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When I was growing up, my daddy ran a country grocery store on Main Street in Elgin. He opened the store at 7 a.m. six days a week. It was Red and White when I was very young, but later became Nelson’s Foods.
R.E. Nelson lived in Austin and owned the store, but Verner Green, my dad, was the one who took care of everything concerning the operation.
He was my hero.
He grew up an orphan and was raised by the Otto Danielson family in the New Sweden community. When he came into Elgin as a young man, he had several jobs before the grocery store. The store, which was on the corner of North Main and Second Street opened in the late 20s or early 30s, and very shortly he took over.
Daddy went to a country school because of work on the farm and had very little education. However, Mr. Nelson still turned the grocery over to him, and Daddy did everything from ordering supplies to checking to unloading trucks to cutting meat for the market. No prepackaged meat in that day.
Everything was in the case, you chose the roast or steak or hamburger by the pound. All meat was weighed and wrapped in butcher paper tied with a string. The price was written on the package with black marker. I especially remember close to Christmas, when the lingonberries and lutefisk would be delivered in big barrels that people would come from miles around to get. You could smell the lutefisk all over the store.
When I started school, I started spending time in the store with Daddy. He would let me put stock on the shelves and let me help him “checkup” at 6 p.m. when the store closed.
He had a little space in the back of the store, which was his office, and I had a stool beside him.
Back then almost everyone charged their groceries and paid their bill once a month. We would sort the tickets for the day and Dad had a case with a numbered filing system. Each charge customer had a number in the file where all the tickets were placed. When a person came to pay, all their tickets were in their slot. Dad had most of these memorized and could file most of the day’s tickets while I was just looking up one name.
Did you know that Elgin has a museum in downtown Elgin? Built in 1903 and its red bricks came from Elgin clay.
Visit facebook.com/elgin.depot. Vintage black and white parade photos on display now.
