After three generations and nearly 90 years in El Rito, Martin’s General Store will close Aug. 31, owner Greg Martin said Monday.
“This store has been part of my life as long as I can remember,” Martin said. “Me and my brother and sister worked here. But things have been slow. It’s tough for mom and pop stores these days. I’d been thinking about it for a couple of years but finally decided three months ago. It wasn’t an easy decision. I had very mixed emotions and sleepless nights.”
El Rito residents will have to drive 20 or so miles to Bode’s Store in Abiquiú or even farther to stores in Española for groceries and gas, customers said.
“It’s going to be a big problem, a big change,” El Rito native Pete Archuleta said. “It’s gonna affect everybody. Here to Española is 35 miles. El Llano (Mercantile in El Rito) doesn’t have gas and only very little groceries. This is our only store. It’s been here my whole life.”
As Genera Archuleta spoke to Martin about the store’s closure, her granddaughter Flor, 2, quietly examined Martin’s selection of candies.
“It will completely change our lives,” Genera Archuleta said. “We have grandkids. We can’t shop at El Llano with the kids because they sell liquor there and have a bar there.”
The store is a community gathering place and landmark, other customers said.
“It feels like a death in the community,” part-time El Rito resident Wendy Bucklin said Monday, pointing at the tin ceiling panels. “Those date back to the early 1900s. (The store) has been an amazing fixture in the community.”
Martin’s grandfather George Martin had come to El Rito in 1911 to run the Spanish-American Normal School, which was opened to train English-speaking teachers for country schools and eventually became Northern New Mexico College, Martin said. After leaving his position as school superintendant and briefly moving to Colorado, George Martin returned with his family to help run the store.
“My grandfather George Martin started the store,” Martin said. “I’m not too good on the history but he and another guy, John Sargent, started the store in the 1920s.”
The original store fell victim to ethnic tensions, Martin said.
“It was across the street,” Martin said of his family’s store. “But it burned in the 1930s, I forget what year. It was arson.”
Hispanic residents opposed to the arrival of Anglo businessmen in El Rito were rumored to have formed a vigilante group that sent messages by fire. Asked if the arson of the original store was attributed at the time to the group, which some say was called the “mano negra,” Martin nodded and said only, “That’s what I understand.”
He declined to comment further on the arson.
“The people up here have been good to the store and my family for many years,” Martin said.
After the fire, Martin’s father moved the store into its current home, an adobe built in 1912, Martin said.
“I dunno what the building was before that,” Martin said. “I should know that but I don’t.”
When his father Tom Martin died in 1974, Greg Martin left college in Albuquerque and returned home to take over the store.
“I met my wife Josephine at UNM,” Martin said of his spouse of 33 years. “I drug her up here and she helped me run the store.”
Martin stopped allowing customers to buy on credit “almost completely” about two years ago, he said.
Asked if customers were failing to pay off their tabs, he winced.
“It was because it was tying up money, was all,” Martin said after a pause. “A lot of customers have credit cards nowadays, more so than four or five years ago.”
But that was Martin being kind, some customers said.
“He would always give people credit,” El Rito resident Pauline Barros said. “The store’s always done that and it was fine in the old days, with the older generation. But the younger generations wouldn’t pay him back. They would buy gas on credit and drive to Española to spend their money at other stores instead of paying him back.”
The store’s schedule hasn’t been easy on Martin either. Since 1974, the store has been open six days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Martin said.
“It’s just been a lot of hours,” Martin said. “It ties you down and I’m not getting any younger.”
Corporate Rivals
The store’s front windows serve as a community bulletin board. A shelf along the southern wall holds softball and basketball trophies from El Rito teams.
Martin paused periodically to speak with customers in an easy mix of English and Spanish.
Some of his Spanish he picked up as a child, stocking shelves in the store, Martin said. But while his grandfather came to El Rito to teach English, Martin went to the University of New Mexico in the 1970s to study Spanish.
“Kind of ironic,” Martin said.
Martin’s grandmother was a nurse and midwife, Martin said.
“It would take her a full day to get to Española by car back then,” Martin said. “The roads are better now.”
But better roads are part of the problem for country stores, Martin said.
“People are pretty mobile now,” Martin said. “That’s changed over the years. Thirty miles to Wal-Mart is nothing so we’ve turned into a convenience store, basically.”
Michael Garcia owns El Llano Mercantile, El Rito’s only other general store.
“The (Family) Dollar store in Hernandez has hurt us,” Garcia said. “It’s only 20 miles away and it’s hurt business in El Rito because a lot of people stop there on their way home. We can’t compete with the Wal-Mart Super Center either. They buy everything in bulk. Business has slowed down.”
Like Martin, Garcia inherited his store, and grew up stocking its shelves as a boy.
“There were four general stores in El Rito at one time,” Garcia said. “Down Placitas three miles, there was one. It and the Loma Country Store closed in the 1960s or 1970s.”
El Llano stopped selling gasoline a decade ago, leaving Martin’s as the only gas station in El Rito, Garcia said.
“(Losing) the gas will be a bad deal for the farmers in El Rito,” Bucklin said. “The other thing is hardware.”
There are not many country stores left in Northern New Mexico anymore, Martin said, ticking off the list on one hand.
“The Garcia’s (El Llano store) has been here forever,” Martin said. “There’s Tafoya’s in Truchas, Oliver’s in Ojo Caliente, Bode’s in Abiquiú, even though it’s not Karl (Bode)’s anymore.”
In the last couple of years the Family Dollar chain has moved into Chimayó and Hernandez. Neither store has driven out businesses yet. Two locally owned general stores still operate in Chimayó, and Montoya’s in Hernandez shut down prior to Family Dollar’s opening. Nevertheless, country stores do not have the buying power of corporate chain stores, said Orlando Martinez, who owns OM general store in Chimayó.
“One little store versus 7,000 like Family Dollar,” Martinez said, referring to the corporate chain that opened in Chimayó last year. “You know, it’s very hard. I started my store 48 years ago and should be smart like Martin and hang it up. But I’m not really worried about the Family Dollar store (in Chimayo) because I’m still doing pretty good after a year with that competition, because my store’s a different set-up. We sell hardware and building materials, plumbing. The store itself isn’t doing the greatest but we’re fine.”
No Plans
Pausing to look around his store, Martin nodded at a mounted elk head that stands guard over the store’s meat locker from the back wall. The elk’s left antler has a large hole in it.
“Somebody was partying in our parking lot about a year ago and shot the elk through the window,” he said, chuckling. “It nearly took the antler off and I’m glad it didn’t. They couldn’t even kill a dead one.”
The store always employed two or three local people, Martin said, standing in front of photographs of George Lucero, who worked at the store for 30 years.
“George was more like a brother to me than an employee,” Martin said.
Employees tend to stay with the store for a long time, Martin said. Angel Manzanares has worked at the store for 14 years and Julie Gallegos for 10 years, Martin said.
Martin hopes somebody will buy and revive the store, but he will not hand it down to his children, who moved to Albuquerque a decade ago.
His daughter Victoria is a lawyer, his son Anthony is a firefighter.
“I’ll have to get a real job now,” Martin, 58, said with a sad grin. “I’ll stay here in El Rito. Except for three years at UNM, I’ve been here all my life. I love El Rito. I’ll take a month for home projects and then collect wood for winter.”
The store will close without a community party or send-off, Martin said.
“We’ll probably do something quiet,” Martin said. “That’s just how I am.”