SPITZER CORNER STORE
(Rose Hill Community)
By Judy Tracy
About 1927 the H. C. Ely Family moved from Beckham County to Roger Mills County, settling one mile west and ½ mile north of what we now know as Spitzer’s corner (the Spitzer Store was on the northeast corner of the intersection). On the northwest corner of that same intersection, located seven miles south and three miles west of Cheyenne, Oklahoma in Roger Mills County, there was a grocery store which was operated by a Mr. Church. By 1932, Mr. Church had sold his land and moved to Texas.
There were several Spitzer families living in the area, Charley was one of them and the area was known as “Spitzerville”. In 1929 Solon and Bessie Spitzer had been farming and had bought a new car, making a note at the Hammon First National Bank for $250.00. That year they made a good cotton crop and cotton was 27 cents a pound; he had picked 750 pounds. The next day a big rain and hail storm wiped out his cotton crop and half of his feed crop. The next year he had to buy feed for his stock but cotton was only seven cents a pound. It was a very dry year. He raised thirty-five acres of cotton and harvested seven bales. The banker asked him to pay his note, but he didn’t have the money. After a while his note was extended at 20% interest. That is when the Spitzer’s decided to have a farm sale and quit farming. They moved from the Kiowa Community to the Rose Hill Community.
They borrowed money to build their store from Ballard Lumber Yard in Cheyenne. Solon and Bessie Spitzer bought an acre of land from his brother Charles. Charles and his sons helped Solon build a grocery store building and living quarters, which was 14 feet by 36 feet. Solon paid them back the next summer by working for them on the farm for each day they had worked on his store building. Solon’s father loaned him a one hundred dollar bill to buy the groceries to stock the store. He bought from the C.B.& R Wholesale Company in Clinton, Oklahoma. Their salesman was Mr. S.O.S. White. Solon said he had to buy everything by the case. He kept asking “How many in a case?” When the total of $150.00 was reached, Solon said, “Stop, that is all the money I have”. On March 22, 1932, the Spitzers, “Tige” and Bessie opened for business.
They had built a cream station and grocery store in the front part of the building and they lived in the back of the grocery store. It became known as Spitzer’s Corner. In 1932 people milked their cows and separated the cream to sell. Solon bought cream and eggs from the farmers on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The cream sold for nine cents a pound for the butterfat content. The eggs were six cents a dozen. This helped the farmer with his grocery bill. Solon would take the cream and eggs he bought to Armour’s in Cheyenne. He said that he made 1.5 cents a pound on the butterfat content in the cream and he was lucky if he broke even on the eggs. During the 1930’s Solon would take from fifteen to twenty-five cans of cream a week and several cases of eggs to sell in Cheyenne.
Mr. Ballard, at the lumberyard, would cash Solon’s check; the first time he did this, Mr. Ballard didn’t have enough cash to cover the whole check so Solon told him to apply the extra $4 to his note. Solon said every time he had an extra $3 to $5, he applied it to his note and at the end of the year, he had his note paid off except for the interest. Mr. Ballard told him that anyone who paid off his note the way he did, he wouldn’t charge him any interest. Bessie Spitzer said that they saved all the silver dollars they took in through the store and paid Mr. Spitzer’s father back his $100.00 in silver dollars.
Spitzer’s Corner Grocery was a thriving business from the start. Frankie Ely Tidwell, Henry Andrews and Bill Olson all stated that their families traded at Spitzer’s Store. Bessie said, “The good old days was when you were young enough to take it.” Solon and Bessie were very fair and honest in their dealings with the people of the Rose Hill Community and they never lost a customer unless they moved away. The Spitzers sold groceries, ice in the block form, flour and feed in sacks with printed material used to make clothes, etc.(especially during the depression years), and Phillips 66 gasoline. S.C. Spitzer was awarded a 40 year plaque from the Phillips Petroleum Company in recognition of forty years continuous association as a seller of Phillips 66 products.
Bill and Elaine Olson shared that one year when their son, Nels Olson and the neighbor girl, Melanie Thompson were young, they went to Tige and Bessie’s trick or treating on Halloween. The duo said the usual “trick or treat” and Bessie invited them in. Tige looked in their pumpkin bag which had some candy in it and helped himself to a piece of it. Bessie scolded Tige when saying, “Tige, you are supposed to put something in their bag, not take something.” Tige quickly went to the ice box and brought both of them some cold fresh green beans and put it in their bag. Elaine commented that Nels and Melanie have never forgotten this, an example of Tige’s sense of humor.
Bill Olson’s first memory of the corner was the location of the Spitzer’s Store on the corner, then moving north down the road was the Brewer’s Feed Mill and next to it was the Nazarene Church. When the church building left, they would have church meetings in the Rose Hills School (located across west of Spitzer’s Store and had been moved one mile north of its original site). Bill recalled that they had a dance every Saturday night in the Rose Hill School and then church services there on Sunday.
When visiting with Jerry Swartwood, he shared a story that Frank Tidwell, son of Murray Tidwell, had shared with him about the Spitzer store. It seems that Frank and Murray Tidwell and L.D. Morris were at Spitzer’s Store one day. Frank was really wanting a bottle of pop. They costs a nickel each. L.D. spoke up and said, “Frank, I will be glad to pay for as many pops as you can drink!” Frank was very excited. He began to open up the bottles of pop and guzzle them down. Frank had drunk six of them when the reaction began. Frank stated that he learned a very valuable lesson that day!
Jerry Swartwood shared another story that “Tig” Spitzer shared with him about Jerry’s Uncle Haskell Swartwood. It seems that the Haskell Swartwood family lived in the area surrounding the Spitzer Corner Store during the 1930’s. When Haskell and his family moved to Sayre, he came by the Spitzer Store to settle up his bill with “Tige”. Haskell paid the bill, put his change in his pocket and said his goodbyes to the Spitzers. Six months later, Haskell came to Spitzer’s Store and told “Tige”, “I have come to pay back $20.00 to you.” Spitzer told him that he had paid his bill and didn’t owe him anything. Haskell said, “When you gave me my change after paying my bill six months ago, you game me $20 too much in change and I am here today because I NEED to pay you back!”
In 1934 Solon sold his produce at Sayre for a year. Several other store owners and Spitzer went together and hauled their produce to Shattuck, Oklahoma. Mr. Wilder bought their cream at four cents a pound on the butterfat profit. Later on he paid six cents a pound to them for a three year period. In 1939 they sold to Armour’s at Elk City, Oklahoma until the 1950’s.
In the 1930’s and 1940’s Solon bought ice; four 300 pound cakes of ice at a time and stored it in his icehouse. Bessie said they sold mostly twenty-five pounds of ice for the people to put in their iceboxes at home.
Mr. and Mrs. Spitzer had three children, identical twin boys A.D. and J.D. and a daughter, Wanda. A.D. and J.D. would play twin jokes on anyone who couldn’t tell them apart. He and J.D. were riding a horse, which was hit by a car, throwing J.D. in the bar ditch and A.D. landed on the car. J.D. wasn’t hurt, but A.D.’s neck was broken, which they did not know. He died when they picked him up on November 20, 1936 at the age of thirteen years old.
In the Rose Hill Community, there was the Rose Hill One Room School, which was located one mile south of the Spitzer Store (the Rose Hill Cemetery is located one-half mile further south). It was used for school classes during the week and church on Sunday. After the school consolidated with Berlin and Grimes on September 20, 1937, the school building was moved across the corner from the Spitzer’s Store and was used as a Community Building. Solon took care of the Community Building and the grounds. The Rose Hill School was bought in 2007 and moved to the Dwayne Roark Farm. It is now completely restored in 2009.
While Tige and Bessie ran the store, many families would come in and charge their groceries for a whole year. When the cotton crop was made, they would come in and pay their bill one day and begin a charge ticket the next day.
When J.D. came home from World War II, he took over the store operation and Solon and Bessie moved to Cheyenne, OK where they operated a cream station and later a restaurant. They lived in the front of Mollie Herring’s house (which was located where Market Square is in 2009). Their restaurant (Drake Restaurant) was located where the Beavin’s Building is today in 2009 on the main street of Cheyenne. A couple of years later they moved back to Spitzer’s Corner. The grocery store had served the community for twenty-seven years before the dairies replaced the need for a cream station and the automobile brought more mobility for shoppers. J.D. allowed the families to continue the charging of their groceries for a year, but the families didn’t always come and pay as in the old days. After an auction of the grocery store items, they re-modeled the store into a house by turning the cream station area into a kitchen and the grocery store area into a living room in 1959 at Spitzer’s Corner. Tige, Bessie and J.D. retired from the grocery business on April 21, 1959.
Tige began selling Moorman’s Feed for several years to the local cattle owners. Tige enjoyed dancing almost better than eating. Bessie could bake the best angel food cake and cherry pie that would melt in your mouth. Bessie was taught how to cook by Solon’s mother as her mother had died early in her life and she was reared by her father. Bessie passed in 1989 and Solon in 1990.
The Spitzer’s landmark burned in 2007; but the special corner in that neighborhood is still referred to as Spitzer’s Corner.
From the Merritt two room school to Emerson One Room School….
Frankie Ely Tidwell tells that her family moved from Beckham County to Roger Mills County in 1927, when she was about ten years old. She remembers that there were several Spitzer families in that neighborhood. The school was such a drastic change for Frankie. At Merritt, there were buses to take you to school and there were twelve grades and several teachers. At Emerson One Room School, there was one teacher for all the subjects, you walked two miles from their house to Emerson School and there were only eight grades. It was quite a change!
Emerson did not have church in the school when they first moved to the Rose Hill Community; but it did later on. The Nazarenes had built a church north of the Spitzer Corner and held services for about five years there. Frankie and her sister, Jane Ely walked to Emerson School and enjoyed gaining their education. By 1934, Jane was a teacher herself, at the Rose Hill School.