General Store Mix & Match

The Elk Creek General Store in 1910. Elk Creek is seven miles north of Cabool, Missouri—home of Woodpro Cabinetry. 

Photo courtesy of

  
Paul Grisham  

Written by 
LeRoy Walls 
CEO 

My wife, Paula Grisham Walls, lived in the house next to the Elk Creek General Store for the first three years of her life. Her parents, Paul and Katie Grisham, operated the General Store. Paul was following in the footsteps of his father, Dick Grisham, and other family members who had operated an Elk Creek store since 1840.

In the store, merchandise was hanging from the ceiling, on shelves, in barrels or stacked on the floor. It was a well-arranged conglomeration that included hardware, tobacco, candy, groceries, furniture, dry goods, patent medicine, horse shoes, horse collars, buckets, wash tubs, fly paper, coffin lining, axle grease and shoes.

In the 1930’s Dick Grisham would haul a load of livestock to St. Louis each week. He would then haul back unauctioned estate furniture; unclaimed new tailored suits and salesmen’s shoe samples.

Dick purchased huge quantities of the shoe samples at 10 cents each with the hope that a match or near match could be found to make a left and right pair. Many were never matched. When a full match was found they were sold for close to the going rate for shoes. But, if they matched within one full size and only close in style they ended up on the $.50 per pair bargain table.

There was a lot of mixing and matching going on at the Elk Creek General Store before a pair of shoes could be taken downstairs and sold.

12/31/1999