Stokes, I went to school with his son, Jimmie. The father would call me over and ask, is it true that you and Jimmie are best friends. And I’d say, yes, that’s true. Yeah, that is what he tells me. Jimmie later finished school and he became a dentist. Yeah, he was a good friend of mine there.
The Mercantile 2009 with the windows boarded up. It's a wonderful building.
Then the middle part of the Mercantile was a good sized grocery store and a meat market in the back that was handled by Casiano. He later went off on his own and started his own meat market.
The right side of the Mercantile in the front part was the clothing department where they sold shoes and clothing. The back part of it was a hardware store where they had nails, harpoons, hammers, saws and small pieces of lumber. If you wanted big pieces of lumber you had to go outside and walk across some railroad tracks that went there and there was a
lumber yard that was owned by the Mercantile. My grandfather would sometimes get lumber there. The railroad car would be unhooked from the train and they would take it over to the mercantile and they would unload it there and then take it back to the train tracks.The Mercantile was a big thing back then, it was like HEB is now, how the big superstores are now. It had an area where you could drive thru and get gasoline for your vehicle right there.
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