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Warrenton Old Feed
Granny McCormick’s Yard
Four Generations
BY LOU CHRISTINE
Roadside signage often has the mind wondering, just what happens there, as we pass by properties. Over twenty-years-ago, when first viewing the Granny McCormick’s Yard’s sign on the brown-stained, wood-framed building on State Highway 237, in Warrenton, I peered deeper to the back of the property, taking in a more stately, white structure, a family home. I figured, that must be Granny McCormick’s real home me imagining a Whistler’s-mother-type rocking on a porch chair as she knitted away.
Facts are the McCormicks have occupied that property for over four generations. Betsy and husband Bobby reside on the homestead these days, it being the very house Betsy was raised in. Betsy provided me background about the Warrenton location. The front building was once a General Store named G. A. Alhrichs. The owner operator was shot dead by an intruder, and after that tragic incident, Betsy’s grandparents took over the property.
As the twice-a-year, Warrenton-Round Top experience blossomed, local land-owners began permitting dealers to place their goods in the front of their properties for a nominal fee, to sell to the folks coming and going from the bigger established antique shows up the hi-way in Round
Top. The McCormicks, especially Betsy’s mother, Bernitta, began accommodating dealers looking for a spot on the highway.
Fast forward to today, it’s Betsy, who once owned a jewelry store in La Grange, McCormick’s Gold Works—now closed—who has been honchoing the show for some years. Even though the McCormick Show is not one of those behemoth venues, there’s quality in them there stalls. McCormick hosts about 15 dealers, most of them for years, who by now, are considered family?
Betsey has witnessed all the changes, knows the drama, and has taken in with grains of salt the many opinions blabbered about from such growth. She says it’s hard to separate fact from fiction at times. No real gripes from
