Article for Westbank Picayune

Article by Dona Price for Westbank Picayune on a new grocery store added to the Westbank area — a substantial change for the community whose nearest grocery had previously been miles away.

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_The following text was extracted via OCR from the digitized scan held by The Portal to Texas History (UNT Libraries). OCR can introduce errors, especially on handwritten material; the canonical record links to the original scan._

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To the new Westbank residents of the last two or so decades, the opening today of a new grocery store in the area may not seem as momentous as it does to the old timers. For many who have lived longest in these cedar-covered hills, it is still a wonder that shopping for groceries has come to the neighborhood. Among the many pictures in the Eanes History Center Archival Library is a photograph of the first and for a very long time the only "store" to be in these western hills across the river. In the early 1930s B.B. (Pop) Beard had bought land at auction in the westbank for less than $15 an acre and built a home for his family. (He and his son, Benton, were the ones who brought electricity and telephones to the area. That is a whole other story that needs telling, for this put Eanes area fa ahead of the rest of rural Travis County.) It was the -%4 sin 1937 who built the first tiny store at Westlake Drive and Bee Cave Road (both unpaved roadways.) Benton Beard told how he hitchhiked to Austin for supplies; and having no scales, he guessed at weighing produce. He bought goats from the Marshall ranch for 50 cents each to barbeque on weekends. To quote Pop Beard in the November, 1954, issue of The Village of Westlake Hills' The Town Crier, they "sold the first hamburgers out here ...and homemade tamales which were a delight to eat." This small store became the hub of the community. For the next two decades the only large store for most grocery shopping for those who lived out Bee Cave Road was the Kash Karry on South Lamar just south of the river. This became the place to meet and visit for westbank neighbors as people returning home from work in town would stop there for shopping for their evening meal. Its meat market and produce were very Later you can imagine the excitement when Rylanders (a long-time name in Austin grocery business) made the anouncement of plans for a grocery "supermarket" on Bee Cave Road. They built the store (where Drug Emporium is today) and opened it with great fanfare. It immediately became popular. Many residents remember with fondness the checkers, usually girls, and the sackers, usually boys, who were for the most part Westlake High School students. Eperienced shoppers often times freely gave needed instructions for sacking groceries. (No, you don't stand the egg cartons on end in the sack with the can goods!) It was with some trepidation that the community received the news that Rylanders had sold out to Tom Thumb (an out-of-town chain, no less.) But like its predecessor Tom Thumb became a sponsor of school and community activities and was well accepted as not only the place to buy your groceries but also as a place to see your friends from all over the Westbank. When the Safe Way chain opened a store and excellent pharmacy in the new West Woods Shopping Center, and Tom Thumb moved to the new Westbank Market Center, residents really felt "up-town" in shopping convenience. Grocery shoppers form loyalties to their stores and sometimes resent changes inside the stores and changes

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in ownership, so when Randalls of Houston bought out both these stores and closed Safe Way, shoppers'anxieties about the changes were great. They were quite relieved when their favorite employees at Safe Way were moved across to the new Randalls. Now with a new Albertson opening (and according to the pre-opening descriptions, a different kind of grocery store), Westbankers have joined the rest of Travis County in having choices. From the Beards beginning service to their neighbors with their tiny store to the large modern ones welcoming customers today, this Eanes Area reflects the change in population and culture that comes to rual areas when it becomes more a part of big city living. Some things don't change much, however. Shoppers still enjoy running into their neighbors at the grocery store,; and they still welcome the involvement of the stores in community and school affairs. Eanes History Center has recorded much of the change in this area through preserving artifacts of an earlier time and the records of the people and happenings of these hills. The request made this time by the EHC is for pictures and stories from those who have experienced some of these changes. The volunteers at the History Center would like to add to the collection of pictures and other materials (including taped stories) of the 1950s and 1960s on to the present. Do you have pictures of our grocery stores and other business of the area as they have been built and of other changes that have taken place? We would like to copy them,if you could let us for the EHC Library. The Eanes History Center is in the Old Rock Schoolhouse on the lower campus of the Eanes Elementary School, 204 Eanes School Road, telephone 329-5631. Thanks and appreciation go to the several who called the History Center about the picture appearing in the Picayune last month, the swearing in of the first city council for the newly created Village of West Lake Hills. The members were identified and in the course of converstions with the callers more facts about those early times were learned. Thank you!

Original record: metapth1065498 on the Portal to Texas History.