Charlie Brown’s bids adieu – Mildred store has final hurrah today

MILDRED — This tiny town in northeast Allen County will slip one step closer to oblivion before the sun sets today.
Charlie Brown’s Store, the last business in Mildred, will close at 6 p.m.
The store opened in 1912 selling hardware and as an auto repair shop. After World War II, when Charles Brown and brother Carl took over from their father and uncle, groceries became more of a staple, along with appliances and hardware. They also repaired what appliances they sold.
In more recent years the store has been better known for its trademark sandwiches, heaped high with meat.
Business, however, has not been steady enough to keep the doors open.
Charlie’s grandson, Michael Becker, assumed management in 2002, with Charlie’s’ death.
Poor health has kept Becker at bay in recent years. In his stead has been Marilyn Colgin, who turns 87 Monday, and now worries how she’ll occupy her days.

“I HATE to see this place go,” said Jason Beckman, a frequent customer who dropped in Wednesday morning for a sandwich.
It’s an easy dash from the field, said Beckman, who farms outside of town.
“I usually come in four, maybe five times a week,” he said. “I was hoping someone would buy the place and keep it open.”
No mention has been made of any such plans, Marilyn said.
Thrive Allen County, which has economic development in its portfolio, once looked at ways to keep the store open.
Eric Bruyninckx had never been in the store before when he ambled in.
“I heard about the sandwiches from others on the crew,” said Bruyninckx, an environmental inspector working Enbridge’s Flanagan South Pipeline project. He ordered ham, turkey and pepper jack cheese.
The store’s 1950s decor had the Louisiana worker ogling.
“What’s this?” he said, peering at what Marilyn quickly identified as old post office boxes. It’s been 30 years since mail has been delivered in Mildred through the store.
“How do you get into them?” was Bruyninckx’s next question.
“We all had a number,” Marilyn said, with the P.O. boxes opening when the right combination was dialed.
“OK if I take a photo,” he asked, and returned in seconds with his cell phone to snap a few.
Wednesday morning’s spurt of activity was followed by a long yawn. That’s how it has been for years, Marilyn said. Some days four or five people stop by for sandwiches or groceries, sometimes 12 or 15.
“You never know,” she said.

MILDRED once was a boom town with as many as 375 men toiling at a factory making cement at the very edge of town. Tall concrete silos are a haunting reminder.
At the plant’s peak, 2,000 called Mildred home.
The 2010 Census put Mildred’s population at 28, including Marilyn who has lived on the south edge of town most of her life. Her ancestors homesteaded a nearby farm in 1886.
“One of two still in the same family,” she said of the farm.
In 1907, Sam T. McDermott of Kansas City bought 260 acres near the railroad tracks that run along the east side of Allen County to construct the Great Western Portland Cement Company.
To support the $2 million plant, Mildred, a true company town named after the cement plant manager’s daughter, sprang up. Soon, Mildred had two hotels, two barbershops, elementary and high schools, and a movie theater.
When construction hit a snag during World War I, cement sales slumped. Another hiccup was the cement industry had expanded too much, too fast. In addition to Great Western, there were cement plants in Iola, Humboldt, Carlyle and Concreto, a mile northeast of Gas. Humboldt’s Monarch Cement is the only plant remaining; Iola’s closed in the 1960s.
The Mildred plant shut down in the late teens, and reopened briefly in the 1920s.
The plant’s closing sounded the death knell for most of Mildred’s businesses; the last high school class graduated in 1944.

THROUGH IT ALL, Charlie Brown’s survived.
It became the go-to place for miles around. Coffee drinkers dropped by to fill voids between grocery and sandwich sales.
That has been true, though in waning fashion, to the very end. And, where else could a housewife find a bundle of tea towels made from flour sacks?
Charlie and Lucille enjoyed visitors and never missed an opportunity to host a politician on the stump, or anyone else who wanted a forum. For a few years, motorcycle groups — of the tamer variety — made the store a destination.
But, the inevitability of economics finally is having its way with Charlie Brown’s, proving for the umpteenth time nothing is immune from the bottom line.