"Going to Gobler": Before There was Walmart, There was "Missouri's Most Famous Country Store"

When I was a little girl, growing up in the bootheel of Missouri, I loved to hear the words, "We're going to Gobler."  Gobler Merchantile Company was a central location of commerce in southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas from 1937 until 1956 and its success was nothing short of amazing.

Just a visit to the store was quite an event for a young girl.  I remember a huge (today, it might be called humongous) building that had grown from 30x60 corrugated tin structure containing $900 worth of merchandise.  It had grown into multiple buildings by the 1950's, housing everything needed by the farmers who were its main customers -- groceries, housewares, farm implements, hoes and other tools, and space for new departments and lines of merchandise.  According to Virginia Branch, who has written a tribute to Gobler Merchantile, it eventually covered about five acres and contained a grocery store and meat market, drug center and dry goods section, furniture, housewares, and hardware departments, a restaurant, television shop and lumber yards.

People came from miles around to Gobler; cars were often parked on both sides of the highway for almost a mile distant on the county line road.  Entertainment was scheduled to attract even more customers, which included the Slim Rhodes show and other fairly well known country and gospel performers.  Many families planned their Saturday afternoons around a 4:00 prize drawing.  Later, a drawing for a car brought the largest number of shoppers in Gobler's history.

Gobler Mercantile's popularity was largely due to business partner and proprietor, Dennye Mitchell, who was primarily responsible for building the store from one small structure to what was larger than many "superstores" today.  Its reputation also grew when Mitchell began advertising on KBOA radio in Kennett, Missouri; thousands of households regularly tuned in to "Old Camp Meeting Time" while eating their breakfasts and heard what the 18-wheeler trucks had recently delivered to "Missouri's Most Famous Country Store."

My stepmother told me that there was also a smoke-filled night spot called the B&B Club in Gobler, to which young couples in the area would go for entertainment.  Elvis Presley performed there twice early in his career.

The shortcut from my home in Kennett to Memphis took me by Gobler during my years of driving back and forth to the University of Memphis (then Memphis State).  There was nothing to remind me of Gobler Merchantile and the time I spent there because Missouri's Most Famous Country Store burned to the ground in 1956.  Today, the farm community has a population of fewer than 300.

If you happen to drive north of Blytheville on Highway NN, you may recognize the little town by "The Soul Shack", Ragins Salvage Yard and Trucking, or the Gobler Baptist Church.  Nothing remains of Gobler Merchantile.  If you stop and listen carefully, though, you may hear the country and gospel performers, The Slim Rhodes Show, or even Elvis himself entertaining hundreds of people there..  You may also hear the children, the young couples, and the old farmers sharing the excitement, their voices celebrating that special weekly event, "Going to Gobler."

Photographs of Gobler Merchantile and Virginia Branch's entire tribute, as well as a history of KBOA and its assocation with Gobler, by Joe Bankhead, are available on KBOA's website.