The Country Abbey now occupies the former Justin Baptist Church, which occupied the former Pennington College.

A History of The Country Abbey - by Naomi Niederer, owner

Welcome! Here’s how it all started:

A tornado ripped through Justin in 1896 (pop.100) and destroyed most of the part of Justin that was East of the railroad, including the schoolhouse. Two years later a group of citizens joined together as investors and built two 2-story white frame structures they named Pennington College. Justin’s Pennington College, which was actually a preparatory school, was named after local physician Dr. Pennington and operated from 1898 to 1913, when it closed for reasons we don’t know. A good guess would be that the public school system was getting established in the area.

The owners of the school donated this building to the congregation of the Justin Baptist Church, which did not have a building of its own. The Baptist congregation, established in 1901, had sprung from the efforts of traveling preachers sent by the Denton County Baptist Association to minister to these new communities sprouting up along the rail lines. The Baptists moved into their donated building in 1914 and remained here at the corner of Jackson and Second Streets until 2002 when they built a new facility north of town on 8th Street. This original church building on Jackson Ave. was purchased by Naomi Niederer of Argyle and opened as The Country Abbey in May 2002.

Old timers recall when the church consisted of just the present chapel from the last pew forward. Long curtains hung from wires strung across the ceiling and were pulled shut to divide the room into sections for Sunday school, then opened for the worship service. The tall chapel windows were left open during the summer to catch a merciful southern breeze. An elderly gentleman in Justin, though just a young boy at the time, recalled the pastor having a difficult time keeping his place in the text as the pages of his Bible fluttered in the breeze. “His sermon was the only thing in the room not moving”, he said with a chuckle. A potbelly wood burning stove positioned in the center of the room provided heat in the winter. “Burned to death if you sat too close, froze to death if you didn't”, recalled another long time member. Many descendants of those early founding families continue to live in Justin today.

The foyer and balcony of the chapel, along with the pews and hanging chandeliers, were added in 1946. Brick was installed on the church’s exterior at that time, thus concealing the true age of the original structure. The most noticeable change made when the building became The Country Abbey is the glass in the chapel windows. The non-colored glass was made in 2002 by West Virginia artisans using the same glassmaking techniques that have been used there without interruption since the 1850’s. To give the glass more interest, while the glass is a liquid, the glass is intentionally "seeded" with small imperfections which produce tiny bubbles throughout, creating what’s known as “seedy glass”. Then it is poured onto tables and pulled and shaped with rakes. The results can be seen in the unique pattern of each pane. The colored panes of amethyst, sage, cranberry and peacock were also made in West Virginia, but by modern methods. The original glass from the windows was given to the Baptist congregation and made into a cross that hangs above the altar in their new church.

Which brings us to the present:
Today, when you visit the Country Abbey, you are sitting in a building that dates to 1898. The town of Justin is still on the map, with a population of 3,450. Cattle still graze, farmers farm and stories abound of the baptisms, weddings and happy events enjoyed in this place from 1898 to today. And the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe still rumbles through every hour or so on its way to Kansas. You might hear the whistle, the whistle that's been blowing for one hundred and twenty-five years.

Also part of the Country Abbey is:
The Seely House - 116 N. Jackson Ave., Justin, TX 76247 - (940) 648-1606 - www.seelyhouse.net

Built in 1947, the Seely House is now a charming Bed & Breakfast with its original pine floors and nostalgic cabinetry.

Retiring the pump: Full-service gas to be a thing of the past

Published Friday, May 11, 2012 at www.ThisJustInTexas.com
By Bob Buckel - reprinted with permission here at JTXAHS

An old photograph of the Justin Service Station hangs on the wall at the Major League Realty office, showing how little has changed.

An
 old photograph of the Justin Service Station hangs on the wall at the 
Major League Realty office, showing how little has changed. This justin 
photo by Joe Duty

Let’s get this out there, right up front. Henderson Oil & Propane, a mainstay of Justin since 1946, is NOT going out of business. No doors will close and no buildings will be shuttered.

But the days when you could pull up to the pump at the iconic brick building and say “Fill ‘er up!” are over.

Until Wednesday, the company at 401 Highway 156 operated one of the last full-service gas stations to be found anywhere. That institution has been mostly replaced by gleaming multi-pump convenience store operations that can sell gas cheaper with pay-at-the-pump systems. For the other services offered at a place like Henderson’s, you have to go to a quick-lube place.

Most younger drivers have never experienced “full-service” at a place like Henderson’s.

“We’d check the air in the tires, check the oil, wash the windshield – most of the vehicles back then didn’t go fast enough to get bugs on the windshield,” said Danny Henderson. Danny worked for his dad, Marvin, “from the time I was six or seven years old to the time I went to college.”

The taillight of John Faust's 1956 Cadillac Sedan de Ville pops up to accept a fill-up from the hand of Michael Pennington at Henderson Oil & Propane's full-service gas station Tuesday. The service station, one of the last of a dying breed, was planning to shut down the full-service part of the operation at the close of business Wednesday, converting to self-serve. They're also getting out of the tire and battery business to put more emphasis on propane, oil and lubricants. This justin photo by Joe Duty

And even then, he worked weekends and summers before taking over the business. He sold it in 1997 to Bill Clinkscale, who owns several propane dealerships, but only one that also sells fuel.

Henderson said he remembers selling gasoline for 11 cents a gallon.

“It was very common for customers to buy a dollar’s worth of gas, and it wasn’t unusual for someone to buy a quarter’s worth,” he said.

His dad bought the business in 1946 from E.C. Talley. Three years later, they went into the propane business, eventually expanding into oil and lubricants, tires, batteries and other items. Much of their business in the early days was servicing farm customers around Justin.

“We had two or three hundred farm accounts when I was a kid,” Danny said. “There were maybe 50 when Bill bought it, and that’s down to around 10 or 12 now.”

Service station employee Miles Faught (left) and his dad, Charles Faught, visit in the office of Henderson Oil & Propane's Service Station on the next-to-last day of business Tuesday. Charles drove a propane truck for Henderson's for 32 years before retiring a few years ago. This justin photo by Joe Duty

“The face of our customer has changed,” manager Lisa Cate said. “They’ve sold their property and there’s houses on it – and a lot of those nice, new houses use propane.”

Propane, diesel and lubricants will continue to be the focus of Henderson’s business. They just won’t sell gasoline, tires or batteries anymore, and employees Miles Faught and Michael Pennington will no longer be around to fix your tires, check your oil and clean your windshield when you pull in at the picturesque old filling station on Justin’s main thoroughfare.

“This is going to allow us to focus more attention on our core business,” Clinkscale said. “We’ll be able to use our people assets to better serve our propane customers, our existing customers. The core business is not going to close – we’ll be able to make it better.”

Henderson’s started out selling Premier gasoline, then switched to Sinclair, whose trademark included a dinosaur. After they sold to ARCO, Henderson’s wasn’t “branded” anymore. They ran their own transport into Fort Worth, bought gasoline and sold it on their own.

A customer waits on the bench outside Henderson Oil & Propane as employee Michael Pennington puts the lug nuts back on a tire he has just repaired. The full-service station was scheduled to convert to self-serve on Thursday, and they are also getting out of the tire and battery business. This justin photo by Bob Buckel

Cate went to work there in 1995, but she’s a lifelong resident of Justin.

“I never thought I’d be here 17 years later,” she said.

Henderson laughed. “If I was still here, you probably wouldn’t!”

Clinkscale said propane was already 80 to 85 percent of the business when he bought it. Gasoline will continue to be available on a self-serve basis for a while, but he’s debating whether to keep that beyond the time the underground tank empties.

Long-term, that seems unlikely.

“I sold the business because of three things,” Henderson said. “Personnel issues, liability, and ‘what next’ from the government.”

“There’s been a lot of ‘nexts’ since you left,” Clinkscale said.

Strict regulation by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) is one of the factors in Clinkscale’s decision to shut down the pump.

“We couldn’t put as much pollution in the air in a month as one big QT does in a day,” he said. “But we have to have the same environmental controls.”

Even an inspector from the state asked Cate one time why they continued to sell gasoline, “as few gallons as you pump through here.”

But things were different, back in the day, when Henderson Oil & Propane served a community of 500 instead of 5,000. The building was used in a Hollywood movie [see above story] and is even immortalized in the mural on the west side of Outlaw Burger, as it looked in the 1940s.

It was a gathering place for community characters, too, Henderson recalls.

“I remember one customer pulled in there and said ‘Fill it up with ethyl and change the air my tires.’ Then he went around the corner to the cafe. Well, I was just a kid, so when he came back, I had let all the air out of his tires.”

He did put some “new” air back in, but only after all the grownups had a good laugh.

“They gave me a hard time about that,” he said, “but the customer is always right.”

Memories like that will linger as long as the old-timers still sit around telling stories about the way Justin used to be.

“The service station is one of the few things in Justin that was still the way it was,” Cate said. “We have several businesses that have been here a long time, but their buildings and the way they do business has changed. We’re still doing the same things, in the same building.

“I get the economics of it,” she said. “I so understand – but that doesn’t change the nostalgia of it.”

Danny Henderson, Bill Clinkscale and Lisa Cate visit in front of the service station at Henderson Oil & Propane this week. Henderson's family owned the business from 1946 until Clinkscale bought it 15 years ago. Cate is the manager. This justin photo by Bob Buckel

HENDERSON’S HAD ITS MOMENT OF FAME

Not everyone knows it – and not everyone should see it – but the 1988 movie “Baja Oklahoma” had a scene that was shot in Justin, centered around Henderson Oil & Propane.

The film, with novel and screenplay written by Fort Worth’s Dan Jenkins, was about a barmaid in Fort Worth who dreamed of being a country-western songwriter. Lesley Ann Warren played Juanita, and Peter Coyote played the male lead – a guy named “Slick Henderson.”

“They changed the sign and put up a false front across the street,” Danny Henderson said. “It had a saloon door, but of course when people went through it, there was nothing there. Anything that happened inside, those scenes were shot in California.”

Henderson said the shooting took a full day, but the business stayed open.

“They offered to pay us,” he recalled. “We were trying to raise money for the fire department at that time, and the city had just started the library. So the library and the fire department got some nice donations out of it.”

Willie Nelson made a brief cameo appearance in the movie, as himself, and Juanita’s daughter was played by a young Julia Roberts.

“We were wanting to conduct business as usual,” Henderson said. “It was a pretty hectic day.”