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THE MUSTANG COMMUNITY STORE and CREAM STATION |
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Following is a history of "George's Will" This index will lead to property "field notes" for the lots and a photo gallery of the small pictures included in the narrative. If you have further information, pictures, or comments, please contact Mark Wallace. |
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INDEX
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 Click for a larger plat of George's Will. |
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Click on each photo for a larger version. The people who settled in this area in the late 1800’s established the Mustang Community. The early residents of Mustang came from Norway or were children of Norwegian immigrants. They brought with them their skills, trades and professions. Most of these people were farmers. The land and climate in this area supported a variety of crops. The native grasses and vegetation were excellent for cattle, sheep, and goats. In order for them to survive, they became diversified farmers. They raised small grain crops and corn for animal feed; they produced their own beef, pork and other meats. They raised chickens and turkeys. A few farmers had bees and provided their families and neighbors with fresh honey. They had productive vegetable gardens and bountiful orchards. Cotton, wool and mohair were common cash crops as was milk, cream and eggs.
The farmers of Mustang had an abundance of dairy products to sell, but there was a problem getting it to market. Travel to Meridian, Hamilton or Waco to sell their products was not as easy as it might seem. At the turn of the century, and well into the 1920’s, horses and wagons were the most common conveyance in Mustang. In the mid 1920’s, George Knudson, one of the early settlers in Mustang, saw a need to have an outlet for farmers to sell their products locally. In the early 1920’s, George got the idea of building a small town at the southeast end of his property. Mack Bertleson, the county surveyor, was hired to survey and plot the town site. Originally, George wanted to call his town “George’s Will.” The land was surveyed, and ten lots, each 25 feet by 100 feet were plotted.
The local farmers supported George’s plan and felt such a town would most definitely benefit the community. George and the community leaders decided that the town should be organized as a co-operative with a governing Board of Directors.
The first business built and opened was the Community Store. The Board of Directors contracted with Barton Pederson to come to Mustang to manage the new store. It is not known for sure the kind of arrangement Barton had with the board, but from the minutes of a 1932 board meeting, it appears he paid rent to the co-operative for the use of the buildings. The minutes also revealed Barton might have been having financial difficulties about that time. (9)
According to B.C. Rogstad, the Community Store was first built at the extreme east end of the town site on Lot # 1. The Store was twenty feet wide and approximately forty feet long. It was a white frame structure with a pitched shingled roof. An ice vault was built behind the Store so milk, cream and eggs could be stored until picked up by the produce company. Shortly after the Store opened for business it was decided to relocate the Store to Lot # 10. (1)
When Barton and wife Myrtle (Tergerson) came to Mustang they lived in the house where B.C. and Agnes Rogstad currently live, and it was while living there their son Billy Wayne was born in 1929. (4) After the business at the Store had grown and stabilized, Barton built a house on the land just across the road from the Store. The land belonged to his father-in-law (Sanders Tergerson).
The second business established in Mustang was a blacksmith shop that was built on Lot # 8. The shop was a tin building that housed a forge and all the necessary tools required to do blacksmith work. Bernt Anderson served the community in this capacity until he later moved the shop to his farm. Not long after blacksmith shop was established a filling station was added. The filling station sold Gulf Oil products. Gasoline, coal oil, kerosene and other oil products were available in the Mustang Community. Charlie Jermstad helped out at the filling station from time to time. (2) Bernt installed a hammer mill for grinding feed on the northwest side of the filling station. (1)
After
the Store had been relocated, the ice vault sat on a concrete pad at the
southwest corner of the Store. The citizens of Mustang had had available
to them a good inventory of basic necessary items. As things continued to
progress, the Board of Directors decided to build another building next to
the Community Store.
This building would be a
The first Board of Directors for the Cream Station was named in 1926. The charter members of the board consisted of C.A. Nelson, E.L. Erickson and O.C. Knudson. Deed records in 1926, document property from O.C. Knudson deeded to the Cream Station Board of Directors. There were no known records showing others who might have served on the board in later years, but discovered among the pages of the Mustang Thrasher Journal, were minutes from a meeting of the Mustang Cream Station in 1932. The minutes are as follows:
Annual meeting of the Cream Station met February 19, 1932.
The Cream
Station (which is the only remaining building) was built just east of the
store on Lot # 9. The twenty feet by twenty feet frame building originally
had a shingled pitched roof. It has a concrete
The water
well, which is located about one hundred feet north of the Cream
Station, was drilled about the same time the buildings were constructed.
The activities at the Cream Station and Store finally resembled a small town. It was a very busy place at times. The name “George’s Will” never did catch on, but the site has been called Mustang from the very beginning. Barton Peterson and Bernt Anderson were important members of the community. Barton ran the store and Cream Station while Bernt practiced his trade as the community blacksmith. I once heard Conrad Knudson say, “I guess Bernt could make anything out of iron.” He made and fashioned horse and mule shoes. He was an excellent hinge maker. He mended binder chains, sprockets and gears. Anything made of iron that broke, Bernt would heat and beat it back together. (7)
Records show that D.L. Helm acquired Lot # 1. He never developed or used the lot. He did however bring a lot of excitement to Mustang on June 11,1931. Helm was a big promoter in Bosque County. He brought in an oil drilling company to spud a wildcat oil well in Mustang. The well site was north of the B.C. Rogstad house. He was very optimistic about the venture and felt Mustang would become an oil boomtown. He organized a big celebration at the town site. Helm sponsored a barbecue celebration where several beeves were cooked and served to the large crowd of people. Barton Pederson had a cold drink stand. Conrad Knudson furnished a horse (Lightfoot) for the policeman to patrol the area during the big event. (11) There were plenty of cold drinks and other items associated with such a celebration. Molden Knudson once told me he was in charge of selling pickles from a wooden barrel. There was homemade ice cream and homemade pies. The special attraction was airplane rides. A person could take a ride for a penny per pound of body weight. If you weighed 150 pounds you could ride for $1.50. The landing strip was the stretch of pasture north of the store. The airplane was a bi-plane with three open seats. Tilden Hastings talked the pilot into giving Conrad Knudson a free ride since he was using his pasture for the landing strip. Bryan Moore was the other passenger. Before they took off Tilden told the pilot to “really give them a ride”. When they finally landed Bryan Moore was quite vocal in expressing his feelings about the ride. He did not enjoy the experience at all. Conrad was not as vocal about the experience, but it gave him something to talk about in the future.
“I remember hearing the drilling rig running at night and the sound it made as it pounded its way downward. I would lie there and count the ‘strikes’ as it pounded its way downward, it was like ‘counting sheep’ until I went to sleep.” (2) As it turned out, the wildcat well was a dry hole and the excitement surrounding the drilling died down and things soon got back to normal. People who were around this area in 1931 have fond memories of the “big doings” in Mustang.
Some of the men got together with Barton and made a croquet court behind the Community Store and Cream Station. They hauled in small gravel that was robbed from red ant beds throughout the community. When it was leveled, smoothed out, watered and packed down it turned out to be an excellent court. (7) The sport really caught on. Some of the regular players spent countless hours playing croquet especially after a rain when it was too wet to work in the fields. Some made their own mallets. They put up a common gasoline lantern so they could play after dark since it was so hot during the day. You could see the lantern swinging back and forth in the night breeze. Tirah Knudson Wallace also remembers that on still nights she could hear men talking, laughing and hear the mallet strike the wooden balls. She heard the clear striking when the balls would hit together. “I loved to hear Tilden Hasting laugh after making a good shot.” (2) I was told that croquet playing might have gotten out of hand as some men wanted to play all the time, even on Sunday morning. I believe some rules were eventually posted about playing too late at night and on Sunday morning.
Barton bought several 100-pound blocks of ice from the Community Public Ice House in Clifton to cool the vault. The vault was large enough to store the blocks of ice and still have plenty of room for the milk and cream cans. Mustang residents could also buy ice for their iceboxes at the Cream Station. Barton ordered grocery supplies from Hubby-Reese and Cooper Wholesale Suppliers out of Waco. It was a common sight to see their delivery trucks in the community. The businesses at Mustang struggled, but apparently survived the worst of the depression years. Things were tough financially, but the farmers produced plenty of food for their families to eat and still had some to sell. The farmers in Mustang benefited greatly from having an outlet market right in their own community.
The Community Store was a nice “stop over” place for school kids walking home after school. Charlie Jermstad attended the old filling station and I remember him weighing us on the feed scales. Most school children walked to and from school each day. The children living up north walked by the station every day, and when there was a cold north wind the store could be a brief sanctuary. (2)
Several families had their mailbox at the store. They were on cedar posts set side by side in a row. Albert Hastings, Tilden Hastings, Otto Nygaard, Selmer Jermstad and Conrad Knudson all had their box at the store. (2) (13) Picking up the mail usually brought word of mouth news from within the community or state. The mail carrier was everyone’s friend and a major information source. Mr. Powell from Meridian was the mail carrier in the 1920’s. Later on, during the middle 1930’s and through the 1940’s Jorgen Jorgenson was the mail carrier. (2) After getting the mail some might drop in at the store and get a cold drink, and maybe take a few minutes to sit and visit with Barton, Bernt or other neighbors who might gather there to discuss the latest news events.
I thought it was interesting when I learned that probably the only altercation that ever occurred in Mustang happened at the store. Archie and Cecil Tergerson were in the first grade and had lost their report cards. As it happened, the boys with their dad, Coin Tergerson were at the store when the subject of lost report cards came up. A local farmer in the store, who was on the school board at the time, made a snide remark that “the boys probably tore their report cards up.” Coin took objection to the accusation and punched the gentleman. Crates and boxes stacked in the aisle of the store were knocked over and Barton asked them to go outside if the were going to fight. As it turned out, things cooled down and they went their separate ways. (12)
Gene Knudson said when he was a little boy he would carefully carry an egg to Barton’s store and trade it for a candy bar. (3) That was a unique way to “fill a boy’s sweet tooth.” Barton served as quality control for the Cream Station because B.C. Rogstad said that Barton once refused to take their eggs because they were not up to specification. They were “grass eggs.” They weren’t as good as the eggs from grain fed hens. (1)
The Cream Station served as a community-meeting place. The Mustang Thrasher Co-operative, which was formed in 1918, held meetings there between the 1920’s and 1940’s. The Board of Directors for the Store and Cream Station met there too. Before the days of the REA, night meetings were held under lantern light.
In 1908, Ben Ammons, of Mustang, asked the Commissioners Court to create a voting precinct in Mustang. It was approved and it became known as Mustang Voting Precinct Number 22. The Mustang School house was the place of voting until the school consolidated in 1939. The voting place was then moved to the Cream Station. (10) The citizens of Mustang voted at the Cream Station for over sixty years. I am sure many folks from Mustang can remember cold November days when they went to the “voting box” to cast their ballot. There was no electricity at the Cream Station after it closed in 1942. At various times in more recent years, J.M. Wallace took his generator up to the Cream Station and electrified the building so the election judges and voters could have lights. The electrical receptacles he installed are still visible in the building. The Commissioners Court decided to close the Mustang Voting Box at the Cream Station after the 2000 Presidential election. The court said it was an unnecessary expense to the taxpayers, so therefore residents of Mustang now go to Cranfills Gap to vote. In 1942, Barton Pederson sold his house and moved away. The house was moved to a site between the Gap and Fairy. (4) The old rock garage is the only structure remaining at the site where the Peterson family lived. While living there they made many improvements. After they built their house they began work on a garage made of native rock. The garage was never completed because building materials were hard to come by during the war. The old roofless rock garage still stands at the site as a monument to the family who served the community for sixteen years.
Clarence Tergerson, Barton’s brother-in-law would help out at the store from to time when Barton was ill or had to be gone for some reason. The store closed its doors for good in 1942, while the war was raging in Europe and the Pacific. Albert Hasting, a long time resident of Mustang, once said the Cream Station was used as a meeting place for aircraft spotters during World War 2. Local volunteers were trained to spot and identify enemy aircraft. Volunteers, at scheduled times, would do their part by searching the skies with binoculars as they helped the cause on the home front. Sometime after the war, the Store was moved to a site at the Gap where the fire station is currently located. It was last used as a laundromat. The blacksmith shop had been torn down several years earlier and the building materials hauled away. Today, the only evidence remaining of the blacksmith shop is a concrete pad where the hammer mill was mounted. If the site were searched one might find old pieces of scrap iron and slag discarded by Bernt Anderson.
The Mustang Community Co-operative disbanded when the need for its services ended. By the late 1930’s and 1940’s, most farmers had automobiles and trucks. They now had the ability to haul their goods to nearby markets themselves. In the 1940’s, there were three well- stocked grocery stores only five miles away at Cranfills Gap. The necessity of the Cream Station and store no longer existed. The only thing remaining at the site today is the old Cream Station, a windmill, water tank, and the old rock garage. These structures stand as a reminder of a different era in history. To a few remaining “older citizens” of Mustang, the Cream Station is a reminder of a simpler time, a period of time which stirs memories of people who once lived and raised families here in the Mustang Community.
In 1945, I vividly remember waiting for the school bus at the Cream Station with my sister Barbara and uncle Gene. It was a cold and icy day and for some reason I stuck my tongue to one of the metal porch posts at the Cream Station. Why I did that I’ll never know. The bus wouldn’t wait for me, so I ripped my tongue from the post in time to catch the bus. Ouch!
I remember several peach trees near where Barton’s house was located. These trees were harvested by the raccoons most years, but I remember more than once gathering peaches from those trees as late as the 1980’s. They are all gone now.
Today, Mark and Jan Wallace own the property where sits the old Cream Station and windmill. The 1.3- acre plot of land across the road where the Barton Pederson family lived was purchased in the early ‘70s from Clarence Tergerson and B.C. Rogstad, Jr. Mark is the great grandson of George Knudson. The plan is to preserve the remains of “George’s Will.”
J. Mark Wallace September 4, 2001 |
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