I have always been drawn to the quaint welcoming atmosphere of a country store. They were an essential part of rural life in America for many years. A place where you could find most everything you needed from groceries to farming supplies and everything in- between, including a good dose of town gossip. The following article written by Houston Chronicle staff writer, Chester Rogers, March 21, 1948, about the C. T. Joseph Store of Cove gives us a glimpse into the essential role the country store played in days gone by. I, personally, have fond memories of the Casey Grocery Store of Hankamer. I frequented it often when I first moved to the Devers area in 1968 and then to Hankamer in 1979. I certainly do miss these friendly gathering places.
More Than A Store
By Chester Rogers ~ Staff Writer
Typed as written in the newspaper.
"I like to meet people and I like to talk with them." That just about sums up the philosophy which has guided Mrs. Ola G. Joseph through the 38 years she has served in a typical country store, which is a vanishing part of the American scene.
Such an institution near Houston is the C. T. Joseph Store at Cove, in west Chambers County, on the edge of the Trinity River bottoms.
Customers of this store can buy anything from sewing machines to overalls, washtubs, liver remedies, rat poison, ribbons, cold drinks, and staple groceries. They can even borrow a book, and besides all that they can visit with neighbors while they take advantage of daily mail service.
The store is operated by Mrs. Joseph whose late husband founded the store in 1900, after he survived the 1900 storm at Galveston and decided he wanted to move to higher ground.
Mrs. Joseph, who admits only to being "over 60," is thinking of retiring, and this store of her, the pride and joy of the community which it serves, may soon vanish like countless other early similar American mercantile establishments.
The Cove post office itself, a small institution that renders a lot of service to the community, is 28 years old.
Mrs. Joseph, who taught school 10 years in the primary grades is Temple, prior to her marriage and moving to Cove in 1910, recalls that the store was a mighty busy place when she first came there.
"All of our merchandise came here by boat from Galveston,” she related, "and it took many packing cases of foodstuff to serve the residents here."
"We used to serve residents from Wallisville and Anahuac, too. That was in the days when a road from Wallisville extended across the present Trinity River bottoms and came over to this side, right opposite Freeman McKay's house where a hand-drawn ferry made the transfer across Old River Lake.
"The highway across the bottoms and the ferry as well, were wiped out by the 1915 storm. The same storm caused a big flood on the Trinity and the flood waters cut a new channel on the east side of the river bottoms."
"It is odd, but right now there is a dredge working back of my house, building a new road embankment across the river bottoms to support the four-lane Houston-Port Arthur Highway."
Mr. Joseph observed that there were not as many people living in Cove 30 years ago as there are now, but in those days all of the residents of the area bought nearly all of their food and clothing at her store. Today, automobiles, roads, and more complete stocks in big stores in the Tri-Cities and Houston draw the bulk of the trade.
"Today we try to supply our customers only the short items, stuff they might need over the week end and small purchases not worth the trip to town," she said.
The store draws quite a lot of trade from outdoorsmen en route to the hunting and fishing grounds for which Cove is famous. Its still quite wild regions will harbor a few great alligators and other animal life, little disturbed by the fast-encroaching development.