Of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
Published by the StarTribune
September 26, 1953
HIS NAME is Joseph A. McClellan but few people know it. Everyone calls this little Irishman Mac--from kids to oldsters. And if you live in the neighborhood of Washburn avenue S. And Forty-sixth street and run out of sugar or bread you don't go to "McClellan's" grocery. You go to Mac's.
The customers don't go there just for groceries, either. They go there to shoot the breeze. Here is one of the top gab centers of south Minneapolis--a throwback to 50 years ago, minus the pot-bellied stove and cracker barrel. Folks smart off and trade jocular insults with the help and revel in the small-town atmosphere.
IT'S SAFE to assume that Mac and his wife, both of whom have spent most of their lives behind a counter, are the targets of as many shopworn gags as anyone in town.
"Be a nice place to start a store,"someone will drawl when Mac is out of a requested item. Or they tell him the scales are crooked or accuse him of playing fast and loose with the adding machine when toting up orders. "Yes, sir, that gizmo was the best investment Mac ever made. Means a big profit with a small inventory."
But Mac, who is 74 and 155 pounds of spryness, is not slow with the badinage himself. "Where are the shoelaces in this gyp joint?" someone will require. "Up on the mezzanine with the buggy whips," Mac will retort.
Ask him who his chief competitor is and he's apt to say Sears and Roebuck or mention a loop department store.
He and Mrs. Mac have been "retired" now for some months, which means that neither spends more than six hours a day in the store. "Try and keep them out of the place," laughs their son Ray, who is now one of the official proprietors. The other one is Jimmy Hart, Mac's son-in-law.
THE MACS have been on the corner for 42 years, first in a little frame building that fronted on Washburn avenue. Six years later they built the present home-store combination, a brick structure with the store on Forty-sixth street. Before they started the present building the area was zoned for residences and signatures of property owners from Beard avenue to Lake Harriet and from Forty-forth to Forty-ninth streets had to be gained before a building permit was issued. During this hassle one customer handed over an unsolicited $300. "Here, Mac," he said, "maybe you can use this." Mac reckoned that he could.
Mac has been a grocer for 55 years. At 19 he left his farm home five miles south of Waverley to clerk for F.A. Barth & Son at Watertown.
Later he managed a creamery for the Hutchinson Produce Co. at Hollywood, Minn. Not long afterward he bought the adjoining grocery store. Then he got married. "So I could have someone to run the grocery while I looked after the creamery," he cracked.
Their first Minneapolis store was on Nicollet avenue. They sold this after a few months and were at Third avenue S. And Thirty-seventh street for three years before moving to their present location.
SOME SHARP changes have taken place in the grocery business since then. Mac recalls. "We sold flour mostly in 50-pound bags--never smaller than 25. Potatoes? Why, people used to buy spuds 10 to 15 bushels at a time. I'd get their orders for the winter and when the farmer brought in a load we'd go along and parcel 'em out. A 10-pound sale of potatoes was a joke."
If the customers now we're just "family" the store would do a fair business. The Macs have six children, 32 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
One of the sons has a brood of 12. This group was featured in a series of advertisements for bread last year. When the mother of the flock leaves Mac's with her groceries one might suspect that she was grubstaking an expedition to the Belgian Congo.
MRS. MAC is six years younger than her spouse and Mac admits that she looks it. You'd swear she was under 60. And the kids who, on Saturdays and after school are always under foot in quest of suckers, bubble gum and pop, never ruffle her. There are normally a couple of bicycles and two or three dogs outside, too, as an introduction to the informality within.
"Haven't you ever gotten sick of being tied down all these years?" I asked. Mac's round, impish face broke into a grin. "Well, I can't say as we have."
Mrs Mac put it better. "We both love store keeping."
They must. The longest they've been away was five weeks--when they went to California several years ago.
If there's a moral to be drawn here, it must be that toil doesn't hurt you, particularly if you like the work. And it would seem that the "retired" McClellans like it fine--well enough to keep going indefinitely.
Copyright 2016 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.
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