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1930s–1950s · Ralph LaFeber's store, on Hoganson's account
The town's mid-century grocery is documented the way few small stores ever are — by a national historian, about its owner's son: Walter LaFeber & Son, Grocery and Dry Goods, kept by Ralph LaFeber in the Walkerton of the 1930s–1950s, "sold a wide variety of products from many places, and it served as a gathering spot for the Walkerton community, a place where people met to shop and gossip" — Kristin Hoganson's telling in The Heartland (pp. 106–107), carried onward in the LaFeber literature. The son worked the store from a very young age, stocking shelves and eventually managing the cash register (People carries Walter LaFeber's life whole: born in Walkerton 30 August 1933, the grocer's son). The store's address and its closing do not appear in the record reached, and they stand in the gaps register; what prints is the institution at its documented strength — a grocery that was also the town's meeting place, which is what the best of these stores were.
Sources:
- Kristin L. Hoganson, The Heartland (2019), pp. 106–107, via Foster & Rotter, "Turning to Asia: The Clash," ch. 7 (the store's name, its range, its gathering-spot role; the son's work in it).
- The Wars & People leg of this build (Ralph LaFeber the grocer; Walter LaFeber verified).