in the hands of the communities
where they are located. “I think as
long as people want to deal with
family businesses, they’ll be around,”
Judy said, adding she receives regular
calls from customers who choose to
buy locally. “I’m sure they need the
chains (stores) and all, and there’s
a place for that,” Judy said. “But I
think as long as you can offer, to
quote City Pharmacy, ‘service the
chains can only dream about,’ we’ll
be around.” Well, that’s a pleasant
vision, but at 58 years old, how long
can Texas Butane keep running? “You
know I see a sixth generation taking
over one of these days,” Judy said.
“Actually, they’re already working
in the business. The two youngest
members of our family are already
working here. They pose for our
company calendar and we pay them
for doing it too.”
Mary Kemp and Leon Tanner with their Nebo Valley Press history books
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
moved in for the jobs. You begin to
see that it’s not the old Weatherford
we were raised in.” Morris said the
county’s business emphasis has
moved from agriculture to industrial
to retail, where it rests now, claiming some family-owned businesses as
casualties of progress. “Years ago, the
old Carter-Ivey Hardware store was
the hub of everything going on,” he
said. “Those stores are gone.
“I suppose you have to have a
balance of both (chain and familyowned stores). I know you could
walk into the Carter-Ivey store and if
you needed something, a certain bolt
or a certain tool, the clerk would go
right back there and get it for you.
Now you have to go find it yourself.
The volume of items they have in
the stores now is so great, you have
to go hunt for it. I kind of miss that
hometown feel.” Judy says there are
very real benefits to dealing with
locally-owned entrepreneurs. “We
can make decisions overnight to
change,” she said. “We don’t have
to go through a corporation to see if
we can make a change, or to make
a donation, anything like that.” Both
Morris and Judy said the futures of
family-owned businesses are largely
JANUARY 2016
“It’s worked out real well. Everybody
knows their jobs and we all pull
together when something goes
wrong. You can count on them. You
can count on family.“
But, how do you meld non-family
members into a small business? “Our
employees, to us, are like family,
too,” Judy said citing as an example a
woman who has worked in the store
office since V.E. Kemp, Jr. died nearly
17 years ago. “She took care of
Daddy,” Judy said. “He didn’t talk or
walk for nine years. When he passed
away, we thought, ‘what are we
gonna do with Janie?’ She’d turned
into family. She moved right up here
into this office and she was here for
15 years. They’re just family, even if
they’re not family.” With the changing commercial face of Weatherford,
the Whites see the value of their new
corporate neighbors, but they don’t
plan on changing the way they do
business.
“The box stores and several new
banks have come in,” Morris pointed
out. “There has been a cosmetic
change here in the last 15 years or
so. With those stores and big corporations that have come in, so have
the jobs. A lot of new people have
History Books and Harmony
Mary Kemp had been looking for
a partner to work with her on book
writing projects. She also needed
help identifying some photos taken
when she was a child. She sent letters
and emails in an effort to connect to
someone from that time.
The last time she had heard from
her childhood friend Leon Tanner,
he’d been living in California. But it
was Leon who answered her inquiry.
He was able to identify one of the
children in a photo that included
Mary. That mystery child was Leon.
The ranch the Kemps had
purchased in 1975 had been in
Leon’s family for more than a century. But of course, Mary knew that,
but it was just one more common
interest the two of them shared.
Leon also had a great grandfather
who signed the Parker’s petition in
1855, alongside Mr. McDonald.
Turns out that Tanner had been
looking for someone to work with
him, to help bring the concept of
his book into reality. The two old
friends began working together and
eventually partnered in writing a
book that was based on a collection
of diaries by Tanner’s father, called A
Parker County Cowboy; other books
followed.
Together, the partners produced
half a dozen books about Parker
29