The old building with the big porch at 4923 Old Lemay Ferry Road that served for decades as a grocery store and tavern in Imperial may soon have a new life.
Several businesses have operated there over the years, including Breezy Heights, El Chaparral and Sally’s Place, and the current owner, Robert Harry, is planning to launch a new business there in 2017, although he’s not quite ready to talk about it.
Carol Riebold, 75, whose mother once owned the building, however, is willing to talk about what it was in years gone by.
“It was my home until I was about 5, and it was my grandparents’ residence. They lived above the store,” Riebold said.
Her grandfather, Frank Schwalbert Jr., the grandson of a Prussian immigrant, built the place. He bought the property from his brother George and began working on a one-story building in 1911, making a store in the front portion and living quarters in the back. The building would also include a tavern. He called it Breezy Heights.
“It was at the top of a hill, and it was breezy up there,” Reibold said.
Frank had married a neighbor, Henrietta “Yeta” Ehlers, three years earlier. As the children came along, Frank built another story on the house and added a barn. He and his wife, Henrietta, had five children – four boys and one girl.
“The girl (Alma) was my mother,” Riebold said.
The store sold everything – fruit, vegetables, canned goods, meat, even bottles of medicine that were sold to local doctors, until one day the federal agents arrived and cleared the shelves.
They said “that he could no longer sell the drugs he carried … that the doctors will now have to get them somewhere else” (because) there was a new law, Riebold wrote in the book Jefferson County History and Families.
When cars became a frequent sight along Old Lemay Ferry Road, Frank put in two gas pumps and a kerosene pump. During the summer, Frank began trucking farmers’ produce to the market in St. Louis.
“I remember one farmer would bring 10 bushels of potatoes, another would bring corn and whatever various produce they were growing,” Riebold said.
She said the exchange her grandparents had with the neighbors gave her a real sense of community.
“It was a treat to be upstairs on the porch and hear how they had a good day. There was a warmth and affection about it.”
In the winter, Frank delivered groceries, she said.
On one such delivery, in 1938, he found residents at a local home for the blind had been left alone in a cold house and were desperately trying to build a fire in a stove, Riebold said.
The caretaker, a woman, was mentally unbalanced, Riebold added.
“Frank had gone to the county seat many times to complain on how the people were being treated, and thought they might burn the place down, so he brought all of them home,” Riebold wrote.
There were 14 of them.
Riebold said some of the people’s families came to get them, but Frank eventually received permission from the state to become the caretaker for the seven who remained as boarders with the Schwalberts, and they stayed there until the day each of them died. The last boarder, Andy, died in the early 1960s.
“They were awesome people and became part of our family,” Riebold said. “As a child, I thought all older people had blind people living with them,” she said.
Alma and her husband, Harold Paul, eventually purchased Breezy Heights from her parents, and Frank and Henrietta and the boarders moved out. In 1942, the Pauls bought a beer distributing company, which is still in the family today, Riebold said. A few years later, the Pauls moved out of the house, and the Schwalberts and their tenants moved back in. Frank and Henrietta lived there for the rest of their lives.
“The grocery store lasted until the bigger grocery stores started moving into the area,” Reibold said.
The tavern, which at one time was called El Chaparral, remained and continued to thrive.
Alma eventually sold it to her godchild and cousin, Sally (Schwalbert) Harry, in about 1980, and sometime after that, the business became known as Sally’s Place. Then, Sally Harry ran the establishment until her death in 2009. Her son, Rick, then took over for another year and closed the business in 2010.
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