life

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Our General Stores Bucket List

If you have watched enough Westerns, you have likely seen a scene or two play out in a general store. In the small towns of the American West, the general store played an important role in everyday life.


As a fan of old Westerns, I find one of the most memorable general-store scenes in the 1953 classic Shane, starring Alan Ladd. Much of the conflict between a powerful rancher and struggling homesteaders unfolds at Grafton’s General Store and adjoining saloon, which serves as the town’s commercial and social center.

Like so many things in history, the general store occupied a particular slice of time that is now gone. It was eventually replaced by stores that were bigger, broader, and supposedly better—but maybe not.


The closest thing to a general store in my world is the Little Burro Country Store, located about an hour south of Alpine in the Big Bend Valley, just north of Study Butte and Big Bend National Park. Our cabin is only a few miles away, and whenever we need something to get us through, this is the place we shop.

The Little Burro carries just enough essential goods to keep locals from making the hour-long drive to the grocery store in Alpine. More than once, however, what I expected to be a quick visit has turned into a much longer stay. I have enjoyed my share of conversations on the store’s front porch—a reminder that a good country store is still more than simply a place to shop.

The Little Burro is a small surviving example of the role general stores played in the history of the American frontier. It provides essential supplies and serves as a gathering place, with plenty of seating where locals and visitors can pass the time.


Old general stores were important for several reasons, not the least of which is that they helped the local economy. Farmers and ranchers bought supplies there. They also sold or traded their own goods. These stores connected small, isolated communities to the outside world, often acting as post offices, telegraph offices, and stagecoach stops.

Genuine general stores are a thing of the past. What remains are some really cool General Stores around the Lone Star State that, once you walk through the doors, revive nostalgic feelings and take you back to a simpler time. Some of these old stores occupy the same piece of real estate that housed them from their beginnings. Others are housed in old buildings that look and feel like an old-time general store.

Cheryl and I hope to visit as many of the remaining general store locations in Texas as we can on upcoming road trips. I have written about a couple of these stores and will follow up with posts on the others as we visit them. I hope you will come along for the ride.

Here is our General Stores Bucket List. Leave a comment with info about any missing from our list.

Hill Country and Central Texas
Camp Verde General Store — Camp Verde, near Kerrville
Gruene General Store — Gruene Historic District, New Braunfels
Luckenbach General Store — Luckenbach
Bandera General Store — Bandera
Fischer Store — Fischer
Kendalia General Store — Kendalia
Garven Store — near Vanderpool
Welcome General Store — Welcome, near Brenham


East Texas
Jefferson General Store — Jefferson
T. C. Lindsey & Co. General Store — Jonesville
Edge General Store — Edge, near Hearne
General Mercantile and Old-Time String Shop — Nacogdoches


North Texas
The General Store — Fort Worth Stockyards
Texas General Store — Grapevine
Martin General Store — Granbury


West Texas
Eggemeyer’s General Store — San Angelo

Gulf Coast and South Texas
Girouard’s General Store — Freeport
Morales Store — Morales, near Edna

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Back to the Ranch

My grandfather was sixty-six when I was born at Mission City Hospital in 1956. The hospital was small, but it was just right for our little town of Mission, Texas. I wasn’t his first grandchild, but I was the only one who lived nearby.


By the time I was born, my grandfather had already lived in Mission for over forty-five years. He worked as a real estate developer, served on the Mission City Council, led Boy Scouts Troop 20, and as a Notary Public helped many people in the community.


Yet, throughout all his years in Mission, he never forgot his roots on the family ranch in Duval County. He maintained a lifelong love for the outdoors and returned to the ranch every year to hunt or ride his horse. Although he had left the ranch many years earlier, the ranch had never left him. It remained a part of his heart.

He wrote in his journal about how much he loved ranch life. Here’s part of what he wrote:

Returning to the ranch proper at the end of the day, you feel hungry and ready to eat. Your appetite is plentiful, and by nine o’clock you are already in bed and so sweetly tired that nothing can perturb the quietness of your nerves. The breeze on the east porch where I slept was an ideal location.

Trips of this kind were better than medicine. Your feelings are better served and the next day you have a desire to work vigorously.

And so time was consumed in these routines of ranch life. What a wonderful method of passing your time.


My grandfather shared many stories about life on the ranch. Reflecting on those stories helped me understand how the ranch shaped him. Ranch life helped him develop a strong work ethic and become someone who never complained and always tried to help others.


I also admired how he kept his love for the outdoors and adventure all his life. From his childhood to his later years, the ranch was like good medicine for him. He often talked about riding horses, hunting, and even stretching barbed-wire fences. I was always fascinated.


After my first visit to the ranch, I tried to go back as often as possible. I found that the ranch had the same effect on me as it did on my grandfather. Most importantly, each visit made me feel closer to him. Since the ranch was special to him, it became special to me too.

I feel the same way whenever I visit our off-grid place in Big Bend. When I’m there, my mind feels calmer, my heart feels stronger, and the desert air refreshes me. Time seems to slow down. The hard work is satisfying, sleep comes easily, and life’s routines feel simpler and more meaningful.

Now I understand what my grandfather meant. Places like these truly are better than medicine. Whenever I go back to our little spot in the Chihuahuan Desert, it feels like I’m returning to the ranch and to him.

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Visiting El Frijolillo

My grandfather was a storyteller. From as early as I can remember, he shared wonderful stories with me—stories that made my imagination sit up and pay attention. I loved listening as he told Aesop’s fables, the story of Androcles and the Lion, and other fascinating tales. This was during an age when television was still in its infancy and storytelling remained a treasured form of entertainment.

But the stories I loved most were those he told about his childhood growing up on a ranch in Duval County. To this day, Duval County remains rugged scrub country, populated by mesquite, cactus, and other stubborn vegetation seemingly determined to stick, cut, and wound the unsuspecting traveler.

As a boy, I was captivated by his stories of riding horseback across the ranch. During his teenage years, he worked as a cowhand on the George West Ranch, located not far from his family’s ranch. His stories made me want to be a cowboy, just as he had been before leaving ranch life behind to attend business college in San Antonio.

One day, he told me about being thrown from his horse at a place he called El Frijolillo (pronounced free-ho-lee-oh). He described it as a thick, tangled cowlick of mountain laurel and chaparral at one end of a pasture. The fall was apparently memorable enough to remain vivid in his mind decades later. As a boy, I often dreamed about that mysterious place called El Frijolillo.


When I was barely a teenager, my grandfather arranged for me to visit my country cousins at the ranch. He bought me a bus ticket from Mission to San Diego and sent me off on a great adventure—all by myself, with only a small suitcase in hand.

The only thing I remember about the bus ride was sitting next to an older woman who had doused herself in an overpowering amount of perfume. I could hardly breathe and pressed my face against the window, hoping for even the slightest whiff of fresh air. Toxic fumes aside, I made it to my destination, where my Uncle Florentino, my grandfather’s half-brother, was waiting to pick me up.

Florentino was a towering man. When I stepped off the bus, there he stood—wearing khaki pants, a long-sleeved shirt, black boots, and a straw cowboy hat. He looked down at me with welcoming eyes, shook my hand, took my bag, and led me to his pickup truck for the nearly twenty-mile drive to the ranch. That day marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Florentino.

I told Florentino that while I was at the ranch, I wanted to see El Frijolillo. He laughed and remarked that this was the very place where a horse had violently bucked my grandfather to the ground. Then he assured me that I would indeed get to see El Frijolillo—on horseback. I grinned from ear to ear and could hardly wait.

My cousins made sure that I experienced plenty of great adventures. They took me rabbit hunting, led me on hikes through the brush, climbed with me into deer blinds to survey the land, and introduced me to horseback riding. I killed my first rabbit, and my aunt cooked it for supper that very evening. Unbelievable! This adventure was already more than I had expected.


But the greatest adventure of all was riding a pony out to El Frijolillo, the place that had etched itself into my grandfather’s memory decades earlier. For whatever reason, he never forgot that fall—perhaps because being thrown from a horse was a rare occurrence, or because the impact had bruised itself so deeply into his memory.

I was there. Finally. As I surveyed the place, I could hear my grandfather’s story echoing in my mind. Standing on that very ground made me feel even more connected to him and to the ranch land that had nurtured him. This was part of my history—and now I had become part of the story of El Frijolillo.

Decades have passed since my great adventure on the ranch. When my grandfather told me stories about life on the ranch, he unwittingly gave me a wonderful gift. He gave me a connection to the land and to my family. Best of all, he gave me a connection to the boy he once was. Now, whenever I think about El Frijolillo, I can hear my grandfather’s voice and feel inspired to keep the storytelling tradition he shared with me alive.

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Boys Need Adventure

One of the highlights of the year for me is hosting an outdoor adventure retreat for boys from the Brookshire community. For the past several years, Cheryl and I have hosted this Spring Break retreat at our off-grid property outside of Big Bend National Park. Watching the boys enjoy and learn from these adventures is one of the best things ever.

A few months ago, my nephew Ryan Rogers and I were talking about how God has used the Big Bend retreat to allow boys and their mentors to build deeper bonds. In our conversation, we talked about giving the boys a new opportunity to spend time with their mentors in the great outdoors.

Encouraged by what he heard, Ryan offered to host a shooting retreat at Flat Creek Ranch in Dimmit County. The sprawling 2,100+ acre ranch offers amazing opportunities for boys to experience the great outdoors in one of the most rugged settings in the Lone Star State.


My friend Dennis Turnipseed, the executive director of Eyes On Me, a ministry that works in some of the toughest communities in the greater Houston area, and I met to plan the retreat. Dennis invited a select group of older boys from the Brookshire community who have previously participated in the Big Bend retreat and other adventures in Colorado.


Our plan for this retreat is to provide the boys with their first opportunity to learn about hunting in Texas. That all begins with gun safety. Dennis and my old friend James Meredith led the gun safety orientation session for the boys. We spent a lot of time teaching about the fundamentals of firearm safety before taking the boys to the shooting range on the ranch.


This retreat, however, is about much more than firearms and marksmanship. It is part of a larger effort to shape the character of boys through outdoor adventure.


Boys need adventure. They need opportunities to step away from screens, enter unfamiliar environments, attempt difficult things, and discover what they are capable of doing. They need challenges that require them to listen carefully, act responsibly, manage their emotions, and persevere when success does not come easily.

The outdoors is one of the best classrooms for teaching these lessons. This is adventure with a purpose.


At the shooting range, the boys learned that every detail matters. They must listen to instructions, remain aware of those around them, and understand that their decisions have consequences. We repeatedly emphasized that handling a firearm requires maturity and self-control.


The boys learned that before they ever place their finger on the trigger, they must know where the muzzle is pointed and be certain of their target and what lies beyond it because a bullet can travel a long way. And they learned that they must obey the instructions of the mentor responsible for the gun range.


The lessons they are learning here extend far beyond the shooting range. Life also requires us to pay attention, exercise restraint, and consider how our choices will affect others. A young man who learns to act responsibly in the outdoors is developing skills that can help him become a responsible man.


Outdoor adventures are important because our culture is making life too easy for boys. Many boys spend too much time in carefully controlled environments where comfort is maximized, and they can avoid failure. But boys do not grow stronger by avoiding difficult things. They do, in fact, need opportunities to experience frustration and learn how to work through it.

That is why the shooting range is a good place for boys. They need to miss the target, adjust their aim, control their breathing, and try again. They need to discover that improvement requires patience, practice, and perseverance.


A key part of this retreat is the time boys get to spend with good men. They need men who will teach them how to handle responsibility and deal with setbacks. The outdoors creates natural opportunities for men and boys to have good conversations about these things.

At the end of this retreat, I hope that the boys will remember the men who stood beside them and took the time to help them succeed and to take another step toward manhood. Over the past couple of days, we have taught boys how to handle a firearm and safely hit a target responsibly. Ultimately, we are helping them aim their lives toward something greater. And that is a key reason why boys need adventure.