Moravia General Store celebrates sesquicentennial

Ask Miss Henrietta Filip why she chose to get into the bar business 28 years ago, especially when she and her late husband Frenchie Filip were actively downsizing everything to quietly enjoy their retirement years together, and her reply might surprise you.

Mostly because when she says it, it sounds as if the answer should be as plain as the nose on your face.

“Because it was here,” she says. “And nobody else was doing it.”

Miss Henrietta and Frenchie, you see, had just given up their place in town and moved out to the country. That farm, it turned out, happened to be just up the road from the store. And after seeing it always closed every time she drove past, curiosity finally got the better of her.

“I decided to give the realtor a call, just to see what they had to say, you know,” she said.

Whatever it was that realtor said, it must’ve been one of those Godfather situations—like in the movie, you know, an offer you just can’t refuse—because the next thing you know, Miss Henrietta was signing papers, buying refurbished drink coolers and scrubbing things down like her life depended on it.

“It was filthy,” she said. Not surprising, really. For six long years the place idled before Miss Henrietta came along. Several jugs of Clorox later, things started to take shape. Still, it needed something, Miss Henrietta recalled.

They had posters up the walls before we came along,” she said, suddenly rubbing at her palms, as if by instinct. Mere mention of the old posters seemed to conjure the many painful pricks and staple stabs it took to get them all removed, most blending right in with the aged plank wood walls.

That was also when the first of her vintage metal beer signs went up, trumpeting brands like Jax, Schlitz and Grand Prize—hardly the stuff most folks keep in stock these days—and it wouldn’t stay lonely long. Over the months and years that followed, Miss Henrietta slowly amassed one of the largest private collections of antique beer signs you’ll likely find anywhere.

She affectionately calls it her “sickness,” that thing that compels her ears to perk whenever opportunity arises that might land another sign on her wall. Some are merely images or words painted on metal and faded with age. Others sport catchphrases and slogans from long bygone eras. A few even light up. Together, they fill nearly every square inch of wall, from its hefty plank floors to its shadowy rafters, giving the place a distinctive glow that’s all its own. About the only thing she’s limited by nowadays is the space to show them all off.

And on Saturday, April 27, big celebrations are in store. Not only will that day mark a full 28 years since Miss Henrietta began her journey as owner and proprietor of the Moravia General Store, but it’s also a remarkable 150 years since the place was first established.

Miss Henrietta has a whole day full of activities in store. It opens at 10 a.m. with the antique farm equipment show put on by the South Texas Wheel Spinner and Crank Twisters, sponsored this year by Wenglar’s Pipe & Iron Supply, that concludes with the hourlong James Brossman Memorial Tractor Ride through countryside beginning at 3 p.m.

Didn’t grab lunch? Don’t worry about it! The folks at Moravia Store have you covered. They’ll be serving up delicious hamburgers, fries and all sorts of other goodies, all day long, alongside their usual selection of ice-cold drinks and refreshments. Last but certainly not least, Marty Shimek and Shiner’s Second Wind Band take the stage from 8 p.m. to midnight for the evening’s entertainment and dance.

All that’ll be missing is you. Just remember, “FM 957 leads right to their door.”

Rich history:

The Moravia General Store, as it has been called since Ignac (J.E.) Jalufka and Jakob Hollub first brought their families to this part of northern Lavaca County in 1874.

The community of Moravia itself wouldn’t officially organize until 1883, but through it all, the store served as the main hub for life in and around the area for a full century and a half.

The place took its name from Moravia, Czechoslovakia, to honor the region that many of those first settlers left behind when they came to Texas. The first commercial structures that went up, apart from the store, included a blacksmith shop (which still stands today, there on the premises), a cotton gin, and a school.

Through the years, Jalufka expanded his store location to add a second-story saloon and dancehall, a grocery and dry goods store down on the first floor, a post office (with Jalufka serving as official U.S. Postmaster), a butcher counter and, round about 1930, it expanded to include brand new dancehall, located across the street from the current store location.

Jalufka never lived to see that final addition come to fruition. He passed away in 1920, which was about the same time that Prohibition took root across our nation. Forced to shut down their popular saloon, Mrs. Agnes Jalufka, his widow, opted instead to sell the business her husband had built up from nothing.

It eventually sold in 1922, moving from Jalufka hands to Annie Chromcak and Lillian Blahuta.

It wound up one of the best moves Jalufka could’ve made at the time, considering what lay ahead. That was the same year that the rains just simply quit. While many had heard talk of a looming economic depression, most were oblivious to it until the Dust Bowl years set in. In addition to relocating millions of tons of topsoil to American Midwest and New England, the winds also carried off the seeds farmers planted, carried hordes of hungry insect pest like plagues straight out of the Bible, and sand-blasted everything in its path leaving an ever-present grit that just stayed in everything people had at the time.

It wasn’t long before Chromcak sold off her share of the business to the Blahuta family outright, and with them, the store would remain until Miss Henrietta happened along that day in 1996.

They’d be the ones who added the dancehall across the road in 1930, and later, in 1950, tore it all down again. They’d also remove the second-story saloon and dance hall addition that Jalufka had built on. But through it all, the store remained a mainstay there in Moravia, a central hub for the community, as it were.

Still, something was notably different about this new generation of Baby Boomers, as they were called, that unlike most generations that came before it, would forever alter places like Moravia and other communities like it across Lavaca County and its surrounding areas.

That is, this new generation of youngsters was leaving its farm roots behind, once and for all, and moving on to bigger and (occasionally) better places.

For some, mostly young men, the moves were to distant lands, oceans away, on Uncle Sam’s dime. They wound up in places like North Korea and Vietnam, where the fighting was vicious, unlike any we’d seen before, and many never made it back home.

For others, their parents’ success during those prosperous postwar years helped afford them things people never talked about much before. Things like college educations and company jobs. Those post war years also saw several plants spring up around Houston and other coastal towns. The oilfield was blowing and going. What’s more, these jobs paid more in a month than they could earn in the whole year picking cotton.

It wasn’t a hard choice, but it was a choice just the same. Like never before, they moved away, in numbers unprecedented. And for the communities like Moravia, Breslau, Witting and so many others around, they died a little with each person who left, such that by the 1980s, most were barely a shell of their former glory.

The Blahuta family might’ve kept Moravia Store around all those years, but that steady decline of patrons eventually forced them to close its doors in 1990. It was the first shutdown, barring those forced by Prohibition, in the store’s 109-year history.

While a small handful of people would take stabs at reopening the place, none ever took. Until, that is, Miss Henrietta came along.

Modern day challenges:

Miss Henrietta knows a thing or two about shutdowns as well, though hers were of a more mandatory, government-inspired variety. It wasn’t all that long ago, in fact. Rather, they all happened within the last four years, all on the heels of the coronavirus pandemic.

Closing, though difficult, might not have been so bad, all by itself, she told us. “What just about did me in was when they said we were reopening finally and, in the last possible moment, they shut it all back down again.”

Mind you, that came after several months of nonstop closures of places everywhere—restaurants, barber shops, “nonessential” retail stores and shopping centers, churches, schools, you name it, really. In fact, when all was said and done, most of those places gotta stay open. Just the bars got hit that last round.

Thing is, that also came after most bar owners went out, hired the biggest band they could afford, and then called up their beer distributors to come fill every shelf they owned with the stuff.

Now, something not widely known about that particular expense for a state-licensed bar owner is that the state requires that they pay for beer stocks up front, with cash or check only. Considering it had been nearly a year by then since anyone has set foot inside the bar (lest they lose their state license to operate) so most bar owners overshot their beer stocks by a lot for that first opening.

When the governor shut them down again on a Friday, the same day they were set to open, that meant if they wanted to keep their license, they had to shut down, too. All that beer they just bought was theirs as well. The same license they need to stay open forbids them from selling it out the back door, or even if they were so inclined, it prevents that distributor from coming to collect it all back up and move it elsewhere.

Not only did they have to eat all that beer, they also got tasked with turning everyone away, be they patrons finally returned, workers brought in to help with the anticipated crowd, or in many cases the bands they hired.

Remember them? The governor changed his mind, you see, after most bands were already loaded and on the road to wherever they were booked that night, all eager to work again after months with no pay. To afford gas money at that point, they probably took up a collection before they set out, only to arrive and find out that this gig, too, was now nixed.

Plus, that same bedraggled bar owner, the one who lost so much already, got to deliver said news. To a bunch of fellows who were expecting to get paid and did their part (at substantial personal expense, no doubt, considering) just showing up at this point.

That can’t have been a fun day for anyone. It can’t have been fun at all.

So how bad was it? After Miss Henrietta ran her numbers following that Friday shutdown fiasco, she came to the stark realization that she’d need to come up with several hundred, at least, just to keep the power on, if nothing else. So, she decided to part ways with the caboose she’d bought and had delivered out to the grounds that surround the Moravia Store.

“If I hadn’t done that, it would have shut me down for good,” she said. And while she had some good times since, she’ll quickly add, “I still regret having to get rid of my train car.”

If those walls could talk…

If you ever get the chance, pop into Moravia Store late afternoon on a weekday some time.

Make sure you arrive close enough 5 o’clock somewhere that you don’t feel the slightest tinge guilty about pressing your lips to that ice cold refreshment Miss Henrietta Filip, the place’s longtime owner and proprietor, will surely have slid in front of you before you even find a chair.

At the same time, however, try and get there before her crop of regulars start arriving like clockwork— first one, then two, then the couples come in, two at a time—before you know it, every stool at the bar is full, along with most of the seats at the tables

Even if it’s your first time in, you can spot them a mile off. The regulars, that is. Most help themselves, waving Miss Henrietta back to her conversations with whomever she may be talking to at that moment, either by phone or eye to eye, there in the soft ambiance of her sanctum.

Drinks orders satisfied, each drifts toward his or her respective place in the room. At least, they must’ve been assigned at some point because each instantly looks as natural to that particular spot as the furniture. And from their respective perches, they now hold their courts, striking up conversations with whomever happens to be closest.

There’s no way to be certain, but some of the words are no doubt as old as the slatted wood walls of the place themselves.

"We sure could use another good rain before summer really sets in this year,” for instance, or, “Did you make it out to that _________ on Saturday? (As one fellow last week so aptly put it last week, which word you place in that blank, be it wedding or funeral or benefit plate pickup, tends to coincide directly with how old you might be getting.)

But if you get there before the regulars do, and don’t take a seat right away, go ahead and roam some. Look about, and take it all in instead, from the countless beer signs on the walls to yellowed news clippings folks tack up, and mile and mile of photographs.

Most pictures are of a black-and-white variety, though the white in many cases now bears a noticeable amber hue. Many are band promotion pictures, and nearly all bear scribbled-on messages like “Thanks so much for everything!” and “God Bless!” They have hand-sketched guitars and cowboy hat and boot doodles, and elaborate signatures, a veritable who’s who of performance artists.

Some you recognize instantly. Others, you likely never heard of apart from that lone magical evening they played there, years ago. Whether you know them or not really does not matter at all. Rest assured, Miss Henrietta remembers them fondly, and she’s the one who matters.

Together, they tell a story of good times past, all via snapshots from parties, dances and get-togethers of every sort. They give color to the vibrant history of the place, which isn’t always easy, especially for the black-and-whites.

But if you listen closely, you might just hear it: No, it’s not the same stary barroom chatter that’s been bouncing around those walls for ages now, and no, it’s not that awful clattering from the cooler she got second hand all those years ago.

It’s something far softer, almost indistinct, a whisper on the dancefloor. It speaks of good times spent. Of good times yet to come. Of good friends made and good friends lost. Or perhaps, just maybe, it says nothing at all… But wouldn’t it sure be amazing if they did?