Old Town Grocery Stores

In the 1950's and early 1960's, Mannford (the old town) had at least three grocery stores.  Convenience stores had been created by that time but Mannford wasn't ready for them.  In fact, the first convenience store in the United States was opened in Dallas, Texas, by the Southland Ice Company in the 1950's.  It later grew into what is today 7 Eleven stores.

The grocery stores I remember were Varnell's Grocery, Mannford Trading Company, and Vaught's Grocery.  Varnell's was located on South Main Street on the east side of the street.  Earl Varnell ran the grocery store and my most vivid memory of that store was that he had a cream station.  Did Earl's wife work there as well?  I don't remember.

In the early 1960's, we had a milk cow who could out-produce what our family could consume so we would run the excess milk through a cream separator and sell it in town at Varnell's Grocery.  Running the separator was hard work and you had to crank like mad to keep the speed up.  The cream was hauled into Varnell's and, as I recall, they measured the butterfat somehow to determine how much to pay you.

Hugh and Ethel Vaught's grocery store was across the street and west of the Bank.  I don't remember a lot about it except that it was relatively new and always appeared to be extremely clean.  Mr. and Mrs. Vaught, like most of the people in Mannford at that time, were wonderful people and really contributed to the community.  Mr. Vaught had run a grocery store just west of the drug store but sold it to a Mr. Willetts when he built his new store in the 1950's.  Mr. Willetts later sold that grocery store to Alfred Hughes who turned in into a feed store.

The other grocery store in Mannford at that time was the Mannford Trading Company.  It was probably the biggest store in town as well as being the oldest.  F.M.  Coonrod, who had opened the Mannford State Bank several years earlier, opened the Mannford Trading Company in about 1925.  I'm told that he and his wife, Jessa, ran the Trading Company for many years until their daughter, Juanita, and her husband, Les Hinton, took it over.

As a youngster, I found the Trading Company to be a fascinating place.  It was "L" shaped with an entrance on the south to Highway 51 and another entrance to the east opening to Main Street.  The groceries were all located on the west end of the store and best accessed from the Hwy. 51 entrance while the dry goods were on the north side of the store.

It, by the way, was the ancestor to today's Phelp's Market.  When the town moved in the early 1960's, Les and Juanita moved their grocery store to the new town.  The store was located across the walkway from the Bank.  After a few years, they decided to retire and talked their daughter, Peg, and her husband, Jack McIntire into running the store.  Later, in about 1969, the grocery store was sold to Bill and Harriett Phelps.

When my brother, Gary, and I were in our early teens, we made extra money by planting tomatoes and okra and then selling them to Mr. Hinton at the grocery store.  I can still visualize him standing behind the counter in that grocery store!