A Day in Yoakum

Gee, we have not been in Yoakum for some time, so we decided to make the trip a few days ago.  The weather was iffy, but we decided to go anyway.

We arrived in Yoakum about 11 am, just in time to hunt for the best café.  Earlier, we picked H & H Café, not knowing that we had been there before, some years ago.  Well, it looked just the same.  We had a smoked meat sandwich and sat for awhile and enjoyed watching the locals come in for lunch.  It turned out to be the best place in town, confirmed by the many who chose to have lunch there.

Then we found the tourist bureau and chatted with the young lady who was staffing the place for the day.  She had lots of good answers for all our questions, like where is the local gun shop, and where might we buy a good cup of coffee. We chatted about a lot of topics, but one caught my ear.  Nearby is a town spelled Hochheim.  She says the local pronunciation is Ho heim.  Obviously a german name, and the germans would have said hoke heim.

 Coffee was good, but it was not a Starbucks (thanks for that) but at a Tiger Tote Exxon Station.

Yoakum downtown area is a bit unusual in that it has a great number of what look like old warehouses alongside the track that goes through the center of town.  Most are vacant now, but must have been for the shipping of tomatoes decades ago.  The only remaining aspect of the tomato business is their annual TomTom Festival, in June.

Found a good antiques store (we should be selling not buying) not far from the Café.  It was called the St. Regis Antique store, named after the name of the hotel which once occupied this building.  Bought four brass book stands for $1 each---a safe buy as they are worth more than that at the Green Guy recycling center.

The lady at the tourist office confirmed that the outlet store at Sweet Home was still in business, so we started planning on swinging by there on the way home.  We stopped at the local gunshop, a nice one, named Harley's Guns.  He said his business was really down, not sure why.

Here is a down-the-street photo of the café:

Then, off to Sweet Home, where there is not only a leather outlet store, but a oneroom elementary school.

Here's the school, perhaps not just one room, but close.

I like their sign!

From here, we went to the leather shop and bought a few things we needed like replacement wallets and purses, all at low prices for sure. Sent one to Art for his birthday gift.

Asked about the building with several cars in the lot in front of it, she said it was a saddle making shop.

Here is the front of the saddle shop building.

 I walked into the building through one of the big open doors seen here in the photo.  This was the storage area for all their raw materials for making saddles.  Then moved to the left inside the building where I found the supervisor.  He was born in SH and had been making saddles since 1980.  The shop is a model of neatness and well organized.  They produce custom saddles for use in tournaments and rodeos.  The shop is a Larry Coats saddle shop.

The building is marked valenti on the top with dates of 1901 and 1913.  The supervisor told me that the building portion on the left was a mercantile store and recalled that he visited this store with his dad when he was a small child.  The building also housed a bank at one time, and the vault is still there.

Must return to this for more information.