OVERBROOK, Kan. –
It’s the first day of July in 2021. The exterior of what used to be O’Bryhim’s Thriftway looks unchanged at first glance.
Time travelers from 1995 (or 1985, or 1975) might whiz by on Maple Street without noticing much at all. The tan metal and brown brick remain the same. The word “Thriftway” is still on the signs. Only a local would notice “O’Bryhim’s” has been replaced by “Overbrook.”
I’m an O’Bryhim. This was partly my store and is partly my story, and the absence of our family name is one I feel in my gut.
The sign is half-true. “Overbrook” is still here: its 1,000 residents live a 30-minute drive northwest to Topeka or northeast to Lawrence. But “Thriftway” is gone. If our time travelers peeked in the window, they would find no groceries. In 2020, five years after my uncle, Cliff O’Bryhim, sold the store, it closed for good.
The loss has been a painful jolt to the residents of Overbrook. It shatters the American small-town idyll of rugged self-sufficiency, forcing residents into dependence on nearby cities for meat and produce. The loss is different to our family, not only for its effect on our lives but also for how it has challenged our idea of who we are.
In the end, it’s natural to think about the beginning: O’Bryhim’s traces its origin to one man’s dream of owning a grocery store.
“That’s all everybody knew, was O’Bryhim’s” says Derrick Dahl, 54, president of The Kansas State Bank in Overbrook.
That’s all we O’Bryhims knew as well.
Waldon O’Bryhim, my great-great-grandfather, owned a creamery in the 1890s that sold groceries. His son Clifford C. O’Bryhim came off the farm in the late 1920s to work for the Farmer’s Union, one of several grocery stores in Overbook at the time.
“In 1932, he opened up his own store. The five stores in town each specialized. My grandfather Clifford specialized in meat,” my uncle Cliff O’Bryhim said.
The tiny store featured a grand total of one aisle and a meat counter in the back. It doubled in size, to two aisles, when Clifford and his wife, Pearl, moved the store to the building next door. Their only child, Scoot, took over operation of the store in 1955 upon Clifford’s death. The third and final iteration of O’Bryhim Thriftway sprang up in 1968. Soon, it was the only grocery store left. Afraid he would suffer the fate of his father and die before he had a chance to retire, Scoot sold the store to his youngest son, Cliff, in 1980. He needn’t have worried: His retirement would last 31 years.
“I worked a year-and-a-half in Kansas City and came back in 1980,” Cliff said. “Scoot was short-handed, and they wanted to take a vacation. I said, ‘I’ll come back and work for the summer.’ Two children and 40 years later — ”
After Cliff sold the store in 2015, Overbrook Thriftway carried on until July in the plague year of 2020. An auction for the store’s fixtures cemented the reality of the loss.
“We always talk about it in the mornings, over coffee. Wishing we had a store,” said Sandy Gustin, a 70-year-old resident of the low-income apartments behind the now-defunct store.
Samuel Scott, 34, is a former vice president of Overbrook’s First Security Bank. He said the closure had particularly impacted low-income residents. Overbrook residents who don’t have transportation, like Gustin, find themselves in a pickle — or, rather, without any.
“Just before I had my stroke, my car blew up. I couldn’t afford to get it fixed. I have to get someone to take me places. … Sometimes it’s hard to get someone to run you down there. I try to get everything I need at one time,” Gustin said.
Still, not everyone in town has someone they can count on for a ride or is comfortable asking for one, local resident Sarah Wilson, 36, said. This makes getting fresh foods a challenge.
Just up Maple, at TJ’s Mainstreet Grill, owner Jane Goodyear said she used to rely on the grocery store to help supply her restaurant. Now, if it’s before 3 p.m., she asks an employee who lives in nearby Carbondale to pick up supplies on the way to work. But if Goodyear needs something after that employee has set off for Overbrook, the restaurant is out of luck — unless Goodyear can find something at Overbrook’s Dollar General.
Sandy Kramer, a vice president at First Security Bank, said the bank preferred to buy supplies in Overbrook rather than out of it and wished a local grocer were still an option. Overbrook’s mayor sympathizes.
“It was pretty devastating for us,” Mayor Jon Brady said. “My wife and I are opening up a bakery and had every intention to buy our materials locally.”
Pat Martin’s laundromat, also on Maple, has seen traffic decline since the store closed. Martin said business was slow. The eighty-five-year-old Overbrook resident doesn’t drive much anymore. Luckily, her son picks up groceries for her.
“Overbrook is a neat town,” Martin said, “and it was a lot neater when it had a grocery.”
Overbrook resident Cheryl Miller owns a wellness retreat that offers a sauna, yoga and lodging. In the past, her guests would go to the Thriftway to stock up for their visit. Now they must shop before they arrive or visit another town during their retreat. It’s less convenient, and visitors from out-of-town miss Overbrook’s charms when they’re forced to venture elsewhere.
Miller worries about lowered real-estate values. She speculates local housing will become harder to sell — a local grocery store is a great if often uncelebrated convenience. Kansas State’s Rural Grocery Initiative agrees. Rural grocery stores, its website says, are community hubs that keep residents in place, attract newcomers and add to the tax base.
“When you look at just the city sales tax, we are down a few percentage points from what we were with a store,” Mayor Brady said, adding that the loss of jobs also rippled through the local economy — as well as decreasing opportunity for young workers looking for their first employment. “Some of those are not costs, but they are a cost to the community.”
Dollar General arrived in Overbrook after the sale of O’Bryhim’s Thriftway. The store’s food inventory is limited: its small-format stores lack a meat counter as well as a produce department. The selection of frozen vegetables and prepackaged lunch meats is limited.
“It’s pretty inadequate,” Scott said. Cliff agrees.
“You walk through there and it’s mostly snacks, chocolate and candy. The packaged foods they have are off the charts in sodium. It is not, for the most part, healthy fare. They carry a few frozen vegetables, but very few,” Cliff said.
For residents who live and work in town and have the means to drive to Carbondale, Lawrence or Topeka once a week, the time-cost of a round trip to a grocery store can be high, Scott says. There are also practical considerations — less obvious costs.
“I end up wasting more food,” Cliff said, “because I end up buying vegetables or fruits, and I don’t get them eaten as quickly because I’m trying to make them last [because] I’m not going back to Lawrence for five days.”
These problems are not unique to Overbrook. According to Kansas State’s Rural Grocery Initiative, 105 grocery stores in the state of Kansas closed between 2008 and 2018. That works out to one store closing in each Kansas county; only half of them have seen a replacement grocer open.
“I don’t think the community realizes the extent of not having a grocery store until they don’t have a grocery store,” Mayor Brady said. “Now, our citizens that don’t drive as much or they can’t get out as much, how do they get good quality food? How does that affect our overall life span and overall health?”
The cat’s out of the bag. The bottle can’t be recorked. What’s done is done. There’s a million ways to say: O’Bryhim’s Thriftway is gone for good.
“Anybody that came in for a donation for a ball team, school district or churches: Cliff never turned anybody down. If you don’t do things to support the community, how can you expect the community to support you?” former O’Bryhim’s Thriftway employee Doug Hermann, 55, said.
Everett Thompson, 77, a longtime Overbrook resident, remembered Cliff would tell him there was no need to visit Walmart if he needed items for a church dinner. Cliff told him O’Bryhim’s would take care of them.
“Our church would always smoke chickens on Palm Sunday. So Cliff would get all these chickens in and then we had a heck of a snowstorm. And he just ate that cost. He never complained to anyone,” Thompson said.
For O’Bryhim’s Thriftway, it was an investment in the community, a chance to give back. There were some things businesses just did, and should do — a series of unspoken expectations and responsibilities inherent to doing business in a small town. It wasn’t noblesse oblige, it was a mixture of corporate citizenship and civic pride.
“For a number of years, we were very successful with brat and burger sales for various organizations. You lose money on it, but something my dad taught me is that you can’t look at everything as a moneymaker. He felt like the downfall of a lot of merchants is that they get greedy. That wasn’t how he operated,” Cliff said.
Overbrook Police Chief Terry Hollingsworth said Cliff was committed to community activities, whether it was donating watermelons to the town’s Fourth of July celebration, helping out with the police department’s first-responder showcase or letting Girl Scouts hawk cookies in front of his store when he had his own cookies to sell.
When a customer walked into O’Bryhim’s Thriftway, they would see their friends, family and neighbors ringing up their sale, sacking their groceries, cutting their meat or stocking the shelves. Most importantly, it was an opportunity for their children to learn the value of work. Local high school kids would bag your groceries and carry them out to your car, Derrick Dahl, a local banker, said.
“Both my kids worked at the store for Cliff before they went to college and learned a lot of good work ethic, provided a good opportunity to deal with the public and work on those intangible skills you don’t get by sitting behind a computer,” Mayor Brady said.
Cliff employed about a thousand people over the course of his 30 years owning the store — that’s the total population of Overbook today. Most years he employed 30 people, 10 to 12 of whom were full-time. A half-dozen of those 30 were typically high school kids. Cliff also discovered that many local mothers needed work as well.
“There were young mothers out there, and you have to be very flexible, who want to work but sometimes can only work between 9 a.m. and when school gets out. It wasn’t uncommon to have three or four workers with young families,” Cliff said.
Cliff understood that a medium-sized store like O’Bryhim’s Thriftway could never stock the variety of specialty items that his customers might find at Walmart, Dillons or Whole Foods. The store responded by focusing on service. Chief Hollingsworth and Sandy Gustin both said Cliff would try to find whatever they needed. If you lived in the apartments behind the store, his employees would carry out your groceries and sit them on your kitchen counter.
“We knew we could go in there and Cliff would say, ‘It’s either here or we’ll get it for you,’” Everett Thompson said.
Sometimes it took a little prodding, but Cliff’s employees figured out that service was king.
“I asked some kid who was working there about a certain kind of ice cream. ‘Oh, we’re out.’ Cliff happened to be within earshot, because he was always in earshot of all of the conversations happening there. Cliff sent him back and made him look, and he actually came out with it,” Chief Hollingsworth said.
Doug Hermann remembers serving as a de facto telephone operator for the town of Overbrook. The store’s phone would ring and the caller might want to know when the post office opened. Hermann educated himself on what was happening around town because the customers learned to expect O’Bryhim’s Thriftway to be an information clearinghouse.
And if they weren’t calling, they were coming to hang out in person. Chief Hollingsworth considered O’Bryhim’s Thriftway the social gathering place for Overbrook.
“We hung our hat on that,” Cliff said.
Even though the store was dwarfed in size by its larger urban competitors, O’Bryhims Thriftway used technology to try to even the playing field. Cliff’s father, Scoot, had an electronic scale in the meat department before most grocers. They were the second store in Kansas to put in a scanning system to read now-ubiquitous bar codes. Cliff instituted a loyalty card before loyalty cards were cool. They even got into video rental when it became a viable option.
And yet…
O’Bryhim’s Thriftway is no more. A little piece of Overbrook’s American Dream has slipped away.
“I just never thought it would ever happen. I thought Cliff would be there forever, like Grandpa. At the time I was there, Brad and Chad were young enough, I thought they’d get into it. Once I got older and knew they might have their own plans, I still didn’t think twice about Cliff not doing it,” said Beccy Bucci, 54, who lives in Rochester, N.Y.
Beccy is my first cousin, the eldest daughter of my aunt Pam. All through high school and part of college, she’d spend the entire summer in Overbrook, working for our Uncle Cliff at O’Bryhim’s Thriftway. The Brad and Chad she’s referring to are Cliff’s two sons.
“But I mean, retail stinks. I think about the holidays. Trucks coming in. The hours were horrible, especially if you have a family. So I totally understood him trying to get out and try something different and relax a little bit. I was happy for him but sad for the rest of us,” Beccy said.
Every Monday and Thursday, every week of the year, Cliff would greet the truck from Associated Wholesale Grocers as it pulled into the store at 5 a.m.
“Until somebody owns their own business, they don’t have a clue what it’s like,” said Marsha McKee, an 80-year-old former store employee.
In 1955, Cliff’s father Scoot took over the store after Clifford C. O’Bryhim had a heart attack and died. It wasn’t supposed to go that way. Scoot had been living in California, working for a yearbook company. He did plan to come home to Overbrook, but not to run the store. He had secured a job as postmaster.
And in 1980, when Cliff came back to Overbrook to help out, he never left.
“I kind of felt like he fell backward into the grocery industry because he didn’t know what to do after graduation,” says Brad O’Bryhim, Cliff’s eldest son.
When Cliff went to college, he didn’t see that life in his future. Neither did my father, Michael O’Bryhim, Cliff’s big brother.
“I think I saw the life father had and I thought ‘I don’t want that.’ By the time I went to college, I had no desire to do it,” said Michael, who’s 74 and lives in Wichita.
My aunt, Pam O’Bryhim, Cliff and Mike’s older sister, passed on it as well.
“Scoot did offer all of us the opportunity to continue in the business: Mike, me and Cliff. Cliff was the only one that had the interest,” she said.
The dream of owning a grocery store came from Clifford C. O’Bryhim all the way back in 1932. But Scoot and Cliff picked up that dream and carried it on their backs for 60 years. Clifford C.’s dream put six people through college. It fed a town for 83 years.
What would Scoot think of all this?
“I think he would be disappointed there wasn’t a grocery store in Overbrook, but I think he would have understood why the O’Bryhims weren’t running it,” Pam said.
Brad and Chad O’Bryhim worked at the store alongside their father throughout their teenage years. As a boy, Chad never knew much about what his friends’ parents did for a living. But everyone knew what his father did. It became an easy identity to latch onto. But it wasn’t his dream.
“I don’t think I ever seriously thought buying the store, or owning it, is predetermined or destined. In my mind it was, ‘Oh, Brad will do it, but it’s probably not my job,’” said Chad, 34, who now lives an hour away in Lenexa.
Early in life, Brad knew it wasn’t his journey either. Neither of Cliff’s sons ever felt any pressure to run the family business.
“[Dad] did it because it was a labor of love. He loved Overbrook,” Brad said, “And he loved the store. I don’t think any of us realized how much energy it took to run the store.”
Despite the hard work, physical demands and long hours, Cliff passed that love down to his sons.
“Anytime we are traveling somewhere, I want to look inside grocery stores: how they are laid out, what their prices are and what their services are. My wife thinks I’m a total weirdo,” Chad said.
The 1980s brought abundance to the independent grocers in Kansas. The Kansas Food Dealers’ convention drew 200 store owners and their spouses. A young Jay Leno entertained the crowd in the evening. By the late 1990s, so many grocers had gone out of business, the group discontinued its conventions, Cliff says.
Over time, the business became more price-driven than customer-driven. People cared a little less about whether you said hello and a lot more about a cheap price. Still, Cliff never felt terribly threatened by Walmart. He made sure he mirrored prices on popular items and provided what today would be breathlessly marketed as “concierge service.”
“Our philosophy was to identify 20 top-selling items and you bite the bullet and match the price,” Cliff says.
But economies of scale harness compelling business vectors. Throughout his tenure at the store, Cliff geared himself to acquire additional stores. Increasing quantities purchased decreases unit costs and helps keep prices competitive. He moved pieces around the chessboard to facilitate future expansion. And it almost happened. Four times he closed in on deals. Once, he even bought land. There was talk of Chad running one of the stores.
“For a minute there, I thought Chad would fall into the same place that dad did,” Brad said.
But the expansion never panned out. By the 2010s, Cliff began to think about retirement in lieu of doubling his workload.
“I probably wasn’t making quite as much money, but the money was still pretty good. I didn’t sell because of that. I left the business because I had a buyer. I was in my late 50s and knew I wanted to retire sometime in my 60s,” Cliff said.
His business concerns morphed from the myriad details of expansion to wondering whether he could find a buyer.
“It didn’t take long to figure out the number of buyers lining up to buy a grocery store in Overbrook, Kansas, was far fewer than people gave Overbrook credit for,” Chad said.
So when a buyer actually came forward, Cliff sold the store.
“It’s a very hard job. Blood, sweat, and tears for that grocery store in that town. He should feel no guilt whatsoever for doing everything he could to keep that store afloat,” Brad said.
With the help of Kansas State’s Rural Grocery Initiative, the city of Overbrook is attempting to lure a store back to town. A local committee is studying the data from a survey that indicates the people of Overbrook would shop at a local grocery store with produce and meat. Mayor Brady and the city have been in touch with grocery wholesalers to better understand the next steps.
“The data says [Overbrook residents] are willing to pay a higher price if they know they can get the item and it’s a good quality item. We believe that if we can produce that, people will buy,” he said.
Options include a privately-owned store, a public-private partnership or a cooperative concept. A local couple, Curtis and Dawn Gragg, have indicated an interest in starting a grocery store focused on meat, produce and locally-made products.
Will a grocery store return to Overbrook? Cliff, Chad, Doug Hermann and Gerry Coffman all agree that the odds are slim. The city is determined to make it happen, but even if they fail, Cliff thinks Overbrook will survive.
“Absolutely. There’s only a 20-to-25-minute commute to Topeka, we have TJ’s and a new Mexican restaurant, there’s a new dog groomer, there will be a coffee shop soon, a very good school system, a $1.5 million library that has anything any city library would ever have. I think we’ll get a florist back,” he said.
Doug Hermann is less optimistic. I asked him what would create a turnaround for Overbrook:
“If the store said ‘O’Bryhim’s Thriftway’ again.”
My gut told me that this store belonged to me and the rest of the O’Bryhims. As a boy, for several summers, my mom would drive me from our home in Wichita to Emporia, where Grandpa Scoot and Grandma Kay would pick me up and take me the rest of the way to Overbrook. I cleaned tar off the floor. I bagged groceries and carried them out to customers’ cars. I stocked shelves. I spilled an entire case of glass mustard jars on the floor. Even though I did these things somewhat lackadaisically (except for the mustard; I did that with great poise), my gut told me this place, in small part, belonged to me. Or perhaps that I belonged to it.
When I heard that Cliff was selling the store, it shocked me. No O’Bryhim’s Thriftway? Unthinkable. When I would visit Overbrook from my hometown of Wichita, I’d usually enter through the back door of the store. If an employee looked at me funny, I’d flash a smile and say, “Cliff’s my uncle.” Membership, as they say, has its privileges.
What I felt wasn’t a mistake, but it wasn’t entirely accurate, either. Sure, in some figurative way, by virtue of my last name, I had an emotional stake in O’Bryhim’s Thriftway. But Clifford C.’s dream didn’t pass on to me. It passed on to Scoot and then to Cliff. They lugged that hefty weight around for 60 years. They grew to love it the way people with impossibly hard jobs tend to: they served it. And it, in turn, served them.
Scoot and Cliff were lifers; I was part-time help. I carried boxes, but I never bore any of the real burden. I never sacrificed things I loved for the store. I didn’t earn a place there. The chance to be a small part of it was a blessing bestowed upon our entire family by Uncle Cliff, Grandpa Scoot and Great-Grandpa Clifford. Me, my brother Brendan, and each of my elder cousins, Beccy, Tobi and Callie, had the good fortune to be invited by Cliff to come spend part of our summers working at the store. To be sure, each of us is better for it. There’s nothing wrong with finding a measure of fulfilment in another’s dream. There’s nothing wrong in learning about yourself in the context of upright and decent men. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with the pang of regret that comes from a good thing fading away.
O’Bryhim’s Thriftway, like, I presume, scores of other little grocery stores in rural towns, really belonged to the community. But the onus of real ownership and the warm feeling of family pride are two different things that I owe the respect of considering separately; both matter. The practical and physical loss felt by the people of Overbrook stands alongside the emotional vacuum felt by my family. We were impacted differently. Still, we share at least one thing in common: We all hope others will benefit from a grocery store in Overbrook again — someday.