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| JW Heacock With Cigar |
Business was slow at the Heacock Hardware store in Edinburg back about 1940, so Grandpa JW Heacock walked out onto the sidewalk in front of the store — hoping for a cooling breeze because it was hot inside the store. According to my sister Peggy who observed this event, he sat down on a weight scale removed his hat, wiped his brow and held his Panama hat in his hand. He was shaded from the afternoon sun by the front of his store and from this location, he could observe the activities around the town square that contained the Hidalgo County Courthouse. Directly across the Court House square, stood the Hidalgo County Jailhouse, across the street and in front of it was a corral. Why was there a corral in that place? “Because cowboys would ride into town, get drunk, thrown in jail and there was a need for a place to hold their horses.” Anyway, that’s the story that my dad, Charlie Sterling told and he knew about Grandpa’s view from the store because Dad worked in that store sometimes.
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| Vela Mora Located Here Later |
Grandpa Heacock had moved to Edinburg in 1912 so he had observed the traffic around the square evolve from mostly horses pulling wagons, carts, and carriages, and of course, cowboys riding their cow-horses -- to automobiles, which now dominated the scene. It was still a fairly small town in those days so Grandpa knew many of the folks and he greeted them as they passed — hoping more of them would enter his store and buy stuff.
Sister Peggy describes the store primarily by smell. “It smelled like tack (saddles, bridles and other leather stuff)” she said. But of course, “he sold all kinds of hardware, furniture, farm equipment and upstairs he even had a clothing section. In the back of the store, stairs led up to the second floor where metal tags containing the price were attached to each clothing item. These tags were used over and over again.”
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| Heacock Hardware |
But, I digress. Grandpa was about half asleep in front of his store when a lady passed by and dropped a nickel in the Panama hat that he held upside down. Now Grandpa suffered some from the essential tremors so his hand holding the hat likely shook some, and it must have appeared to the lady that he was a beggar. Maybe she was new to the town and did not recognize Grandpa who had served on the city council and such. By the time grandpa realized what had transpired, the lady had passed on down the street.
He told sister Peggy Sterling Miller (who told me this story) that he wished his hat was filled with pencils so he could have given the lady one. He was not a man who craved charity.
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| Grandpa Sat on a Scale |
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