A Night on the Town in Old Spring Valley 

There are a thousand stories in the city (or village, as the case may be). This is our story. 

When our gang was growing up in Spring Valley, it was the commercial center of the surrounding countryside. You already know, from previous articles, that it had a bustling business district, and a lot was going on. It was busy most of the time. 

A special part of that experience was the weekend evenings when the stores would stay open until 10:00 pm. My earliest recollection was Saturday night opening. I remember Rex Pence, my dad, and my mother, Golda, discussing the businessmens association debate about opening Friday night instead of Saturday night. I dont know that I ever knew why the businessmen did eventually switch to Friday night, but it might have had something to do with the incompatibility of hangovers and church early on Sunday mornings. In any event, the town looked the same on Friday night as it did on Saturday night when the switch was made. It made no visible difference to the casual observer. 

The sidewalks were packed with people. It was sometimes difficult to walk through the multitudes moving from store to store, tavern to tavern. It was common to see kids playing at the open door of the family car parked at the curb. The smaller tots were fast asleep in the back seat. They were not exactly unattended, but there was no thought of any danger in those days. It was a different time. 

The women folk were busy shopping for groceries for the next week and for dry goods and clothing. The men (and some women) packed the taverns to the gunwales. If the taverns had been ships afloat, they would have sunk. Of course I was a bit young to visit the taverns, but I could certainly see into the taverns from the sidewalk, and hear the uproar. The doors were always open with the crowd spilling out onto the front steps.  

The men would do their hardware shopping before settling down to socializing in the bars. The hardware stores did a booming business early in the evening, but it tapered off by 9:00. My mother, Golda, helped my Dad in the Marshall Wells store. She would pack us kids up after supper and take us to the store on those nights because she had to help Rex with the customers. Beds would be made up in the back of the store for us in big cardboard boxes (the kind that refrigerators and stoves came in) and we would be set for the evening while they were taking care of customers out front. That was quite enjoyable for us kids, except that getting up at 10:00 pm to go home and get in bed was never much fun. 

I think the taverns stayed open after lights out for the other businesses. Spring Valley was known as a great tavern town. As the other business traffic petered out, the bars really got hopping. Bob Langer recalls those busy evenings as a budding businessman. Bob says:  

Those busy Friday nights and before that it was Saturday nights when the town was crazy with people in to do their shopping, bar hopping, going to the movie or buying popcorn from Harvey Hanson's Bakery popcorn maker on the street. Probably the thing I remember was how we used to shine shoes in the bars or on Main Street.  Those were the days before tennis shoes were popular and the folks kind of dressed up to go to town so a good shoe shine for (I think) a quarter was a pretty good deal.  The customer also got his foot messaged as well from the action of cleaning, polishing and brushing of the shoe.  That practice kind of started with older brother Vic and was passed on to Roger and I.  It seemed like we were always out on Friday night trying to talk the crowd into one and often did get a tip for the shoeshine as well. 

Bob was an entrepreneur and the king of opportunists. You may recall the story about Bobs Doodlebug and Spring Valleys gas pumps in an earlier article. I always admired Bob for his capitalistic resolve, but I didnt know about the shoeshine business until he wrote me about it.  

John Kirk, now living in Barron, WI, was a few years older then me. Johns dad was the postmaster in Spring Valley while we were growing up. John remembers the early forties, and he asked me: 

Do you remember the popcorn stand that used to be located in the spot occupied by your dads Marshall Wells Store? They were open for business every Friday night when all the businesses were open.  It was a kind of trailer type affair. You could smell fresh popcorn all up and down Main Street. I can't think of their name. It perhaps will come to me. There was a vacant lot there before the Marshall Wells Store was built next to Lillies jewelry store. Later on, Harvey Hanson had a popcorn machine going in front of his  

bakery on Friday nights. He competed with the theatre for business. 

I was a bit young at the time of the popcorn trailer. I do remember playing in the construction site when the Marshall Wells store building was being erected. The movie theater was being built at the same time, and I was briefly under the misconception that it was to be my dads hardware store. I remember playing there also, and telling my good friend Tim Sandvig that it was the site. I was embarrassed, as a kid would be over nothing, when I found out I was wrong. 

Harveys popcorn stand competed with the movie theater for popcorn customers on Friday and Saturday nights, but not during the week or on Sunday. I remember hanging around on Main Street when I was older, and going into the theater lobby to buy popcorn. The theater popcorn outlasted Harveys popcorn stand and the bustling open business nights in Spring Valley.  

Now that the movie theater in its turn is no longer pumping popcorn out, maybe it would be good to get a popcorn machine (or trailer) out on the street again. Who knows, maybe it would be the start of a grand renaissance, a return to Spring Valleys business district of old, when the town went crazy one night a week. How about it Bob-are you interested? 

And bob is right - the town was crazy with people in spring, summer and autumn on those Friday and Saturday nights. Just before Christmas, however, it got even crazier. This was shortly after WWII, and Rex came up with an idea that was innovative at that time lay in a large stock of toys for the Christmas shopping season. 

Of course that doesnt seem very revolutionary today, but at that time no one else in Spring Valley had done it. He had a couple of good seasons as the other businessmen lay back in the weeds to see how it went. After a couple of successful seasons, he had a lot of competition from the other hardware stores, the variety store and eventually, the grocery stores. It started to look a lot like Christmas as we know it today, with toys being peddled everywhere. 

That innovation was a huge boon for me, too. I got to help unpack the toys. It was like Christmas Morning after Santas sleigh had tipped over in the store for several weeks. Talk about things falling into a kids lap!

John Kirk remembers the store, too: 

Now that Christmas is approaching, I often think about how great a store the Marshall Wells store was, especially at Christmas. Rex always had so many toys on hand and it was fun just to go in there and look at them. The store also had a certain smell or aroma. I can't really describe it but it is etched in my memory and thinking about it revives that smell or aroma in my mind. I think it was all the tools and merchandise that gave off a special aroma.

Norry Larson was working for Rex. I can't recall the dates of this but I remember that I was fairly young. One time, one of my friends bought a Daisy BB gun from the store and Norry made him raise his right hand and repeat a certain oath that was put out by the Daisy Company. It was kind of silly, we thought, but it had the buyer of the gun repeat words that he should not use the gun in a careless manner or shoot things not intended, such as birds or other animals, etc. Norry made it out to be a "big deal" and, who knows, perhaps it did remind the buyer that he did carry a certain responsibility for handling a somewhat dangerous weapon.  

The timing of Johns story was perfect for this article and this season. And I remember Norry. He was very highly thought of by Rex, a good and conscientious employee. And of course I looked up to him as one of the big kids. Thanks, John.

_________________________ 

Well, thats about it for this article. I am getting some good anecdotes from a number of people. Some of them would have fit well in earlier articles, but I didnt receive them in time for inclusion. As a result, while they are interesting, they are fragments that dont fit a theme for articles yet to be written. Perhaps from time-to-time I will submit a collection of these orphan fragments to the Sun, with credit to the authors, in a potluck article (one without a particular theme). 

Future articles for the period from 1940-1956:

1. The Railroad in SV

2. The Spring Valley Constabulary

3. The Garages of Spring Valley 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours! 

The Spring Valley Kid

Russell Pence

e-mail: pence@asu.edu: