Louis Mikulich, Sr., behind the counter of the store he purchased in 1926 and operated untill his death in 1961.
Part One: The Mikulich Era
Editors Note: Part Two, which will feature what has happened to
the store since Dee Morgan purchased it (among other things, it has been
designated a historic site by the Michigan Historical Commission and is
a candidate for national recognition), will appear in the spring issue
of Footprints.
Morgan's Country Store closed for the season the day before Christmas, that event being the first temporary closing of the historic old building known to most longtime area residents simply as Mikuliches' store. The only other time a closing of any kind occurred there was back in 1987, when Louis F. Mikulich, the last proprietor of the last general store in my township (Limestone) was forced by failing health to close the business that had been owned and operated by his family for over sixty years.
In the early days of Alger County there was a general store like Mikuliches' within walking distance of just about every resident (bear in mind that folks were willing to walk a lot farther back then than they are now). Six miles west of where I grew up in Traunik there was Kivimaki's store, in Kiva; two miles to the east, in Limestone, folks shopped at Swanson's; five miles south several such business establishments were in operation in Trenary; and six miles north, in Eben, a like number.
But my family never went to any of those faraway places to shop for its general needs because within spitting distance of our house there was Mikuliches' store and right across from it' at the intersection of two roads now designated as H 01 and H 44, another store and (after the end of Prohibition) a small tavern, operated by Ludwig Knaus. Folks in those days usually shopped at whatever general store they were closest to, gradually developing a loyalty to it that precluded taking their business elsewhere even when automobiles and good roads for them to travel on would have made shopping for the best prices feasible.
The brief history of Mikuliches' store which follows will offer the reader insights into how many such places developed over the years: In 1922 John Debelak sold 2.6 acres of land to W. J. Kehoe for $75 and an agreement by Kehoe to employ John's son in the store he planned to build on the site. Bill Copeland, known also as "Indian Bill," was hired to construct the building out of lumber which had been sawed at Brown's portable mill in Trenary. Kehoe, who had operated a logging camp store in Loud Spur, three miles north of Traunik, had been educated to teach school (he came to our area from a teaching position at Birch, a now-defunct community on the Big Bay road) and after operating his new business place in Traunik for less than a year, he sold out in July of 1923 to John Knaus, Sr., and resumed his teaching career in a new school built just a few hundred yards west of the store.
Knaus
operated the store for three years and then sold out to Louis Mikulich,
Sr., in August of 1926, and the business stayed in the hands of the Mikulich
family, as stated earlier, until July 31,1987, when Delayne (Dee) K. Morgan
purchased it.
"Going to the store" was as much a social activity as an economic one in the days before World War II. All three of the stores in Limestone Township also housed the local post office, so mail time was a high point of activity during the day. And in the evening nobody seemed to need much of an excuse to gravitate to the general store.
Born in 1929, I began my gravitating almost as soon as I was able to walk, and because Judith and I built a house in Traunik, where we have lived for the past thirty-five years, I continued doing so right up until Louis, Jr., closed it (resuming that activity, I might add, when the store reopened as Morgan's Country Store this past summer).
I am amused when I read about "modern" marketing concepts which permit one-stop shopping in super market/department store combinations like Meijer's downstate, because we were able to do that in Mikuliches' store more than half a century ago, and the range of goods available to us exceeded that found in any modern establishment. There was almost literally nothing that one could not either buy or order from there, and that included farm equipment of all kinds, feed and other supplies for the variety of livestock raised on small family farms in the community, furnishings for the home, etc. Like Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery in the fictional Lake Wobegon, Mikuliches' store offered enough merchandise to warrant the statement that "if you couldn't get it there, you could probably get along without it".
The warehouse behind the store was filled with sacks of feed, salt blocks, cases of food to stock grocery shelves with, galvanized pipes, stove pipes, hardware of all kinds, cans of oil, roofing, windows you name it and Mr. Mikulich could probably find it there, and when I walked behind him as he went in search of something my dad had sent me to the store for, I counted those, minutes in that treasure trove as among the most exciting of the day. I can still, with no difficulty whatever, recall the co-mingled odor of feed and fuel and the sight of many things that I, at that young age, couldn't always even identify.
In the store itself there was at least one member of the large Mikulich family behind the counter to "wait on us." Louis, Jr., Ethel, Mary, John, Bill, Gladys, Robert, Alice, and Patricia, as well as Mrs. Mikulich herself, played a role in the operation of the business. My favorite, when buying the nickel's worth of candy that some obliging bachelor in the community had given me the wherewithal to get, was Gladys, whose concept of a nickel's worth was a little more generous than that of her brothers and sisters and dramatically more in harmony with mine than that of either of the senior Mikuliches, who were interested in making at least a little profit out of each transaction.
Before World War 11 much of the food that is now available mostly in plastic-wrapped packages was sold at Mikuliches' in bulk: coffee, rice, navy beans, candy, cookies, corn meal, sugar-all were weighed into brown paper bags as per our request. "Four pounds of cornmeal," a customer would say, and out came an aluminum scoop whose location in one bag or other always seemed to be known to whatever Mikulich was waiting on us. I used to think they all had Superman's ability to see right through those burlap bags. I swear that if the scoop used all those years in Mikulich's store was in a "line-up" with a dozen others, I could identify it with ease even today.
My favorite purchase was a couple of pounds of cookies, mixed, which gave me an opportunity to point from one to another variety visible through glass covers on big boxes-half a dozen different kinds! Almost more choice than we could deal with back then!
There was adventure in meat buying, too, with Mr. Mikulich removing a large chunk of beef or pork from a hook in a large oaken refrigerator case, throwing it casually onto a huge chopping black, and filling my order (actually my mother's) for three pounds of soup meat, a pound and a half of steak, six pork chops, etc., which he deftly removed from those huge chunks before returning them to the cooler. I was impressed by Mr. Mikulich's skill with the carving knife, which he invariably stroked once or twice with a sharpening device before employing. And with his cleaver he could split a soup bone right down the middle with remarkable precision (my mother would never accept an unsplit soup bone under any circumstances)!
The seasons were clearly identifiable in Mikuliches' store. In the spring bags of bulk seed made their appearance: rutabaga, alfalfa, corn, timothy, and others, which were also measured out into those ubiquitous brown paper bags. In the summer the ice cream freezer was turned on, and we could choose from vanilla, chocolate, and maybe one or two other flavors, strawberry usually among them. Late fall saw piles of blackand-redcheckered shirts, caps, jackets, and pants the uniform of deer hunters in those days before hunters' orange made its appearance and the uniform, too, of most of the guys who worked in the woods-which was just about everybody in Traunik at one time or other. And, of course, the most important seasonal change for us kids occurred in early December, when toys and other items appropriate for Christmas gifts made their magical appearance.
Anything bought at that store would be delivered, if the amount warranted it, to private homes and to logging camps as far away as seventy-five miles, run by loggers who had done business with Mikulich when they operated a camp close by and who maintained an allegiance to him when they moved on-a fine testimonial to the kind of service they received there.
The Mikulich boys-and a couple of the gals during the war, when all four guys were in military service had what I thought then (and still do, come to think of it) was the very exciting job of climbing behind the wheel of one of two delivery trucks and heading off through all kinds of weather to deliver groceries and other merchandise to those logging camps. I went with Bob once to a camp somewhere in the Melstrand area and had my first opportunity to see a logging camp up close-and to eat a genuine "slab" of pie that was darned close to as good as that which my mother baked.
My most pleasant memories of the store, though, center on mail time, when everyone who wasn't otherwise occupied came to the store to wait for the mail. I marvel now at the patience of the proprietors who had to fight their way through a throng of mostly guys (the women were back home preparing the noon meal) who hung around the wood stove winter and summer showing off their skills at lighting matches in unconventional ways and employing them to light tobacco in various forms, including "roll your own's." When the little service doors of the postal section in the corner of the storeclosed to announce that the mail was about to be placed in all those numbered boxes, a momentary hush fell over the crowd in anticipation of some important piece of mail or other, after which the waiters returned to their smoking and talking but now with one cocked in the direction of a particular box (ours was No. 43) so that box could be dialed open and mail removed, one item at a time. One got so much more pleasure-and sometimes pain-out of doing it that way.
Space considerations prevent me from going on about a place that was so important to me during my growing up years. Some day I shall write more about it and the remarkable Mikulich family that ran it because: I think we will eventually tire of mega malls, discount warehouse stores, etc. and decide to return to a form of rnerchandising that was vastly superior to anything available today in all those categories that bring people closer together, which is arguably one of the greatest needs facing society today.
I want to thank a lady I don't know and whom I'll probably never see again for motivating me to write this piece. We bumped into each other in one of those long aisles in one of those large sections of one of those large stores in one of those gargantuan malls which are beginning to infiltrate even our beloved Upper Peninsula. She was close to tears and I, close to profanity as we searched in vain for a clerk who might give us some help. I needed a strainer for a kitchen sink drain, not the entire assembly encased in a bubble of plastic in front of me, and she was looking for some kind of solvent. We commiserated with each other and considered for a moment doing a screaming duet to get attention, but opted instead to leave the store, sans solvent and strainer, averring as we did so that such an outcome would not have been likely at Mikuliches' store or the one like it that she was familiar with from her "good old days."
Click Below on the text to read Part Two of The Traunik Store
Part Two: The Morgan
Era