The building was a general store for more than 60 years. It spent nearly 15 years as a restaurant under two proprietors before reverting to a retail establishment again. But for the last few years it sat vacant slowly running downhill.
In 2006 Joy and Wes Ferrell discovered the old structure when it was for sale. As raggedy as the building had become, it was love at first sight. Mrs. Ferrell said she could see right away the possibilities. They bought it and immediately began a massive renovation.
The rafters had been burned in a fire some years earlier so the first order was a new metal roof from the rafters up. They gutted the 32-by-100-foot interior but left a commodious mezzanine on the second level that looks down onto the first floor.
The original stairways, banisters and railings around the mezzanine were left in place and painted a gloss white. As the project unfolded the Ferrells installed a new tin ceiling, ceiling fans, a commercial kitchen, and on the second floor an office, an owners apartment, a banquet room and nook-like service kitchens.
The concrete walls were stripped of years of paint and repainted a soothing pastel to set a relaxing tone.
With its white banquet tables and chairs, white railings and fans set against a soft neutral background, a visitor walking in through the vintage, glass double doors has the impression of stepping into a sepia-toned photograph from the past.
The business opened in March 2008 at 102 N. Evans at FM 436 as the Ferrell Center - an event center catering weddings, receptions, banquets, reunions and other social gatherings.
Mrs. Ferrell said the Evans heirs gladly supplied them with a wealth of history and memorabilia.
According to a family account recorded by Ola Mae Evans Huckabee and published in E.A. Limmer's "Story of Bell County," her grandfather, Joe E. Evans, opened a mercantile business in Little River in 1892. It was a time that cotton was king in the region. Evans and his brothers, C.L. Evans and George W. Evans, worked together in various partnerships and later bought the Marshall Sloan General Store in Burgess.
In 1911 Joe Evans built a new store in Little River from concrete blocks poured in forms on the site. He later sold that store to his brother George, who ran a successful retail business there until 1942. Ill health prompted him to sell to his son-in-law, Leslie Huckabee, and his daughter, Ola Mae.
Mrs. Huckabee wrote that it was one of the most modern and well-equipped country stores in the state, located in the heart of cotton country. Like most country stores of its day it extended credit to the local farmers who came in to settle their bills after the harvest. She said the store offered a line of merchandise that included groceries, dry goods, leather goods, hardware, shoes for all ages, men's hats, shirts and work clothes, ammunition, fishing equipment, ice, meat, fruit, candy and caskets.
Coffins were not a successful line, however. A newspaper account of the day said that in 1925 Evans decided to liquidate his stock of coffins because they were such slow movers. Evans told his son, Euel Evans, to hold a coffin sale and "close out all the dead stock."
Ola Mae Huckabee's daughter, Shirley Huckabee Kirk, now 79, of Houston said she worked in the store as a child and teen during the summers and spent many happy hours there. She prepared a paper to present to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 1999. In lilting prose she took her readers through a tour of the store.
"Go with me now as I leave my home across the tracks and walk barefoot down the dusty gravel road going from the house to the store," she wrote.
On a walking tour Mrs. Kirk described counter by counter every detail of the building and its merchandise.
There were two thermometers, one outside and one inside, a round Sinclair Oil sign with the dinosaur logo next to the gas pumps, a bread box on the building's south side where Butter Krust Bread made morning deliveries, and four advertising benches, two outside and two inside.
The benches were very important, she wrote. "They were meant for visiting and catching up on local and world news."
A wall phone inside was the only phone in Little River for many years. Calls cost 10 or 15 cents. The calls were few. They were made to the Sinclair distributor, the doctor, the funeral home, TemTex wholesale florist, Sherin Cotton Gin buyers in Waco and, when it rained, the Temple Daily Telegram to report rain amounts in Little River.
The candy case had penny candy and nickel candy. There were no brown bags because merchandise was wrapped in paper and tied with twine.
Mrs. Hicks said growing up in and near the store was wonderful. But the era ended after World War II with the advent of supermarkets and chain stores. Women began to work away from home, she said. And the system of farmers paying after the harvest changed the big credit business of the early days.
"But I saw it as it's finest hour."
On June 20 the Evans heirs had their bi-annual family reunion at the Ferrell Center. Joy Ferrell said the family buzzed for hours about how wonderful the old building looked.
"My parents and grandparents would be so proud if they could see it," Mrs. Kirk said.
Plans for 2011 are for the heirs to meet there again, she said.
For more information or tours call 254-982-4435.
