Mock's Grocery in Dobbin to close by week’s end
By Jay R. Jordan
 

“Wal-Mart came in, Brookshire Brothers came in and then other stores. Everybody took a piece of the pie,” Mickey Mock said. “… Here in the last two years, it was about $2,200 a month in credit card fees. We didn’t have any of that before.”

The store was originally about a half-mile away when the Mocks’ parents originally set up shop in 1942. Mary Mock, the two brothers’ mother, opened up a small gas station, filling up people’s tanks as their father Leo Mock ran dump trucks.

A few years later, Mary and Leo Mock rented a larger building near the railroad crossing and began selling “everything that Wal-Mart sells,” according to a personal account provided by Mickey Mock. Dobbin residents would often stop by the store and spend an entire Saturday there, seeing that it had the only working television around.

“You didn’t need to leave Dobbin,” Mickey Mock said. “There was no reason to leave Dobbin. They had everything. We kind of did that, too.”

Staff Photo by Michael Minasi
Mickey and Kenny Mock, co-owners of Mock’s Grocery,
pose for a portrait Monday at their store in Dobbin.
 

Mary and Leo Mock operated the store for decades, eventually selling it to their sons in August 1977.

“This made many in Dobbin nervous,” Mickey Mock said in his written account. “(It was) two young boys taking over a store that they had traded in all their lives.”

By 1979, a fire gutted the inside of the store, but Mickey and Kenny Mock held their own and renovated the store. In 1984, after a series of small business ownerships, they physically moved the store originally set up by their parents from off of FM 1486 to its present location on Texas 105.

“We would like to thank our family and the people of Dobbin,” Mickey Mock said in his written account, “for supporting the store and its history for all of these years.”

Conroe Courier

April 5, 2016