Wentland's Grocery – 1724 Second Avenue

Moving to the East Side to "the big hill in little Sweden” was a real change from the easy going life of Ridge Avenue. Perhaps because we were now living in the fish-bowl of the public life of a local merchant serving people who did not welcome new-comers easily, or perhaps because of being the “new owners” of a local grocery store people had patronized for years. Whatever the reason, we adjusted to living on the East side.

Crab Apples, Starlings, and One Other Thing

"1724" will be remembered, among other things, as the corner lot with the crab apple trees and messy starlings. Every autumn we’d have the rotting of the fallen crab apples from the tree on the side of the garage. And on summer evenings we’d have the noise and mess of starlings. Neighbors would try to contend with the gathering of the starlings by banging together boards of pots and pans. The noisy calling and messy droppings made a stroll under the towering elms so threatening that no one would dare attempt it. And as if that wasn’t enough to contend with, there was our neighborhood grocery's seasonal sale of lutefisk. I only recently learned how it’s spelled, but I knew as a child how it looked and smelled; and neither was easy to take! Ours was a store that carried whatever would appeal to our neighbors as customers, a very special grocery, indeed. This traditional Swedish “lye fish” is described in wikipedia as "dried whitefish (normally cod, but ling and burbot are also used). It is made from aged stockfish (air-dried whitefish), or dried and salted cod, pickled in lye. It is gelatinous in texture after being rehydrated for days prior to eating." And over-soaking can result in spoiled fish, called in Finnish saippuakala (soap fish). I remember hoping no customers ordered a quart of the stuff, because it fell to me to ladle it out of the crock into the carton. When I was a kid I remember thinking to myself. it reminds me of great big boogers. I'd never say that out loud lest I offend any of our customers who delight in the traditional Swedish dish made from lutefisk.

The Atlas Prager Beer Smuggling

Mom and Dad enjoyed their adult beverages. The beer of choice at meals and at social occasions was Atlas Prager Beer. Dad’s penchant for “boilermakers” made Hiram Walker’s Kentucky Straight Sour Mash Bourbon Whisky "Ten High" his preference. At times, Mom made herself a ginger ale highball with it.

While we lived on the East side, however, there was a problem with their consuming alcoholic beverages. The majority of our customers, being members of the Swedish Lutheran Evangelical Free Church, frowned on the consumption of any such beverages, as well as dancing and playing cards, any type of gambling and, and it seemed, on just about any kind of fun. Needless to say, they were not members of the Moose Club.

And neither were they likely to countenance the consumption of alcohol by the proprietors of the neighborhood store from which they purchased their groceries. And in these years, the local grocery store was the choice, over the big chain stores, for a good bit of grocery shopping. Not wanting to disparage themselves in the eyes of their customers, Mom and Dad were very circumspect about how they transferred their purchases of adult beverages from the car to our home upstairs above the store . I can remember bringing the case of Atlas Prager up the back stairs, the bottle of Ten High nestled among the 24 beer bottles, the case always judiciously covered with a towel or cover of some sort to conceal it from the view of our moralizing neighbors.

The Fingertip in the Hamburger

And then there was the hamburger we ground—a big seller at our store. Once, while grinding the trimmings from Dad’s “boning out” process—the incessant effort of cutting all the scraps of meat from the bones to avoid waste and increase profit. One day Dad was busy grinding the trimmings he’d made from the hindquarter he’d broken down that day. Usually he’d use the stomper—a wooden plunger used to push the meat scraps down the neck to the grinder. For some reason this afternoon, he was pushing the meat down with his hand. As he stuffed the meat down the neck, he pushed his forefinger just a little too far. I remember his pulling his right hand out of the grinder and grabbing it in his apron with his left, somehow using his arms to flip off the switch of the machine. The only words I can remember him saying was “Oh, oh!”—though under his breath he was probably muttering all kinds of self-recriminations.

It was a hurried time getting Mom down from our home upstairs. With panicky nerves, once she saw the blood, Mom got the car ready, and Tom broke down the grinder, retrieving Dad’s finger tip in a paper towel. “Here’s the rest of his finger,” he shouted as he chased after Mom and Dad to the 46 Chevy in the driveway. They brought it with them to St. Anthony, luckily only three blocks away. The emergency room doctor opted not to replace the finger tip. Though today, I suspect that would be routine. When they returned from the hospital with Dad, he was in no condition to be down in the store. That batch of hamburger, needless to say, needed to be pitched. Dad was fortunate to have his friend, Skony from his days at A&P, come in to do the breaking down of the hind and fore quarters for next couple of weeks.

Life Magazine and Photographer Margaret Bourke-White

When I was in sixth grade and eleven years old, I knew only that we were having our pictures taken, and they were to be published in Life Magazine. That’s all any of us knew. As far as any of us knew, we were approached about being in a LIFE magazine article "about Rockford as a typical American city", or, at least, so they told us.

I remember being in our living room above our store at 1724 Second Avenue in Rockford for what seemed to a sixth grader like an eternity. The photo shoot was of two set-ups—one of us sitting around the living room, the other at the piano with Tom playing and us standing behind him as we did a sing-along.

Other photos in which we were not pictured, included Mom and Dad working together in the store as well at the Moose Club.

And the woman who was taking the pictures, Margaret Bourke-White, was not important to me in 1949. I was too young to appreciate that we were being photographed by a renowned LIFE magazine photographer who had just returned from India where she photographed Mohandas Gandhi [at left] just before his assassination on January 30, 1948. And, once she finished the shoot for the Rockford spread, she was heading to South Africa on her next assignment to cover the apartheid reality of that nation. I was more distracted by all the arranging of lights and setting of cameras the photographer and her assistants were making. For my part, I was just lying there on the floor supposedly reading a Mutt and Jeff comic book or standing around Tom as he played the piano looking like I was part of a customary family scene, when in real life we never really did either of the activities these posed pictures were going to show us doing.

We lived on the East Side of Rockford from about August 1947 to August 1950. The photo-shoot for the Life article must have been in February, 1949. It turned out that the article, which came out in the September 12, 1949 issue was not just a feature on a typical American city, but a study of socio-economic strata of typical American cities, using Rockford as an example. Our neighbors and customers of Second Avenue Grocery were aghast that we would allow ourselves to be sociologically categorized that way. How were we to know that Life was doing the article about Rockford as an illustration of Dr. W. Lloyd Warner's six-level socioeconomic system, and we were to be the family featured as ”Lower-Middle.” This, according to Dr. Warner’s social categorizing at the time, was the most "average" based on income, place of residence, type of business, social activities, etc. So what was all the fuss about? I always wondered if it could have been that they were all jealous? Whatever the criticism leveled at us and the other five families, there was no lack of curiosity about this issue of Life. All the issues allotted to the Rockford area sold out within a couple of days in the city. We were lucky to have purchased one for ourselves—a tattered copy remains in the family. Tom and I have copies in better condition recently purchased on the internet.

For Mom and Dad, the opportunity to meet and watch Margaret Bourke-White do her work as photographer far outweighed the chagrin we later faced from our neighbors. She made quite an impression on Dad. He would comment on her ability after she took our pictures in the living room of our home above our grocery store at 1724 Second Avenue. So would Mom after the photo shoots at the Moose Club at 123 Mulberry, near the river, across from the library.

One wonders whether Dad’s interest stemmed from his learning that the photographer’s roots were Polish. But then, the question remains what might have been his reaction to her—given his anti-Jewish tendency—had he learned that her roots were also Jewish, the family name having originally been “Weiss” back to the 15^th century Poland. Maybe her pleasant composure in determinately carrying out her craft was what impressed him. It’s certain her Jewish background never came up since—as her biographer, Vicki Goldberg, attests—Ms. Bourke-White’s heritage was a “weighty secret, revealed in her lifetime only to a handful of people when she deemed it necessary or useful.” [Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography, Harper & Rowe, New York, pg. 43].

It seems that it was Dad who made an impression on the photographer. So much so that, when he asked if we would be able to get copies of the photos she took of the family, she made note of the request. It was a few months after the magazine came out that a large envelope arrived with “Life Magazine” as the return address. And upon opening it, sure enough, there, along with a note from the photographer, were the ten 8x10 glossies of the Bourke-White shots taken in Rockford, five of them stamped “LIFE Photograph - Reproduction forbidden – This photograph is owned by LIFE Magazine, published by Time Incorporated, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York 20, NY”. All but three are stamped “Life Photo by Margaret Bourke-White.” In addition to the two taken of our family together, there were three photo related to the store—one of Dad alone at the counter, one of Mom in front of the store, and another of both Dad and Mom; four of Mom at the Moose Club; and an aerial shot of the city. Of the ten we received, only five of these photos were published in the magazine.

Recently Life has made their photo archives open to the public on their website. The photos Margaret Bourke-White took for the Rockford spread are there for everyone to see. . . except the five never published. We may be the only ones—outside the archives of LIFE—who have the five unpublished photos for that layout by Margaret Bourke-White.

Looking for a New Home, Lindenwood--“Get A Horse?”

In 1950, Dad and Mom started looking for a new place for business. Perhaps, partly due to the fallout from the Life article and partly due to wanting to get away from the restrictive attitude of the neighborhood and its effect on business, they needed a change.

One of the prospective grocery stores they looked at was in Lindenwood, a little farm community south of Rockford about 15 miles. Mom and Dad had us boys join them on a drive down there one weekend. When we arrived, they looked around the corner store and asked questions of the former owner—an elderly man who wanted to retire. When we were driving away questions came up, “Are we going to move here?” One of the possibilities presented to us boys--possibly as a way to sweeten the deal if they were to take it--was that we might get a horse...not a real promise. Mom and Dad decided not to buy that business.

Instead, they continued looking and came upon a store for sale in Rockford.