The Gazette-Enterprise

MARION — The difference between a community and just another wide place in the road is its grocery store.

And in Marion, there’s been a grocery store at the center of the community on the corner of Center and Schulz streets with at least one member of the Hild family working in it since 1929 — save for a couple years during World War II, when no Hild boy was available to work there, anyway.

But that’s about to change because Hild Bros. Foodland, a Marion fixture for decades, is being sold and is about to become the newest member of the San Antonio-based Super S Foods chain.

Marion Mayor Glenn Hild and his brother, John, are the second set of Hild brothers to operate the store their father, Cleburne, started working in when he was still in high school, back in ’29, and reopened in 1946 in partnership with his younger brother, Leslie.

In the decades since, Marion has supported the Hilds and their grocery and feed business just as surely as the Hilds have supported their community.

Leslie and Glenn Hild confirmed Saturday their family is in the process of selling the grocery to Super S, a chain that has nearly 70 stores around central and south Texas, mostly located in small communities. The Hilds will stay in the feed business, although they hope to expand it to include more products they now lack space for and will move its base of operation a couple blocks to their warehouse on FM 78 at Barnett Street.

“Used to be there were family owned grocery stores in Schertz, Seguin and Cibolo,” Glenn said. “I’m not sure there are any others left now. We may be the last mom and pop grocery store left in Guadalupe County.”

But the Hilds are selling to a family-owned chain that concentrates on “hometowns” — communities with a population of 6,000 or so that can’t support a bigger supermarket — a family that first had to convince the Hilds they would be good for Marion.

“These guys have a pretty good chain going,” Glenn said of Super S, which has stores in Stockdale and the Canyon Lake area, among others. “This store’s going to be nice — it’s going to be good for the Marion community, and we’re excited.”

The Hilds had been considering a sale for a while. Cleburne, who is 97 years old, retired from active work in the store in 2006. Leslie, who is also in his 90s, has other things he’d like to do.

But they hadn’t actively pursued a sale.

One Saturday a while back, two men stopped in the store to complement Leslie and Glenn on the business. One, as it turned out, was the president of Super S Foods, and the other was the vice president.

“They said they were passing through and wanted to visit, and they just walked in here, and we had a very nice chat about family owned businesses and small communities,” Glenn said. The talk was a long one, and the two men left.

A few hours later, they came back.

“They asked if they could make us an offer,” Glenn said. “They wanted to buy our store.”

“In a way, they surprised us,” Leslie said.

Glenn said it was a pleasant surprise, if anything.

They were also interested in the old building that now houses the feed store, but intend to move it to another location where the chain has re-erected similar structures to create a kind of old Western town.

“They’re going to keep it intact, and they said they’re going to move it,” Glenn said. “That building originally sat where this store is and was moved back to make space for it on the street. They asked about that building when they approached us because it was attractive to them, and that makes us feel good. That building is more than 100 years old.”

Leslie said Marion is a no-brainer when it comes to deciding where to establish a business.

“They came to the right place,” he said. “They were a Godsend. They made a fair offer that is good for them, good for us and I know will be very good for the Marion community. They run a good operation, and with 68-some stores, I know they’ll be very competitive.”

Super S Foods will also create a store that will leave locals no reason to shop anywhere else, he added.

“They’re going to spend some money renewing this store, and they’re talking about supermarket hours — 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and open seven days a week, which we couldn’t do,” Leslie said. “They’ll get business we couldn’t, and they’re going to be a little different from us.”

But Marion will come to know Super S Foods is no less committed to its community than the Hild family has been, Glenn said.

“They’re going to spend a lot of money in the Marion community, and we hope the community embraces them just as they have us,” Glenn said.

The sale hasn’t closed yet, but Super S Foods is already getting involved in Marion, Glenn said. They’ve inquired about the community’s annual sausage supper coming up in a couple weeks, and will also be involved in the parade that day.

“We think this group is going to take good care of Marion,” Glenn said.

All indications are that Hild is right — Super S Foods becomes a valued community partner everywhere it goes.

In Marion, they’ll be following an example set by Cleburne and Leslie Hild that was also instilled in Glenn and John Hild.

Community cornerstone

Cleburne Hild was born in 1912, and while he was in high school, came down off the family farm in his spare time in 1929 to work in the dry goods and grocery store then owned by John Hicks of San Antonio.

“I would work on weekends,” Cleburne said. “When I finished school, I was going to go to college and learn something, but John said, ‘No, I want you to stay in my store and work for me.’”

Hicks sent the promising young man to business college in San Antonio, and Cleburne Hild didn’t let him down, learning not only the skills necessary for clerking in the store — but for keeping its books and running the business, as well.

“That was my start,” Cleburne said. “People were nice and polite, and John taught me how to do this job.”

The Great Depression couldn’t kill the business, although other businesses failed. World War II, on the other hand, did shut it down for a year or two.

Young men then were expected to join the military to protect our way of life, and the Hilds did exactly that. Cleburne Hild went in the Army, and Leslie went into the Navy.

Like millions of other soldiers and sailors around the world, the Hilds needed work when they returned home to Marion in 1946.

“We didn’t know what to do,” Cleburne recalled. “We started here because my brother had worked here before it closed up for the war. We rented the building from Hicks, and it had a scale outside, and a corn sheller we rented, too.”

Leslie took a moment to help a customer who walked up to his window and asked him if he carried feed for her goats, and he said that he did.

She asked him how much it would cost, and he beamed a big old smile at her.

“Not nearly enough!” he said before the smile broke into a full laugh at a joke the grocer has used again and again over the years.

“I just love being able to say that!” he exclaimed.

Leslie took care of his customer and sent her out to the feed store to see his nephew, John, who would make sure she got her grain, and it got loaded for her, too.

Then he looked out over the store from his chair in the elevated office at the back, and did the mental math, roughly dividing the store in thirds as he recalled the work done in the building over the years.

“It was just a little grocery store, actually from these posts to the other ones there, and this side was a small hardware store,” Leslie said.

“We even sold shoes!” Cleburne added. “We continued that for a couple of years, and as the business grew, we expanded.”

Leslie pointed to a spot about two-thirds of the way across the store.

“There was a wall here on the left side, and we took it out and made the two sides together into a store,” he said. “Eventually, we bought the scale, the corn sheller and the store property. I don’t know when it was we actually bought the thing.”

In 1962, the Hilds renovated the store, adding state-of-the art supermarket style checkstands and other updated features.

“That was when we installed those ‘magic eye’ automatic doors,” Leslie said.

That was also when Leslie coined the name, “Foodland” for the former Red & White operation.

Now, the store will get its first update in nearly five decades — this time by the Super S Foods folks.

The Hilds have seen the preliminary plans.

“It’s going to be quite a store,” Glenn said.

Built on trust

To this day, the Hilds do a great deal of their business on credit. There’s no credit cards or debit cards, although they take those, too, for anybody willing to be rung up and then walk back from the register to the office so Glenn or Leslie can run their card there. The credit business operates out of old-timey cash ledger books and cigar boxes, just as Cleburne did when he worked for Hicks.

Friday afternoon, customer after customer came in to pay their tab. Some customers come in once a month and pay their bill when their Social Security checks arrive.

If not common today, it’s not a risky practice for the Hilds, who know their customers, their customers’ parents and their customers’ grandparents — and likely did business with them all.

“My wife and I were thinking, and just started writing down the names from some of the checks we cash,” Glenn said. “Hundreds of different people come through this store every month.”

Back in the day, generations of Marion farmers bought all their groceries at Hild Bros. without ever spending a dime in cash or coin.

“In the old days, the farmers all had chickens, and they brought their eggs in here,” Glenn said, again pointing to four cigar boxes sitting on top of the store safe. “A lot of farmers bought their groceries with eggs, and we’d sort and grade them and re-sell them. No money ever changed hands. The ladies would come in, get their groceries, and we’d take an egg ticket out of the box every week.”

Leslie said Hild Bros. couldn’t do that today.

“I don’t think any farmers in Guadalupe County raise eggs to sell anymore,” he said.

Glenn shook his head, thinking about how many eggs were tendered as payment over the years.

“Super S bought all the store fixtures, but we’re taking the ‘cash register’ with us,” he said, gesturing to the now-unused cigar boxes on top of the safe.

Leslie nodded in agreement.

“Those things are getting pretty hard to find,” he said.

Menfolk shop, too

Over the years, the women weren’t the only shoppers at Hild Bros. Back in a time when those who had jobs worked six-day weeks that ended on Saturday afternoons, many would come to town to do the grocery shopping. The menfolk had a unique way of shopping that was different from what their wives did, though.

“When we were kids, the farmers would come in with their grocery lists,” Glenn said.

The men would drop the lists, and go to the saloon next door, he remembered.

“You could count on every Saturday night when it was time to close that they would all come in and we’d have to get their groceries all put together so they could go home to mama,” he said.

Like their father, Glenn and his brother John officially started in the family business during their high school years, back in the 1970s.

Unofficially, they started much younger — “helping” their elders by stocking, stacking soda water and milk bottles and doing other jobs that, often as not, a parent or older employee would follow behind, “touching up.”

“Oh, yes,” Leslie recalled, joshing his nephew just a little bit as though the memory was a painful one.

Many, many Marion boys and girls, including among other examples Helping Hand Hardware owner Roger Scheffel, grew up working weekends and summers for the Hilds.

“There’s probably a couple hundred or so over the last 60 years,” Glenn said. “They include a lot of people who grew up in this community.”

Leslie nodded.

“There’s a lot of history here over the years,” he said.

The kids did all the jobs kids do in stores to this day, cleaning, stocking, checking or bagging, and worked with John Hild in the feed business and grain elevator.

“We delivered groceries, too,” Glenn recalled. “A lot of young guys like to do that because you could get out of the store and drive the store truck.”

There were some deliveries the young men were willing to fight over, too.

“There were certain ladies who would have fresh-baked cookies and stuff for you,” Glenn said.

The Hilds are looking forward to beginning a new chapter in their lives.

Leslie is looking forward to “laying low” — which is how he describes being at home a little more than he is now.

“It’s going to be different, but I have other work I want to do yet,” he said. “I’ll miss the store, and I’ll especially miss the people. But I’ll help out, if they need me, in the feed store.”

For Glenn and John Hild, they expect, if anything, to work harder than they have had to — particularly if Leslie is spending a little less time on the job he’s held since 1946.

“Work’s not a problem — work has never scared us,” Glenn said of himself and his brother. “Over time, I’m hoping we can expand our retail down there for things we don’t have enough room for here. We’ll have climate control based on how high you open the doors, and we hope to put a counter up. Later, we’ll relocate a scale down there, but we’ll continue to use this one outside here for the rest of this season.”

Like his uncle, Glenn Hild knows it’ll be different, but he’s ready.

“I’m quite sure when that last evening comes and we turn over the keys, it’s going to be a little emotional,” Glenn said. “I’ve been here since I was five years old, my uncle’s been here 65 years and my dad even longer, if you count his work with the Hicks Company. But I’ve told Super S Foods that on their grand opening day, I want to be their first customer, and I want to have my picture in the newspaper, buying a 12-pack of Bud Light and a ribeye steak.”

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