B&O Cash Store, Everything "From Birth to Death"

An empty stone building fills an entire block in the middle of the farming community of Temple, Oklahoma, which today is dotted with boarded up store fronts and a handful of viable businesses.

Travel back to 1925, the stone building was home to the B&O Cash Store -- a million-dollar enterprise. The town, population 1,200, bustled with shoppers who came by wagon and buggy from north Texas and all of Oklahoma to shop at the B&O.

The history of Temple, anchored by the story of the once-famous B&O Cash Store, will be brought to life at the Temple Museum on the site of a historic blacksmith's shop just a block from the old B&O building.

The Mooney's logo with the jockey's hat and boot flying offsoo appeared throughout the store, on china and advertising across the country.

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Preachers to Marry and Bury

The B&O was the center of life in Temple for almost 50 years. It put the southern Oklahoma town on the map. Owners boasted it supplied everything a person needed "from birth to death."

"We had preachers to help marry the living or to help bury the dead," co-founder Otho Mooney once said.

The B&O was opened in 1906 by brothers Bob and Otho Mooney, who began with $1,300 and 200 square feet of floor space. By 1923, the store took up an entire block with 40,000 square feet. It grossed $1.5 million that year.

Billed ``the biggest country store in the world," the B&O employed a preacher, an undertaker, a doctor, a pharmacist and a milliner among 100 regular employees. The store hired another 100 people during turkey and pecan season.

The Mooneys carried produce, hardware, farm equipment, caskets, candy, furniture, clothing and lumber. They repaired watches, ordered cars and conducted regular auctions. The store bought poultry, grain, pecans and cream from local farmers and shipped it all over the United States in railroad cars.

The B&O catalog, published twice a month, was almost poetic. "Wash frocks, 90 cents, Rockford socks, 11 cents; rayon hose, three pairs for $1; overalls, $1.19," reads a catalog dated Feb. 16, 1930.

	The inside of a creamery. This creamery was either part of the original B&O Cash Store or it was part of the Mooney's store, which the brothers opened across the street several years after selling the B&O.
Photo courtesy of W.A. Yielding.

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Sold to Sears

The Mooneys sold the B&O to Sears, Roebuck and Co. in 1930, making Temple the smallest town to ever have a Sears store. It was known as the Sears B&O until it was closed in 1954 to give way to a Sears 45 miles away in Lawton, Oklahoma.

The Mooney brothers went on to open another successful store called "Mooney's" across the road from the old B&O.

Since Sears closed, parts of the B&O building have been occupied by an auto parts store, a grocery store, a Haggar Slacks factory and gas mask manufacturer, but nothing to rival the success of the country store run by the Mooneys.

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B&O Building Today

	The B&O building still stands today in Temple. It's been used as a factory and for storage. A mural on the front wall depicts the town when the B&O was at its peak.
Photo courtesy Beth Casteel.