St. Joseph prime example of the benefits of small-town Kansas life

Last month when Pat Girard, owner of the St. Joe Store, had jury duty and his wife, Jolene, was taking one of their daughters on a scholarship interview in western Kansas, their cafe did not go unattended.

Jolene Girard prepared the food, put it in foil roasting pans and set it out on the bar. She told the first two customers what the situation was. She wrote a note telling customers to help themselves and left the cash drawer open.

When she returned late that night, she went to the store. All the food was gone. The tables were cleared. Trash was thrown away. The lights were off and the doors locked.

On a table was a pile of IOUs with the names of patrons and amounts carefully written down.

People in the unincorporated town of St. Joseph in Cloud County watch out for one another, the Girards say.

“I guess it tells me that the days of neighbors taking care of each other are not completely dead,” Pat Girard said. “Even in all the chaos that goes on around us, these small towns still offer things that I think everybody longs for.

“This is still a place where you can still trust your neighbors and count on them.”

French/Canadian settlement

Nearly two decades before the Girards’ store was built in 1888, a handful of French-Canadian immigrants settled in Cloud County, forming the community of St. Joseph.

Predominantly Catholic, several of the homesteaders had come first from Quebec through Kankakee, Ill., and finally made their way to Kansas.

“They all wrote such glowing accounts of the new country back to their friends and relatives at Kankakee, Illinois, their former home, that soon a stream of French settlers began to trickle into the county,” according to a news article written by Norma Meir and published on Nov. 13, 1980, in the Clifton, Ill., Advocate. “Most of these settled in the country south of Clyde.”

A priest established a parish in St. Joseph in 1871, southeast of Concordia, and sent word for more French-Canadians to come.

They did.

Nearly 150 years later, some of the descendants of those early families remain.

The town, though, has fewer than 20 residents. There is a mechanics shop, the St. Joe Store and the St. Joesph Catholic Church, an exquisite brick structure that can be seen for miles around.

The church is closed, but the nearby cemetery has French names and phrases engraved on headstones, according to Marci Penner’s “The Kansas Guidebook for Explorers.”

The St. Joe Store originally was a two-story, wooden grocery store. But as the years went by, the building began to sag and lean in the Kansas wind, and the second story was removed, said Pat Girard, who grew up in the community.

It also served as a doctor’s office and a dance hall. It was always a gathering place, somewhere to play cards, drink beer and socialize.

When the Girards bought the building seven years ago, the old St. Joe Store had sat vacant for more than a quarter of a century. The windows and doors were boarded. Siding hung loosely – and sometimes not at all – alongside the building.

A community center

In 2008, Pat Girard wanted a place to relocate his insurance agency.

“When we bought the store, it was at a point where it probably would have been torn or burned down,” Jolene Girard said. “When we started working on the building, people would drive by and ask if we were opening up the St. Joe Store. We’d tell them no.”

Before long, more people were driving by. Some would stop and offer to grab a brush and help paint. Others offered to help pour the concrete floor.

“People were getting so excited, my husband said, ‘Well, maybe we could put a coffee pot and customers could come in and have coffee and doughnuts,’ ” Jolene Girard said.

As excitement continued to build in the small community, Pat Girard suggested maybe the couple could put sandwiches in a cooler for people to stop by and have lunch. Then it became a place for full-blown homemade lunches featuring meatloaf, pork chops, casseroles and fried chicken.

It became a place where people could have special events with Cajun and French meals: lobster boils and steak dinners. It has been a place for reunions and national championship pelote tournaments, French for a form of seven-point pitch meaning “take all.”

Clyde resident Shirley LeBlanc is the reigning 2014 pelote champion.

The Girards’ insurance agency was eventually relocated to a small house behind the store, Pat Girard said.

The store has evolved through word of mouth and Facebook. Those feasting on the meals have come from as far away as Kansas City and Wichita.

It is not unusual for the lunch crowd to number 30 or more in the town of 19 residents, and, with special events, the numbers can climb to 150, Jolene Girard said.

The store is open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for lunch. Lunch is $6; a slice of pie is $2.

On March 28, the store is hosting a Cajun night featuring alligator, crawdads, jambalaya and other good stuff. Cost is $10. Pelote will be played liberally throughout the night.

Penner said St. Joe is typical of small towns across Kansas.

“These small towns can surprise you with gems like this,” Penner said. “There are so many little towns that may seem like a dot on a dusty road but where the most special things happen.”

This story was originally published March 8, 2015 at 10:07 PM with the headline "St. Joseph prime example of the benefits of small-town Kansas life."