A Time Before Walmart - Jeanne Williams.Temple Daily Telegram: May 17, 2010

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A Time Before Walmart

by Jeanne Williams

Temple Daily Telegram - May 17, 2010

HANOVER — Abandoned and empty, the Hanover Mercantile stares through vacant windows as

the world passes it by.

Once the merchandising nexus of this back trail hamlet situated 10 miles southeast of

Cameron where farm roads 2095 and 3242 meet, the building today weighs up as a relic

of old-fashioned country commerce. Several years ago, the front porch gave up and

tumbled down. Lying in lumber and tin ruins is one of two screen doors adorned with

the Texas country-store advertising regalia, “Rainbow Is Good Bread.” Its twin grips

tightly to the doorframe, refusing to retire. The steady wind, not customers, keeps it

swinging The store’s customer-side lot, once paved with gravel and soft drink bottle

caps, today offers a rustic curbside appealing only to wildflower watchers, tourists,

painters and photographers: red and yellow blanket flowers, weeds and native grasses

growing passively around the weathered building. Instead of the Sinclair gasoline sign

of yesteryear beckoning travelers, a leaning tree stands sentinel.

Born in 1898, eons before customers took for granted electronic doors, air

conditioning and bar code scanners, the Hanover Mercantile was a vocational

undertaking of Alexander Foster Robinson, who moved to Milam County a year before.

Robinson and his father, Thomas, combined their carpentry skills to assemble a frame

structure of non-spectacular country store design.

In the heart of agriculture country, the Hanover Mercantile kept farm families and

field workers supplied with pantry staples. Customers carried home flour and sugar by

the pound, weighed and measured from huge storage bins. So large were the bins that a

would-be burglar once burrowed into the flour waiting for closing time, when he

planned to carry off cash and merchandise. Storeowners pulled the flour-dredged thief

from his hideout before he could carry out his scheme. When electricity arrived in

rural Hanover, the store upgraded with refrigeration and a new line of dairy and meat

products.

Summer sausage was the biggest selling item, though the store marketed a full line of

cold cuts, wieners and other meats, said Kay Ditto Moraw, whose forebears handed down

the business through generations of family.

The popular spicy salami infused with peppercorns, paired with rat-trap cheese and

soda crackers, made tasty fast food fare in the fields. Field workers consumed gallons

of soft drinks ranging from traditional Coca-Cola, Dr Pepper and 7-Up to orange and

grape sodas the store stocked in glass bottles that were chilled in a soda dispenser

box filled with chunks of ice.

Hanover store was a child’s nirvana to the mercantile’s resident youngsters of the

1940s, ’50s and ’60s, remembered Mrs. Moraw, who lived with her five siblings and

parents, William Isaac “Ike” and Carrie Neal Ditto, across the road from the family’s

store.

Awell-stocked candy counter, potato chip rack and freezer packed with ice cream were

enough to entice the children to want to work there or just hang out. The children

could freely choose snacks from the stock. The atmosphere was peaceful, and the

patrons were friends and neighbors with an occasional stranger passing through.

The store also welcomed the steady stream of delivery trucks hauling goods from the

baking companies, dairy companies, grocery wholesalers, in addition to tankers

bringing gasoline and kerosene.

The store stood rock solid on its pier and beam bottom until the famous Waco tornado

of 1953, which whirled around Central Texas for days before it blew through the

Hanover community. Cyclone winds jostled the building off its blocks. The store was

not damaged beyond repair and was heaved back into place where it was business as

usual, Mrs. Moraw said.

As major supermarket chains reached area towns offering sales, wider choices of

groceries and electronically controlled glass doors, Hanover’s only store finally

closed in 1970. The family still owns the building.

The Hanover community existed about two decades before the store opened. Leila M.

Batte’s Milam County history book places the community’s birth in the 1870s, when

founder Ed Authifer christened Hanover in honor of his hometown in Germany.

Although the community boasted a gristmill, cotton gin, general store and 25 residents

by 1892, it defied growth. The 2000 U.S. Census counted 27 residents in the farming

community that includes a few homes, a community center where the yearly homecoming is

staged, and the remains of the Hanover Mercantile.

jwilliams@tdtnews.com