| Today it is hard
to believe that the area around the intersection
of Main and D (El Camino Real) once provided
one-stop shopping to the residents of Tustin and
outlying areas. A farmer
could drive into town, park his truck, do his
banking at the First National Bank of Tustin,
buy groceries at one of the several markets,
pick up needed materials such as pipe or nails
at Tustin Hardware, have coffee at the Tustin
Drug Store fountain, and load up a few bales of
alfalfa for his animals along with a couple of
sacks of chicken feed, a few packets of seeds
and some seedlings at Pieper's Feed Store.
John F. Pieper opened the feed
store in 1918 in a one-story building facing D
on the north end of the First National Bank of
Tustin, about where Kelly's gift shop is today.
Pieper, known as Harry by one and all, came to
Tustin in 1910 from Cincinnati, Ohio, with his
fiancée Norma and her parents, Fred and Jennie
Beckman.
He and Norma were married in
February 1915 at a ceremony conducted by the
Rev. McDougal of Tustin Presbyterian Church at
the Beckmans' home. After a honeymoon in San
Francisco, they set up housekeeping in a small
white house on C Street and continued to work at
H. Romer & Co., a general store on Main St owned
by Henry Romer, Norma's uncle. Harry was general
manager and Norma kept the books.
A daughter, Audrey, was born
in May 1916. In 1918 the couple rented the
one-story building attached to the bank and
opened Pieper's Feed Store. Audrey Pieper Forney
remembers that she and her brother Don, who was
born in 1923, thought it was a neat place to
play, with sacks of chicken feed to scramble
over, bales of hay and alfalfa to climb, bins of
dog biscuits, sunflower seeds, rabbit pellets,
salt licks, fertilizers and insecticides,
vegetable and flower seeds, trays of seedlings
ready for planting – everything for the rural
area Tustin was at that time. And always lots of
cats and kittens.
Pieper had a truck scale
constructed beneath the surface of the alley
that ran north and south behind the store. One
of the few licensed scales in the county, it was
used by the Orange County Highway Patrol to
weigh possibly overloaded trucks and trailers.
Pieper was called out at all hours of the night
and paid 50 cents for opening the scale as
Audrey recalls.
The family moved into a larger
home on D Street just south of First shortly
after Audrey was born. In addition to running
the store with Norma in charge of bookkeeping,
Harry was active in groups working for the
betterment of Tustin. He served on the city
council for eight years, 1932 to 1940.
Don, his son, and David,
Audrey's husband, eventually joined him in
working in the store. Norma continued to
operated the store after Harry died from a
coronary in 1946. Don, David and Don, Audrey and
Dave's son, worked with her, helped by family
friends.
Great Western acquired their
building when they purchased the First National
Bank of Tustin in 1959 and moved that operation
into new quarters at the corner of Third and D.
Soon, authorities decided the old Victorian
building was not earthquake safe and the
structure, including Pieper's Feed Store, was
demolished in 1966, ending an era in Tustin
history. |
