Country Stores Dotted The Countryside

Maple Grove’s country store became low-rent housing, as did Shirley’s Market. (Ted Escobar).

By Ted Escobar

LIBERTY — Before the world went high-speed and high-tech, the Yakima Valley was dotted with country stores.

It seemed that there was one at each corner. Many were the centers of the communities in which they stood.

“I used to ride my bike to those when I was a kid,” recalled Norm Childress, the recently sworn in new Yakima County Commissioner.

There were several country stores on the way to White Swan, on the Fort Road and W. Wapato Road, and in between. There was, and still is Kyle’s Corner, now called Wheeler’s Corner, west of Wapato. Others included Hoyt’s Market, Thyers Corner, Clark’s Corner, Lindsey’s Lockers and Chapel’s Corner.

Going to the Lower Valley, there was Leighty’s Market, Kellog’s

Corner and Del’s, which still operates today. There was the Satus Store on the way to Mabton. And there were others that older Valley residents may remember.

The country stores I knew best were a string that ran from Punkin Center to Maple Grove on U.S. Highway 410, now VanBelle Road. Maple Grove Grocery was at Maple Grove and VanBelle Roads. Cozy Corner Grocery was at Outlook and VanBelle Roads.

Shirley’s Market was at Dekker and VanBelle. Then there was Liberty Grocery at Liberty and VanBelle. Finally, there was Punkin Center Grocery at Punkin Center, where Gurley Road meets Yakima Valley Highway two miles north of Granger, three miles east of Zillah.

Those were the three I frequented the most. I walked the quarter-mile down Dekker Road to Shirley’s as a little kid, reached up to the counter, placed a quarter and asked Oscar Shirley for Lucky Strikes for dad.

It wasn’t until many years later I learned that Oscar was the store  owner. As a child, I thought he was employed by an owner named Shirley. I knew Oscar only as Oscar.

My connection to Liberty Grocery was an asparagus field across Liberty Road from the store. My siblings and I cut “grass” before and after school from sometime in April to sometime in June for a dozen years.

Millie and Chuck Eastwood became owners of Punkin Center in the late 1950s. They became key players in the Granger Lions Club and Granger Cherry Festival

We stopped at the store every day, mostly in the evening. I paid 25 cents for a bottle of Pepsi and a Hostess treat.

The thing I liked most about Punkin Center was Joey’s drive-in. It made the best hamburgers. I had to turn to Miner’s in Yakima when Joey’s shut down.

Country stores were mini marts of a different kind in a different time. They were mini, but they weren’t all snacks and pop. They were stacked with groceries nearly to the ceiling, along the walls or on free-standing display racks.

“You can think of anything we wanted or needed, we bought it there,” Childress said.

These were not franchise stores. The owners were people you knew. Their work hours were the same as the sower’s and the harvester’s. You attended school with their kids. And if you needed something like baby formula, they opened after dark just for you.

“Many different kinds of people came into the store,” said Mike Lions of North Bend, whose parents, Paul and Freida, owned and operated Liberty Grocery. He and his younger sister, Nancy Harris worked there.

“In the early years, many customers had charge books (credit), and it was kind of an old guard of people (mainly farmers) in the local community who came into the store,” Lions said. “About 1958, when I graduated, the fruit stand I ran during the summers brought in new kinds of customers.”

The Punkin Center owners my generation remembers best were Chuck and Millie Eastwood. Their son Tom started working there at the age of 15. Tom’s Grandmother, Jean Roe, ran the fruit stand.

“Mom and Dad did several renovations and upgrades over the years, including adding the Punkin Center Drive-In,” Tom said. ‘It was operated by Joey and Lorraine White and then Jim and Beth McCallister.”

Gasoline was available at this string of five stores. Cars, big and heavy were considered efficient if they could go 16 miles to the gallon. There were the local farming and farm working families to serve, as well as interstate travelers. Gas was big.

Yakima’s Al Marquez grew up on North Outlook Road about 2 miles north of Cozy Corner. More than once, his brother Gilbert helped an out-of-state traveler at a garage Gilbert operated beside the store.

“Cozy Corner had everything we needed,” Marquez said. “I could get pop and candy, and we bought groceries. We even used their telephone”

Marquez’s dad, Tony, who raised chickens, bartered with the Cozy Corner and Shirley’s owners, trading eggs for food.

A 30-year-old Mike Lions unloads 100-pound bags of pinto beans, acquired in Othello, at Libety Grocery. Lions, who was an educator for more than 40 years, mostly at Juanita High School, came home at almost every idle stretch, including weekends to help his parents. (Courtesy Mike Lions).

VanBelle Road and Yakima Valley Highway were segments of U.S. Highway 410, which started somewhere east of Washington and finished around Tacoma. Travelers on their way to Yakima and points west were among the country store customers.

Lions remembers the change in Valley demographics and how that changed the business of country stores. Many of the new families were larger than the earlier families.

“One thing I did was order a 100-pound sack of flour one time,” he said. “I was about 18. My father grumbled at me about that. “Who would buy that?” Before long, he had customers who were buying 100-pound sacks of flour, 100-pound sacks of pinto beans and 50-pound cans of lard.”

According to Junior Ford of Harrah, who worked briefly at Punkin Center for Chuck and Millie Eastwood, beer sales were a strong part of the business. Beer drinkers came in after long days in the fields, looking for a way to cool down, he said.

Some stores offered what you might call extra services. Ford remembered that customers purchased blocks of ice, produced in Wapato at Punkin Center. They were kept in an insulated part of a storage building.

“People who had ice boxes before they got refrigeration, needed that ice,” Ford said.

Lions said: “The thing that did help the business was having a large walk-in which kept things cold.”

Cozy Corner today. (Ted Escobar).

Among the items kept cold were long blocks of lunch meats. Just about every store had a powered slicer. You could order one slice or 50 of bologna or “square meat,” specifying the thickness.

“We raised and butchered a steer every year and kept the frozen meat in lockers we rented at Cozy Corner and Shirley’s Market,” Marquez said.

Liberty Store had a scale that weighed trucks loaded with farm products, such as potatoes, corn, grains and corn silage for a fee.

“Snow and Sons Produce had a deal with the store to weigh all their loads of corn for a few years,” Lions recalled.

After Ford’s short stint at Punkin Center Grocery he moved over to Joey’s Drive-In. He met his wife Sally there.

“Joey had me start at the very bottom,” he said. “My first job was cutting onions.”

Ford said Joey’s was a popular after-game hangout for Granger High and Zillah High kids. For about a dollar — 35-cent burgers, 25-cent milk shakes and 15-cent fries — kids could buy a full meal.

“We were making the big burgers before Miner’s (of Yakima) did,” Ford said.

One of more interesting offerings at Liberty Grocery was the wood stove corner. That stove was really handy in cold weather.

“People would hang out in the corner, lean up against something and chat,” Lions said.  “In the best days of the store, people were showing up for cold drinks of many kinds after working in some kind of farming activity.”

Frieda and Paul Lions, enjoy the wood stove corner at their Liberty Grocery. (Courtesy Mike Lions).

In 1967, the federal  government decided to extend Highway U.S. 12 from the Idaho border to and through the Valley. It was progress. But progress sometimes brings unintended consequences.

Highway 12 took four of my favorite five country stores, but not Punkin Center, off the beaten path. It ended some gas sales and some food sales, and slowly, the country store started to fade away.

The beginning of the end came in 1982 when the Yakima Valley leg of Interstate 82 was completed. With Valleyites able to drive to Sunnyside and Yakima in 30 minutes or less, the last of the country stores started to close.

Most of them still stand, quiet and shuttered, reminders of a time when country residents of the Valley were asked to ‘go to the store” and they knew what that meant.