Grayson County TXGenWeb

Stephenson Grocery
Laverne Stephenson is 3rd from right, standing with his hand on his hip.
Last man on the right with a partial view & his arm extended: Abe Cox

Comments from Collinsville Memories Facebook page:

Laverne Stephenson took over the family store and ran the grocery store until retirement. He had a meat locker and kept his baloney and pressed ham in big rolls of meat. He had a machine that would slice off whatever amount you wanted. In the latter years of the store's existence, the floor was warped and had cracks between the boards. If you dropped some change on the floor there was a good chance it would fall through a crack and be lost. I understand that when the floor was torn out and repaired, there was a lot of money found that had fallen through the cracks. Laverne was a very mild mannered man, almost a recluse, but always ready to help anyone that was struggling to put food on the family table. One funny thing I remember is that Collinsville had 2 or 3 what we now call alcoholics and Collinsville being dry, they didn't have access to their needed booze. So they would go into the store and buy bottles of Vanilla extract. The size of the bottle they bought depended on how much money they had. They would buy the extract, walk outside, drink it and then walk to the east to the end of the building, where there was an old part of a shed left with an opening and throw the bottles inside. I know this for a fact because I have seen all the bottles personally.

Something else that I learned about is that Laverne Stephenson was very fast and won 1st place in the 100 yard dash in the State finals. I don't know what year this was. Lee Scoggins said there used to be an old picnic ground just west of Ethel and they had foot races there. He told me there was a lot of betting that went on and people from other communities would bring contestants to participate. Lee said that as far as he knew Laverne never lost a race.