Image provided by: Texas A&M University
About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 28, 1986)
Antique stores in Calvert carry a wide variety of mer chandise, including home furnishings (left), clothing (above) and items such as spurs (above right) for people with more rustic tastes. continued from p.8 tic Victorian towns left in Tex as.” Anderson, whose husband is seventh-generation Calvert, opened the town’s first antique store, The Boll Weevil, 20 years ago. “I started it for something to do, really,” she says. “I just grew up with antiques and studied them in school.” The Boll Weevil is now one of the more upscale shops in town, specializing in 18th and 19th century porcelains, and antique and estate jewelry. Housed in a cavernous, faux Art Deco theatre, the collection is, as Anderson understates, “ex tremely large.” The Anderson’s also own and operate nearby Posh Country, a tea room/antique store and Cal vert’s answer to a fern-bar. .Lockhart says restaurants like Posh Country show how much the town has changed in the last few years. “A few years ago, Gov. Clem ents came here to buy antiques for his home,” she says. “I think they were kind of embarassed because they had to take him to Dairy Queen for lunch.” Lockhart says the town has grown in prosperity, if not pop ulation. There’s now one bank, four convenience stores and six restaurants if you include the Dairy Queen. But in order for the city to really grow, Lockhart says the town has to figure out a way to keep its young people around. “There’s nothing for young people here,” she says. “The ones with any gumption leave.” She says that, like in the olden days, most businesses are family owned and operated which, unfortunately, makes getting a job nearly impossible in Calvert. It may also have pre served the town’s ambiance which, in turn, is attracting tourists. “It probably became an an tique town because it didn’t change,” Lockhart says. “That’s just what it became.” Anderson agrees that the passed-by quality of the town has contributed to its success as an antique center. Coupled with the fact that the town has never encouraged strangers to move in, Calvert has kept its Victorian feel, she adds. “This whole town was in sort of a time capsule,” Anderson says. “They (the residents) didn’t want or encourage any one to move in. The same buildings that were here in the c 80s and £ 90s were still here in the c 30s and c 40s.”