I grew up in the Wadena area, shopped
there, graduated from high school there.
Wadena held my first sense of the world.
I hovered over small purchases at the Woolworth’s store and Ben Franklin. I
still have a 49 cent Christmas ornament made from a real egg shell that came
from one of those stores.
Both J C Penney and Sears were catalog
stores. You could order from their 2-inch thick catalogs and pick up the items
at the stores or have them delivered. It may have taken 6 weeks to arrive but
that only built anticipation. Their Christmas catalogs were delights to the
eyes and if you were the type to sniff new books, catalogs were sniffable, too.
The jewelry stores were great for window
shopping and they probably had to regularly wipe down the nose prints.
I followed my dad into the hardware and
feed stores and went with him to pick up the cream check at the creamery.
I was a regular visitor at Rex McDonald
photography studio since my mom worked there. I worked there, too, when I was
in high school.
One place I never ventured into was the
old hotel. Curiosity wasn’t a good enough reason and it was a little spooky
before it was restored. I suppose the train depot was open back then but like
the hotel, I couldn’t conjure up a reason to sneak in.
Kerfoot’s bookstore was a little spooky,
too, and I never ventured inside until my brothers and I were old enough to go
in on our own. We didn’t look for books. There were fascinating and mysterious
items which included magic tricks and oddities. The proprietor was an old man
who probably cultivated a little fear in young visitors just to keep his
collection from disappearing.
The Cozy Theatre was a little smaller back
then but what a memorable experience it was to go through the doors into
another world. One of my earliest memories is of a scene of a beautiful woman floating
down a river on a raft and another much scarier memory of a small boy being
chased by a huge spider. The Saturday Christmas matinees were exciting and
ended with the gift of a bag of peanuts from Santa.
Creating a set of Wadena images sparked
lots of memories. These images are on note cards and more recently in “A Little
Art” portfolios. Ask Lina at the Wadena Museum and Bookstore and she’ll show
you the current supply of "Wonderful Wadena."
