The sign on the cookie rack in the small cluttered general store says: “Selling Out – groceries, hardware and dry goods.” Will continue to have bread, meat, and milk until stock is sold.
Pius Krenzel, proprietor, wipes his hands on the front of his white store apron with the red “Nash’s Coffee” lettering, threads his way around the caddies of merchandise on the floor to his office in the rear and brews us some instant coffee.
“It just doesn’t pay anymore,” Krenzel says. We used to have twice as many families in town when we started in 1948. Yes, and we used to have three stores and a bank and a meat market.”
He shrugs resignedly, “It’s all been going downhill.”
And when Krenzel sells out his stock, probably within three weeks, the business district of this dusty Pierce County village will be cut by 50 per cent.
For the only other business in town, aside from a grain elevator is Darlene and Adam’s Bar and Dance Hall. It is directly across the gravel street from the general store and it is owned by Adam and Darlene Richter.
Krenzel claims there are 120 people in Selz. If there are it is not apparent. The families living here are mostly retired and there is a 5-family Great Northern section crew. The Great Northern still stops daily at Selz.
Selz is dying hard – but it is dying. The closing of Krenzel’s store may be its final twitch.
The 49-year-old grocer pours more coffee. It is quiet out in the store.
“This is a ma and pa store,” he explains. “Well now my wife’s health doesn’t allow her to work anymore and the last of my sons is leaving.
Krenzel has three sons. One is working in Chicago, Charles, 18, will be a sophomore at NDSU this year and Duane, 17 will be leaving home to go to NDSU. Another son, Pius Jr., who was also an NDSU student, was killed last year in a Cass County car accident.
Krenzel’s store is, or was, a real old-fashioned general store – the kind that used to be the gathering place for rural America in hundreds of prairie towns on Saturday night. There are two gas pumps out front and the post office inside. Krenzel is also the postmaster.
When he quits the store, he will continue pumping gas and continue as postmaster. Krenzel also has an insurance sideline.
The outside of the 2-story frame building is tin – peeling off in places. Inside it is painted green – not lime or avocado or chartreuse or mint, but old-fashioned green green.
In a corner near the front door is the post office window, 63 mail boxes, many unused. Displays of ribbons and Kool-Aid sit atop the counter along one side of the store. The floor is nearly filled with caddies of groceries and work gloves and overalls. The paths between are narrow.
In the rear is the hardware – hammers, bolts, screwdrivers, shotgun shells.
This store was built in 1912 and it prospered as Selz prospered. Krenzel, a former farmhand, and for two years a school teacher, bought the store in 1948 and became postmaster the same year. When you buy the store you buy the post mastership.
Business was good. It’s hard to pinpoint when Selz began dying. Maybe it was when they began hard-surfacing all the highways and you could zip into Harvey eight miles to the south on N.D. 3 in no time at all. Or maybe it was when they started building the supermarkets and the other big stores in the bigger towns.
Whenever it was, Pius Krenzel has felt the squeeze. “I can’t by in volume,” he says, “and expenses keep going up.”
He grabs an invoice and pushes it toward you and says, “Look at that, $1.34 for a pound of salami. Guess what I have to charge for it?”
He shakes his head, “It’s crazy, just crazy.”
We walked out into the store where Mrs. Adam Kline, a part-time employee, is tidying the shelves.
John Wiest, a farmer, drifts in.
“What can I do for you, John?”
“Just looking.”
Wiest wanders to the rear of the store, eyes squinting from a bronzed face leathered by the Dakota sun and wind. He picks up some shotgun shells and welding rods (20 per cent off). Krenzel weighs the rods on the meat scale.
Where you going to buy your shells when the store is closed, John?
“Why, I’m gonna use these here shells to shoot Pius. He won’t be any use to us when he closes up.”
Both men laugh.
Krenzel digs a loose-leaf notebook out from under the counter, opens it and poises his wooden pencil. “What’s your name, address and date of birth, John?”
“Pius, you’ve known me for a hundred years.”
“Can’t help it, John, The government with that new gun law says I gotta write this all down. And I have to check your driver’s license or Social Security card, too.”
Wiest shows him a driver’s license, pays and leaves, shaking his head.
“Everything is just so complex, “ Krenzel says. “So much paper work. Every time I sell a box of shells, it takes five minutes of paper work.”
He continues, “You know we used to stay open until the bar closed at midnight and they’d come and get their supplies. Now it’s about 8:30 to 5:30. There’s nothing after that.
“And we used to buy eggs and cream, too. That was a job, candling all those eggs.”
He sells no fresh meat now except ground beef. “The meat companies used to stop here and get orders and deliver. But it doesn’t pay anymore. Now I have to drive into Harvey to get my meat.”
Krenzel has tried to sell the store, found no takers. His only out is to sell the stock.
Have Selz people been buying in Harvey? Krenzel smiles, “Oh, yes. But they’ve been good to me and loyal. Maybe if I was 20 years younger…”
As happens to all small-town grocers. Krenzel’s legs are giving out. That comes from 21 years of standing behind a counter and sweeping out and oiling the wooden floor and bending and lifting to stock the shelves.
A small boy, Randy Richter, 5 wanders in. “Hi, I hear you’re selling the store.”
Mrs. Kline smiles, “That’s right. You want to buy it?”
Randy ponders. “Well, I guess not.”
Business is slow and sporadic during the morning. Around noon there’s a pretty good flurry and Krenzel says it that way, “Pretty good flurry.”
Krenzel thinks he’ll be able to keep busy after the store closes – pumping some gas, being postmaster and selling some insurance.
”I just don’t know, “he says. “We’ll be staying here, temporarily anyway. Maybe as long as there’s a post office. I got 231 years in will get some retirement pay.
He is philosophical about closing the store. He accepts it as inevitable and he says, “Soon there will be no small businesses or no small farmers.”
Adam Richter, owner of the bar, walks in and pays his bill. He’s worried. “When Pius closes,” he says, “it’s bound to hurt. I’ll just have to wait and see. I know it will cut down on the traffic.”
TraffIc? It sounds like straw-grasping.
Outside, the noonday sun burns down. There are three cars and a truck on the main street. Two cars and the truck are parked in front of Adam Richter’s bar. There is one car in front of Pius Krenzel’s store.
In a couple weeks, that car will be parked in front of the bar – or gone to Harvey.
