To Market, to Market

L B Hartz
LB Hartz Store Red Owl, right side second building in

We have talked about eggs and milk, and ice and meat. We need to talk a little about grocery stores. That is, major grocery stores. Our home base is Thief River Falls. Although we are offering pictures from earlier, the markets we are mentioning are mid fifties.

According to the pictures available the Hartz store was at one time across from what is now the post office. Red owl was in the middle of the 200 block of North LaBree. On the corner of Atlantic and and 3rd St, the first grocery store was called Zeh. It was later named Independent, and again later called Piggly Wiggly.

Pictures available show Hartz building on the corner of 2nd St North and Horace Avenue. This later would be called Dwight's Hartz. The Red Owl store relocated to Main Avenue North and 2nd St. The parking lot was on the corner. These three stores were considered large grocery stores.

In earlier times there was Loken's and Oens. Oen's appeared to be a full merchandise store. Not only did it have groceries and clothing but stoves, and other merchandise needed by a family. The Oen's store rebuilt after a fire, later became S&L., followed by Maurice's and is now empty. This store sits at the corner of LaBree and 3rd St. Loken's also burned.

Let's talk about these three prominent stores from the 50s. The Hartz store was built and owned by LB Hartz. All the warehouses were by the great Northern Depot. The store itself at a lunch counter and, for the time a full line of groceries. Hartz would open grocery stores all around northern Minnesota.

The Red Owl store also had a lunch counter. In the late 50s you could buy a hotdog with chips and a Coke for $.20. Which is the same price as a lunch ticket for the school cafeteria. Many of you remember the little corral where children could color, do puzzles, and read comic books while her mother shopped. Would any of us consider leaving our grandchildren and an area while we shop now? I don't think so.

Piggly Wiggly did not have a lunch counter. What they did have were benches in the front of the store where people could sit in visit. My grandfather sat on these benches and waited for grandma. It was a social event! My other grandmother, insisted on calling Piggly Wiggly the Independent because that's what she remembered it is being when she first started shopping. She would correct herself and call it the "Piggy-Wiggy".

As you know my dad was a builder, he liked mother to buy products at places he had built; although he had built the warehouses for Hartz, she continued to shop at Red Owl. Why? She liked the meat man, he double wrapped all the meat. His name was Donnie.

When I first started buying groceries one could buy apples, oranges, grapefruit, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, and onions. Those were staples. If you wanted broccoli or cauliflower it was bought frozen. Imagine my surprise when I moved to Kansas and found out those products were available fresh!

Imagine how impressed I will's to go back to the town in the 1998 and go marketing with my mother at a place called Hugos 7. Hugos is built on the site was sawmill used to be a hundred years before. The grocery story is well lit, they have a deli, a big variety of produce, and an extremely friendly staff.

We know the red owl store is no longer there, Piggly Wiggly is now the location for a liquor store, and Hartz as we knew it, is no longer there.

What has replaced them? Hugos 7, Super One, and of course, Walmart. The latter of the three seems to have made a full circle, and like Oen's, merchandising is back to the everything store. But, I don't think you can buy a potbellied stove at Wal-Mart or can you?

A hundred years ago the products you can buy the grocery store seemed like a lot of conveniences the people that live then. Think about it. If you walked into a market like that now, what would you think? What would you buy? Or would you just simply been mesmerized by canned goods, smoked meat, and potbellied stoves? Would the dishes sold at general merchandising stores part of an antique collection you own?

Go back and take a look at the pictures looking specifically at the backgrounds and then think about your own grocery store and what you might see. Imagine what it would be like for someone from a hundred years ago to shop at a store like we have now.

Where is our time machine!

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