Back in the days of penny-apiece bubble gum, Everett’s 25th Street Market had an especially loyal customer.
“Ronny Gipson would come in and buy 100 pieces,” said Elmer Callaghan, who spent 45 years working at the corner market, including more than two decades as co-owner along with Richard Faulkner.
Now an Everett City Council member, Ron Gipson had a boyhood liking for bubble gum that helped the store win prizes as top sellers from the gum company — two TV sets, Callaghan recalled.
That’s just one moment in a flood of memories the 77-year-old Callaghan revisited last week after the building where he’d worked much of his life was demolished.
In 2005, Callaghan retired when he and his partner sold the market at 2431 Broadway. The market had been closed the past few months and was recently sold by Nguyen Hait to Katsam LLC, a company associated with Moneytree Inc.
The weekend before Christmas, Callaghan had a call from his daughter, Jeanette Postma, telling him that the old store was being torn down.
“I was down there with a camera taking pictures,” he said. “It’s sad. It’s hard to drive by there now.”
He’s left with memories of the days when longtime customers could run a tab, paying for groceries at the end of the month.
“We were the last ones in Everett with a full-service meat counter, and the last in Everett to have charge accounts to homes,” Callaghan said. “We had customers who started in 1934 when the store opened. Customers had charge accounts until they passed away.”
With six trucks, the market offered home delivery.
Over the years, Callaghan said, the market’s delivery drivers included Mike Price, onetime Washington State University football coach who’s now at the University of Texas, El Paso; Doug Ferguson, today an Everett attorney; and Kathy Patterson Webber, a Snohomish County deputy prosecutor.
For years, the 25th Street Market sold Christmas trees.
Callaghan said his son Russell, now 53, sold a tree to Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson when the U.S. senator brought his new bride, Helen Jackson, to Everett.
Bob Cawthorne opened the 25th Street Market in 1934. Cawthorne’s son, Bud Faulkner, took over in 1945, Callaghan said.
“I went to work for Bud on Jan. 1, 1960. I was 30 years old,” Callaghan said. “I spent 45 years there. December 2005, that’s when I retired.”
In 1994, when the market announced its 60th anniversary on its reader board, Callaghan said customers stopped by in droves. “Some told us how they used to steal an apple as school kids,” he said. The market was a longtime neighbor of North Middle School.
In about 1970, Callaghan said, the market owners were encouraged by area restaurants to get into the wholesale business.
“For the last 20 years, the bulk of our business was wholesale. We sold to restaurants, school districts and hospitals. It was 99 percent produce,” Callaghan said.
“We delivered to the Lynnwood area to the south, Monroe to the east and north to Arlington. When the Navy came in, we did a considerable amount of business with them — in Oak Harbor, the commissary in Marysville, and sometimes to ships on the waterfront when they needed something in a hurry,” he said.
Tied in with the community, the market donated fruit baskets to fundraising auctions and gave Thanksgiving and Christmas food baskets to the North Everett Lions Club, the Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul and other organizations.
At the store, home canning brought big business. “In the morning, we’d have 1,300 boxes of peaches and pears. By the time we closed at night, it would be mostly gone,” he said.
The market’s main fruit supplier was Fred Paukowich, who started farming in the Wenatchee area in 1933.
“We had a lot of suppliers, but he was number one. We never advertised, but we’d put up ‘Paukowich’s peaches’ on the reader board and people would come from all over,” Callaghan said.
He worked six days a week. The last few years, the store was open 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. Long days, long hours, but still Callaghan can say “those were fun years.”
“I never regretted going to work one day,” he said.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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