General Store owner was year-round workaholic

Workaholics, take comfort. Your obsession – even at this time of year – has local precedence. Although let’s hope you’d draw the line at taking a full inventory on New Year’s Day. That’s exactly what happened every January 1 at the El Toro General Store during George Osterman’s 1922-1946 ownership. George had inherited a stern work ethic from his father, local homesteader John Osterman. Even so, after a short period of tenant farming on a remote area of Lewis Moulton’s Niguel Ranch – the site of today’s Laguna Niguel Regional Park – George and his wife Lois chose the seemingly more “cushy” job of running El Toro’s one and only emporium. The main reason for this career choice was the advent of their first son, George Jr., eventually followed by Joe and Jim. Running a store that served El Toro’s ranchers and farmers would support a much more family-friendly lifestyle than attempting to dry farm on isolated acreage. At least, that was the theory. As it turned out, George and Lois operated the store six days a week from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and were open for business half-days on Sunday. Moreover, middle son Joe, who grew up to write “Fifty Years In Old El Toro,” noted it didn’t always end there. “Someone often came by simply desperate for something which he or she had forgotten earlier, or to use the [store] phone” which, for many years, was the only phone in the area except for the one at Moulton’s ranch. But back to the dreaded New Year’s Day. Here are the recollections of George Jr.: “The lowlight of the year at the store was New Year’s Day. For us, on that single day, there was no Rose Parade, no football game except on the old Atwater Kent radio. This was Inventory Day. Every item in the store, spools of thread, yards of fabrics, pounds of nails. Everything had to be counted. It was a family enterprise. The doors were locked, the count went on. I learned to count by totaling up the penny candies. In a forest of pleasant memories of the store, something had to be bleak. The inventory was it!”...more