September 6, 2000
Memories of popcorn wagon still fresh in many minds
Guy and Jennie McPherson ran concession stand outside city zoo starting in the 1930s
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Selling fresh popcorn, roasted peanuts and root beer, Guy and Jennie McPherson of Traverse City parked their concession stand outside of the old City Zoo for nearly than 20 years. Starting in 1932, after a brief stint in a vacant lot downtown, they found a permanent summer parking place right at the corner of Cass Street and the alley, just over the bridge.
For hungry passerby enjoying the warm summer evenings in Traverse City, a nickel a bag was a bargain too good to pass up. The rich smells would draw people from blocks around.
"The wagon was a big attraction," recalled Doc Aeschliman of Traverse City, who worked at the zoo for 41 years. "People used to line right up for it, in those days they did not have anything like this at home and popcorn was a great novelty. You got a big bag for five cents, that was a good deal."
During the Depression, however, sometimes even five cents was too much for a treat when money and jobs were so scarce.
"I remember the wagon but I never bought anything there," said Clint Kennard, who began vacationing up north with his family in 1929. "That was quite a bit of money for a treat."
McPherson towed the concession stand to its location every week using an old Model T. A snowbird who wintered in Arizona, he would stow the wagon at various places around town each winter, where it sat until warmer weather - and its owner - returned.
McPherson was a Traverse City native who also owned a house in Eastport. He and his wife occasionally took the wagon and its wares up to Eastport to sell popcorn and peanuts there. During the Northwestern Michigan Fair, McPherson would tow it down to the fairgrounds for the week.
But the times he parked downtown holds the most memories for Joyce Chance Burrows of Acme, whose sister married into the McPherson family.
"Traverse City was small then and when you went to the zoo or before you went to the movies, you would go down there and get popcorn," said Burrows, whose niece in Florida recently sent her photos of the wagon and the McPhersons. "It was not a teen hangout but the place to stop."
The wagon burned in 1950 when the gas heater inside caught fire and McPherson lost heart in the venture after that. His son, Perry, started another wagon after he returned from the service, trying to keep the tradition going. Burrows recalled helping her sister, Perry's wife, make the root beer at home, mixing batches of flavored syrup and carbonated water, to take to the wagon. After a few years, this small family business died out.
"When my brother-in-law came home from the service, my sister and he had three children," Burrows recalled. "He was going to school to become a surveyor and I used to go down to work on the new popcorn machine with my sister. It was like an ice cream truck."