Storefronts push against each other are perched on elevated walkways; each characterized by tall wood-framed windows, usually two levels and long, rich histories. But on this particular morning no one minds the stores; customers are nowhere to be found. Minutes go by and not one car passes through.
But almost exactly at noon this downtown artery of the self-proclaimed “Spur Capital of Texas” fills with after-Sunday-morning-service traffic and some slow down to gawk at the calamity outside their windows.
Two buildings that existed merely days ago lie in rubble, culled from what remains of a nearly 150-year-old block of buildings that lean against each other for support. On Tuesday, due to incessant rains over the last several weeks, city officials speculate, a portion of the roof of an antiques shop collapsed. Three women and an infant in the building at the time managed to escape without injuries.
All but the rear wall of the antique shop was torn then almost the entire building to its left, which had recently been bought after years of vacancy,in order to preserve the rest of the block.
Several days later, a pile of bricks lie underneath hanging floor planks in the first building while all that remains of the second building is the lone rear wall.
But the old town square, where the demolished buildings are located, still holds many memories for longtime residents who have seen the area change dramatically within the passing decades from a bustling social gathering place to a relic of its older days.
“Downtown on Saturdays, everyone came to town,” said Brents Davis, a 69-year-old retired public relations specialist/publicist/antiques dealer who grew up in Gatesville and returned to retire. “You couldn’t find a parking place. People would sit around town and gossip with their neighbors.”
Weekend mornings on the square in the earlier years also brought farmers who would sell their produce to the townspeople. Ginger Powers’ grandfather was one of those farmers.
“They used to pull their trucks around the courthouse and sell produce from the backs of trucks,” said Powers, 49, assistant manager at tacks and and souvenir shop Leon River.
The newly destructed storefronts are especially dear to many longtime residents of this small city who spent their youth in Gatesville during the ‘50s. The antique shop perhaps remembered most fondly when it was City Drug Store, was a popular hangout for many the city’s youth.
“That was my first job after I got married,” said Patsy Ray, a 73-year-old nurse who had worked as a soda jerk in the drugstore in the 1952. “I got $12 a week.”
Though City Drug was not a regular hangout for Davis, he knew the town’s teenage social circles in the ‘50s well.
“All the kids had their drug stores for their cliques,” he said. “I went to Foster’s. City Drug was usually where the girls went.”
Today the square is a mix of both old and new/vacant and occupied. The destroyed buildings sat on the same street as a video production office, a cosmetic tattoo parlor and a floral shop that had been in business since the 1800s as well as abandoned buildings.
“Several of those building are just now being put on the market for sale,” said Paul Gately, who has served on the board of directors for the Coryell Museum and Historical Center and on the Coryell County Historical Commission for a number of years. “A lot of that has to do with the fact that the old owners didn’t operate their businesses but didn’t want to sell their buildings.”
Gately said that the destruction of the buildings on Main Street may the beginning of a revitalization for the area.
“It could be the best thing that have ever happened,” he said. “It might make all these folks really start to take care of their buildings.”
As for one building around those that fell, a bleaker fate may be in store.
Gately said City Manager Roger Mumby told his wife, City Attorney Sandy Gately, that engineers had decided that the building to the west, which housed the Coryell County Appraisal’s Office would likely have to be re-engineered, if not demolished.
“Timbers that are 120 years old deteriorate,” Gately said.
And for residents like Davis, that kind of change is admittedly inevitable but nonetheless humbling reminder of the past.
“It was just sort of a different time,” he said. “I don’t know what we did, but I know we never went bored.”
mwest@temple-telegram.com
